By the way, I don't really want the people to have nuclear weapons. But, I think that the plain English of the Constitution and the intent of the framers was that the people should be able to defend themselves against a future King George by any means necessary and available to them.
They just did not foresee nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers and satellites and so forth.
I just hate being on the receiving end of a self-serving lecture that the Constitution means what the person says it means, and that this is obviously the intent of the Framers and the plain language of the Constitution. Almost always these lectures come from non-lawyers, or, if they do come from a lawyer, one without a very good imagination. Someone dull, boring, earnest, and without insight, like Bork.
I would love to be able to confront Scalia, whom I love, and point out just how self-serving his little rants are, just to see if he realizes how often he's blowing smoke. All he really means is that he's right, and the others are wrong. Well, everybody else thinks that they're right, too, but they don't wrap themselves in the mantle of the Founding Fathers with such vigorous flourishes.
Any good lawyer with a good imagination could give you an entire spectrum of contradictory takes on any provision in the Constitution, with excellent support from the Federalist Papers or the Anti-Federalist Papers and a good dictionary. |
