A book-end to President Obama's speech, Sarah Palin's video, and the call to civility, from Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips:
"The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this," he wrote, saying President Bill Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to "blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh."
Phillips said "the tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term."
He added, "The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words."
As the Nashville Scene's Jeff Woods says, "Yes, that's the main concern right now: spin advantage. Pretty classy. Emphasis on both words."
Reaction from the Tea Party nationwide is not particularly united in defense of gun rights and violent rhetoric, but noteworthy figures who reached national prominence in 2009-10 are continuing to work hard to protect the government they "took back" in 2010.
While the "liberal lunatic" message is certainly reaching some people, there are legitimate questions to be asked about how conservative ideology and policy creates the means and motives for liberal lunatics to do horrific things.
Lax gun laws, violent political rhetoric, antagonism toward duly elected officials, demands for small government ("drown it in a bathtub" comes to mind), and cuts in healthcare services have all contributed to the current system, just as in July 2008 when Knoxville's Jim Adkisson opened fire in a Unitarian church and killed two people. The Tea Party has largely succeeded in states like Arizona and Tennessee, where Republican governors and legislatures are working to stop legal immigration, slash government spending (especially on social services and education), and promote the right to bear arms of all kinds.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Second Amendment, but nowhere in the Second Amendment does it say that felons, crazy people, or liberal lunatics are prohibited from owning or carrying weapons anywhere. The Second Amendment, in its original meaning and taken to its logical conclusion, implies that if Jared Loughner wants to brandish a weapon, the government has no right to infringe upon that individual right, regardless of his legal or mental health status.
So, taken literally on its face, the Second Amendment rights of individual private citizens should never be abridged for any reason, including mental health status. An literal originalist interpretation of the Constitution is what the Tea Party wants. And now they shall reap the whirlwind.
But as legal scholar Patrick Charles argues:
Unfortunately, this argument is fatal if a court were to fully investigate what constituted the Second Amendment’s "well-regulated militia" as the Founders understood it. The right to "keep and bear arms" in a "well-regulated militia" was not a license to individually train or discharge firearms. What constituted a "well-regulated militia" was a carefully planned constitutional military force controlled by the State and federal governments. This fact was frequently conveyed in militia law preambles. Even the infamous Massachusetts militia that assembled at Lexington & Concord was a well-regulated and disciplined force that had been performing military exercises for a year. Not to mention, there is a long chain of historical evidence that counters the assertion that the individual exercise of arms is what accomplishes the Second Amendment’s purpose. It is well-documented that the Founding Fathers did not equate a random assemblage of armed people as comprising a "well-regulated militia," and instead viewed this assemblage as a dangerous mob.
Despite these proven historical and legal facts, pro-gun advocates, lobbyists, and scholars are not deterred from asserting otherwise. Their interpretation of history is one of voluntary militia associations where arms are the centerpiece of the militia right to keep and bear arms. It is asserted that militia "arms bearing" is not dependent or contingent upon military training and discipline, and instead is an independent function of what constitutes the Constitution’s "well-regulated militia" - organized and unorganized. In fact, this argument has already been successfully litigated using the 1792 National Militia Act as proof. In Parker v. District of Columbia, it was argued that the Act’s structure conveys that the Founders distinguished between an organized and unorganized militia, and that militia enrollment was constitutionally distinct from armament. This argument is an erroneous interpretation of eighteenth century militia law, but the Parker court agreed and regurgitated the argument as follows:
[I]n the 1792 enactment, Congress defined the militia broadly...[It] provides a detailed list of directions to both individuals and states that we take as an indication of what the drafters of the Second Amendment contemplated as a "well regulated Militia." It will be recalled, the second Militia Act requires that eligible citizens enroll in the militia and, within six months, arm themselves accordingly. Subsequent to enrollment, arming oneself became the first duty of all militiamen. The Act goes on to require of the states that the militiamen be notified of their enrollment; that within one year, the states pass laws to arrange the militia into divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions, and companies, as well as appoint various militia officers; that there be an Adjutant General appointed in each state to distribute all orders for the Commander in Chief of the State to the several corps, and so on. The statute thus makes clear that these requirements were independent of each other, i.e., militiamen were obligated to arm themselves regardless of the organization provided by the states, and the states were obligated to organize the militia, regardless of whether individuals had armed themselves in accordance with the statute. We take these dual requirements - that citizens were properly supplied with arms and subject to organization by the states (as distinct from actually organized) - to be a clear indication of what the authors of the Second Amendment contemplated as a "well regulated Militia."
And yet, the Roberts Court found the following in Heller (link courtesy of the NRA):
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
Some might call this judicial activism.
Judson Phillips, a DUI attorney in Franklin, TN, calls it a return to the intentions of the Founding Fathers.
But what about the right of the "Don't Tread On Me" set to take up arms against a government official perceived as tyrannical? If the FBI wants to search your home, and you object, do you have a right to take up arms against a federal agent? That is the question that is being openly asked by the Tea Party now. Intense hatred toward the Federal government and a cry of "States Rights" has led to a call by many in Tennessee to "meet them at the border" if the federal government tries to impose laws like, say, an individual mandate to have health insurance.
But then, what about the state or local government? If an individual finds a law he doesn't like, can he simply take up arms against the State? Where does this rabbit hole take us, and where do we end up?
While President Obama is helping to restore civility and weave together the damaged threads of our American tapestry, Judson Phillips is demanding that personal liberty must trump personal responsibility or loyalty to one's fellow Americans. The differences could not be more pronounced.