Category Archives: Quotes

How Facebook “fact checkers” skew the truth

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Opinion by Glen Davis
Research credit goes to J.d. Benfer.

Facebook “fact checkers” are freaking out about a meme with JFK talking about needing a strong militia. They twist it around to say that it does not say JFK was against gun control. As J.D. Benfer pointed out in his comment, the quote says nothing about gun control. A strong Second Amendment stance, of course, IS implied by the quote.

The quote is from a speech that can be found on the President Kennedy Presidential library online:

PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S COMMEMORATIVE MESSAGE ON ROOSEVELT DAY, JANUARY 29, 1961
January 29, 1961

This year, the celebrations of Roosevelt Day has special significance for Democrats everywhere; for we celebrate not only the triumphs of the past but the opportunities of the future.

Twenty-eight years ago Franklin Roosevelt assumed the leadership of a stricken and demoralized nation. Poverty, distress and economic stagnation blanketed the land. But it was not long before the great creative energies of the New Deal had lifted America from its despair and set us on the path to new heights of prosperity, power and greatness.

Today America is the richest nation in the history of the world. Our power and influence extend around the globe. Yet the challenges and dangers which confront us are even more awesome and difficult than those that faced Roosevelt. And we too will need to summon all the energies of our people and the capacities of our leaders if America is to remain a great and free nation — if we are to master the opportunities of the New Frontier.

The dimensions of our problems overwhelm the imagination. At home millions are unemployed and the growth of our economy has come to a virtual halt. Abroad, we are faced with powerful and unrelenting pressure which threaten freedom in every corner of the globe, and with military power so formidable that it menaces the physical survival of our own nation.

To meet these problems will require the efforts not only of our leaders or of the Democratic Party–but the combined efforts of all of our people. No one has a right to feel that, having entrusted the tasks of government to new leaders in Washington, he can continue to pursue his private comforts unconcerned with America’s challenges and dangers. For, if freedom is to survive and prosper, it will require the sacrifice, the effort and the thoughtful attention of every citizen.

In my own native state of Massachusetts, the battle for American freedom was begun by the thousands of farmers and tradesmen who made up the Minute Men — citizens who were ready to defend their liberty at a moment’s notice. Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of America, cannot succeed with any lesser effort.

It is this effort and concern which makes up the New Frontier. And it is this effort and concern which will determine the success or failure not only with this Administration, but of our nation itself.

Source: White House Central Subject Files, Box 111, “FDR”.

Other Information Sources:

“Know your Lawmakers,” Guns Magazine, April 1960.
“Letter to President John F. Kennedy from the NRA,” [NRAcentral.com].
“New Minute Men Urged by Kennedy,” The New York Times, 30 January, 1961, pg. 13.
“Kennedy Says U.S. Needs Minute Men,” Los Angeles Times, 30 January, 1961, pg. 4.
“Minutemen’s Soft-Sell Leader: Robert B. DePugh,” The New York Times, 12 November 1961, pg. 76.

The quote on the meme is clearly correct.

So you need to watch for this. When Facebook “fact checkers” cannot deny something outright, they twist it around.

Did the founders believe the same? Did they actually add the Second Amendment to prevent the government from becoming tyrannical and acting in opposition to the Constitution? I refer to Federalist Paper No. 29 written by the hip-hop guy Alexander Hamilton. The non-President on the ten-dollar bill whom is not being removed from our currency.

The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.

I could go on, but it is clear that the Second Amendment was not written to protect hunters. It did not protect muskets. The Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

It states that the right to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. That means I keep and bear any arm in the arsenal of the United States military unhindered, so long as I am doing so lawfully, i.e. not robbing banks, killing people, etc. Although my M1 Abrams does have to be converted to tires if I want to drive it in the streets.

The argument that the founders could not foresee the development of arms today is false. They saw the progression from swords, to cannons, to rifles. The advanced concept of “rifling,” in fact, was invented by German gunsmiths right here in the good old colonies.

With all of this said, there are certain REAL common sense restrictions that can be applied. For example if you want to hang onto a case of grenades, they could be restricted to being stored in a bunker that would prevent damage to neighbors property should they explode. You cannot just set up an ad hoc shooting range on your property unless you have enough property to prevent your shots from reaching roads and neighbors property. In other words, your right to arms cannot interfere with the rights of your neighbors.

Happy Birthday John Marshall

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john-marshall

The power to tax involves the power to destroy,” wrote Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819.

The thirteen original States were a band of brothers, who suffered, fought, bled, and triumphed together; they might, perhaps, have safely confided each his separate interest to the general will; but if ever the day should come, when representatives from beyond the Rocky Mountains shall sit in this capitol; if ever a numerous and inland delegation shall wield the exclusive power of making regulations for our foreign commerce, without community of interest or knowledge of our local circumstances, the Union will not stand; it cannot stand; it cannot be the ordinance of God or nature, that it should stand. It has been said by very high authority, that the power of Congress to regulate commerce, ‘sweeps away the whole subject matter.’ If so, it makes a wreck of State legislation, leaving only a few standing ruins, that mark the extent of the desolation. – Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824

Chief Justice John Marshall was born this day in 1755. He was not only a brilliant jurist, but also fought in a War for Independence. McCulloch v. Maryland is one of his much quoted cases; particularly in the area of the Tenth Amendment.

His decision in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden was so maligned by subsequent Supreme Courts (Mainly during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era) that the actual decision in the case has been lost.

Chief Justice Marshall is quoted by the so-called left when it serves their “decades of precedence” on gun control. They do not refer to this case when it comes to the matter of the bureaucracies they have created. In this case Chief Justice Story ruled bureaucracies, and particularly “private” agencies such as the Federal Reserve, unconstitutional. In Gibbons he wrote:

…for the power which is exclusively delegated to Congress, can only be exercised by Congress itself, and cannot be sub-delegated by it.

Article I, Section 1 states:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Only CONGRESS has the power to make law or to effect anything that can be construed as law. They cannot delegate that authority to a bureaucracy.

Article I, Section 8, Clauses 2 and 5 give CONGRESS the power to:

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
AND
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

Therefore that cannot be turned over to any other authority.

For a brief introduction to this Chief Justice, see American Minute with Bill Federer

The Tenth Amendment

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“When government acts in excess of its lawful powers, individual liberty is at stake.”—Justice Kennedy, Supreme Court, Bond v. United States (564 U.S. __ (2011))

“One great object of the federal Convention was, to give more power to future Assemblies of the States. In this they have done liberally, without partiallity to the interests of the states individually; and their intentions were known before the honourable body was dissolved.”—Casius

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.—Articles of Confederation, Article II, March 1, 1781

Alexander-Hamilton-1806

“But let it be admitted, for argument’s sake, that mere wantonness and lust of domination would be sufficient to beget that disposition; still it may be safely affirmed, that the sense of the constituent body of the national representatives, or, in other words, the people of the several States, would control the indulgence of so extravagant an appetite. It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities. The proof of this proposition turns upon the greater degree of influence which the State governments if they administer their affairs with uprightness and prudence, will generally possess over the people; a circumstance which at the same time teaches us that there is an inherent and intrinsic weakness in all federal constitutions; and that too much pains cannot be taken in their organization, to give them all the force which is compatible with the principles of liberty.”—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper No. 17

Thomas Jefferson on government powers

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“Our tenet ever was…that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.” — Thomas Jefferson 1817

James Madison on General Welfare

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James_Madison

“With respect to the words ‘general welfare’, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by it creators.” — James Madison 1831

Property by James Madison

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madisonJames Madison, Property
29 Mar. 1792Papers 14:266–68

This term in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
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