TM Lutas

A Conservative Case for the Militia Clause in the 2nd Amendment

by

The traditional modern conservative opinion on the 2nd Amendment diminishes and almost entirely dismisses the opening clause, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”. I believe this to be an error that leaves leftists an opening to prolong the Second Amendment assault forever. That opening needs to be closed. A substantive construction of this clause that makes sense to the general public is necessary to put down the gun control movement permanently.

But first, a little Latin. Crimes can be generally divided into the categories “malum prohibitum” and “malum in se”. Malum in se are crimes that are universally considered wrong or immoral that all just societies prohibit. Malum prohibitum are crimes that a legislature creates and are only crimes because they told us so. Tyrannies thrive by multiplying malum prohibitum crimes and turning honest citizens into fearful subjects that can be seized by the law at any time. Militias only go after malum in se crimes and are thus useful to the people who want a just society but useless to any sort of tyrant.

The militia’s uselessness to tyrants is its greatest selling point and one that the colonists implicitly understood because none of the abuses of King George were ever enforced by the militia (if there are examples where this actually happened, please share in comments). With that understanding, the introductory clause makes perfect sense to us all and gives us a common sense reason why even today, it’s important to have a strong militia so that our security is, as much as feasible, in the hands of people who will not sweat the small stuff. In fact, it’s truly necessary for the security of a free state.

The alternative is to entirely rely on paid agents of the state for our security, whether military or police. Is there ever a case where governments who are hard up for cash don’t make petty rules to extract fines and hem in the people’s liberty? Is there a government out there that does not favor its supporters and disfavor its opponents? Controlling these agents’ salaries is a powerful inducement for them to do the wrong thing if the government asks them. Over time and across a large number of governments, there will always be cases where they will be asked and there will always be agents who are willing to be tin pot tyrants. They have households to maintain after all.

Check Your Privilege

by

Forum shopping the prosecution of felonies by choosing the campus courts or the criminal courts is a massive case of privilege that is not available to most Americans and favored most strongly by today’s campus Left.

Check your privilege indeed.

Discuss.

Trump’s Dumb Muslim Plan

by

To do a valid Christian baptism requires some water, a Christian to administer it, and about 15 seconds. Licitness so that all the proper paperwork is done and the newly baptized Christian is properly educated could take a year but if you don’t give a hoot for the niceties or it’s an emergency, 15 seconds will do. That’s all that is required to get around Trump’s Muslim ban. This makes his plan a stupid plan. It is worse than useless. It is an anti-screen. Honest Muslims who want medical treatment or just to go shopping will be stopped. For a terrorist, it’s hardly a speed bump.

That isn’t to say that there is no room to change our immigration system to improve things. It’s just not this one. Trump has the money to hire the best help in formulating a real plan and he came out with a stupid stinker instead.

The better solution, and one that would be perfectly understood by Trump’s base would be a straightforward declaration that private courts including religious courts that issue judgments that call for the injury or death of americans are enemies of America. To aid them as a U.S. citizen is treason, and any of their agents or bailiffs are in an immigration-excludable category that gets put on the DS-156 right next to the item asking are you a Nazi.

We don’t need anything complicated. Nobody reasonable is going to get bent out of shape over the declaration of our enemy being people who seek to kill or hurt us. The ones who do protest it will be doing us all a service. Hardly any administrative procedures have to be changed, only one form.

Trump wouldn’t have had to break a sweat selling this. But he didn’t. Why did he push his dumb plan instead?

The US should help give Mexico first world problems

by

The cheapest, most effective US southern border security measure available over the long haul is for Mexico to become a high income country that honors the rule of law. Dollar for dollar, nothing beats making somebody else the front line on handling third world immigration. Mexican illegal immigration dries up in a good way while Central Americans only target the US as much as they currently target Canada (which is hardly at all).

Comments?

Beating Trump on Immigration, the Easy Way

by

From a common sense perspective, Donald Trump is weak on immigration. He is weak because he’s more focused on rabble rousing and being a blowhard rather than actually creating a humane solution consistent with American principles. A competing GOP candidate could easily get to the right of Trump while getting more of the Latino vote. All it takes is being an ordinary human being that looks at these people as equal to everybody else.

A candidate can say the ugly truth that unaccompanied minors from Latin America are victims of child abuse by US standards. Cooperating with originating-country governments to open and manage a child abuse case would be a primarily federal responsibility due to the international nature of the case, though there would be room for a strong state role. Just think about it. If a mother from Miami, FL put her 12 year old on a freight train, destination, San Francisco, CA there is no question that child endangerment and abuse would be on the prosecutor’s menu when the kid’s caught. It would be unthinkable to have different treatment if the point of origin were Boston, MA. This is America and we believe in equal treatment under the law. So why is the legal treatment different when the kid’s from Guatamala, Mexico, or Panama? Their children are not inferior to ours and their treatment should be held to the same standards when they are within our borders. Trump’s plan doesn’t do this. That is weakness. For the general election, this line has the additional advantage of setting up Hillary Clinton as soft on child abuse.

On the larger issue of immigration, the US civil war provides lessons. The destruction of slavery and the plantation system left an enormous pool of labor at loose ends and in desperate need and we mobilized to meet that emergency during the war. Today, the mitigation and end of several types of economic slavery has put the whole world in the same boat. The Deng reforms mitigated the Maoist economic slave system and unleashed hundreds of millions of people in search of jobs. The end of the Permit Raj in India released hundreds of millions more. The end of the Soviet system unleashed yet more within both Eastern Europe and all over the third world. As Republicans we rejoice in the mitigation and the ending of human bondage whether it’s outright slavery, serfdom, or goes under some modern label like communism. But the problems of how such recently liberated people are integrated into the world economy are just as daunting today as they were during our own civil war.

While much of the adjustment to that tidal wave has already taken place, the global political class is failing to create enough work to occupy all those idle hands which will put pressure on wages so long as the failure continues. In desperation many seek to enter the US illegally and our system for welcoming and integrating newcomers is swamped, something that is as dangerous as swamping a boat, or overfilling a house to the point of collapse.

We should not forget that for the vast majority of these economic migrants, plan A is getting a good job in their own society. Migration, especially illegal immigration is pretty far down on the list of preferred life plans for the vast majority of illegal immigrants.

So long as large pools of unemployed and underemployed exist anywhere that connects with the global economy, wages will continue to have downward pressure and Americans will feel the economic pain. A wall on the border is a single layer of defense. It is not enough.

The best defense is a defense in depth. While we build the wall, we need to significantly increase the number of jobs we create so that we drive unemployment down to its frictional rate of 3% and keep pressing on with job creation even after that so that jobs on the other side of the border increase and migrants stop there instead of here. The ideal is for people to have jobs in their own countries, in their own hometowns.

This can only be accomplished by getting government out of the way in terms of job creation and encouraging people to become part time or full time capitalists where they can.

Trump’s plan is weak because it is reactive and offers nothing in terms of reducing immigration pressure beyond our border where the first level of defense should be.