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Rand, Ayn – If you wish to oppose [statism], you must challenge its basic premises. You must begin by realizing that there is no such thing as “the public interest” except as the sum of the interest of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men—all rational men—is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of “the public interest”—not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation—and cannot exist without it. The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of “the public interest.” Such principles did and do exist. Try to project such a system. In today’s cultural atmosphere, it might appear to you like a journey into the unknown. but —like Columbus—what you will discover is America. - The Fascist New Frontier. Rand, Ayn - Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce it. - ATLAS SHRUGGED, p. 382 (1957). Ruwart, Dr. Mary J. – Through taxation, pacifists are forced at gunpoint to pay for killing machines; vegetarians are forced at gunpoint to subsidize grazing land for cattle; nonsmokers are forced at gunpoint to support both the production of tobacco and the research to counter its impact on health. These minorities are the victims, not the initiators of aggression. Their only crime is not agreeing with the priorities of the majority. Taxation appears to be more than theft; it is intolerance for the preferences and even the moral viewpoints of our neighbors. Through taxation we forcibly impose our will on others in an attempt to control their choices. ... Indeed, taxation and other forms of aggression-through-government are so taken for granted in our culture that one of our most popular sayings is that “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Yet slavery was once as universal. Taxation is thought to be indispensable to civilization today, just as slavery once was. Advocates of taxation claim that since most people pay assigned taxes before the guns show up, they have implicitly agreed to it as the price of living in “society.” Most slaves obeyed their master before he got the whip, yet we would hardly argue that this constituted agreement to their servitude. Today, we have an enlightened perspective on slavery, just as one day we will have an enlightened perspective on taxes and other forms of aggression we now think of as “the only way.” Just as our ancestors rationalized slavery, we’ve created the illusion that taxation is legitimate. - HEALING OUR WORLD, Ch. 1. Shipman, William G. (principal with State Street Global Advisors in Boston; libertarian) - Compassionate in intent, but flawed in design, Social Security will prevent many from enjoying financial security in their later years. ... [T]he unsound financial foundation of the system virtually ensures that the promised benefits, low as they are, will be reduced even further. - The CATO Project on Social Security Privatization, Retiring with Dignity: Social Security vs. Private Markets, August 14, 1995. Sobran, Joseph - The Founding Fathers knew that democracy had great potential for tyranny. They understood that a majority tyranny can be at least as terrible as any other kind. After all, a majority can enslave or exterminate a minority. ... In truth, successful dictators are usually very popular. Their regimes are distinguished not by silence but by roaring crowds and festive rallies. Benito Musolini, Adolf Hitler, Juan Peron, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro all mastered the technique of amplifying their support, while reducing opposition to no more than private grumbles. ... Any highly centralized government is likely to be tyrannical, which is why the Founding Fathers were careful to disperse power. Not careful enough, as it turns out. - Tyranny without Dictators, SOBRAN’S March 1996. Story, Chief Justice Joseph (1779-1845; Nineteenth Century U.S. Supreme Court Justice) - The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defense of a free country against foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. - 1833, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES Vol. 3 § 1890, p. 746 (Boston, Hilliard, Gray and Company, 1833; reprinted 1987, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina; also reprinted in THE FOUNDERS’ CONSTITUTION Volume Five (Amendments I-XII) at 214 (Univ. of Chicago Press)). Tennessee Supreme Court – The right to keep and bear arms, necessarily involves the right to purchase them, to keep them in a state of efficiency for use, and to purchase and provide ammunition suitable for such arms, and to keep them in repair. And clearly for this purpose, a man would have the right to carry them to and from his home, and no one could claim that the Legislature had the right to punish him for it, without violating this clause of the Constitution. But farther than this, it must be held, that the right to keep arms involves, necessarily, the right to use such arms for all the ordinary purposes, and in all the ordinary modes usual in the country, and to which arms are adapted, limited by the duties of a good citizen in times of peace; that in such use, he shall not use them for violation of the rights of others, or the paramount rights of the community of which he is a part. - Andrews, v. State, 50 TENN. 141, 153, 3 HEISK. 165, 178-79 (1871). Texas Supreme Court - The object of the first clause [of the Second Amendment] cited, has reference to the perpetuation of free government, and is based on the idea, that the people cannot be effectually oppressed and enslaved, who are not first disarmed. The clause cited in [the Texas] bill of rights, has the same broad object in relation to the government, and in addition thereto, secures a personal right to the citizen. The right of a citizen to bear arms, in the lawful defence of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the state government, but directly from the sovereign convention of the people that framed the state government. It is one of the “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and “is excepted out of the general powers of government.” A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power. - Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, 401-02 (1859). Toch, Hans and Alan J. Lizotte – [R]ates of male firearms ownership tend to be inversely correlated with violent crime rates, a curious fact if firearms stimulate aggression. It is hard to explain that where firearms are most dense, violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest.... [W]hen used for protection firearms can seriously inhibit aggression and can provide a psychological buffer against the fear of crime. Furthermore, the fact that national patterns show little violent crime where guns are most dense implies that guns do not elicit aggression in any meaningful way. Quite the contrary, these findings suggest that high saturations of guns in places, or something correlated with that condition, inhibit illegal aggression. - Research and Policy: The Case of Gun Control, PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY (1992). Trenchard, John and Thomas Gordon (aka Cato) [authors of Cato’s Letters, written under the pen name Cato in honor of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis a.k.a. Cato the Younger (95-46 BC, staunch defender of republican principles and opponent of Julius Caesar), Cato’s Letters were published weekly for 3 years in the LONDON JOURNAL in the 1720s] - The state of tyranny is a state of war. - Cato’s Letters, LONDON JOURNAL Tucker, Thomas T. - The constitution should be the avowed act of the people at large. It should be the first and fundamental law of the State, and should prescribe the limits of all delegated power. It should be declared to be paramount to all acts of the Legislature, and irrepealable and unalterable by any authority but the express consent of the majority of the citizens .... - CONCILIATORY HINTS, ATTEMPTING BY A FAIR STATE OF MATTERS, TO REMOVE PARTY PREJUDICE, 281 (Charleston, 1784). Tucker, William – Cities with rent controls had, on average, two and a half times as many homeless people as cities without them. - THE EXCLUDED AMERICANS: HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING POLICIES. U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia - [The jury has an] unreviewable and irreversible power ... to acquit in disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial judge.... - U.S. v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113, 1139 (1972). U.S. Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit - It is beyond dispute that a judge may not direct a verdict of guilty in a criminal jury trial. - Smelcher v. Attorney General of Ala., 947 F.2d 1472, 1476 (1991). U.S. Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit - If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision. - U.S. v. Moylan, 417 F.2d 1002, 1006 (1969). U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit - [By Judge Learned Hand] Since if they [the jury] acquit, their verdict is final, no one is likely to suffer of whose conduct they [the jury] do not morally disapprove; and this introduces a slack into the enforcement of law, tempering its rigor by the 94 mollifying influence of current ethical conventions. - United States ex rel. McCann v. Adams, 126 F.2d 774, 776 set aside by United States x rel. McCann v. Adams, 317 U.S. 269 (1942). U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit - From now onwards the jury enters on a new phase of its history, and for the next three centuries it will exercise its power of veto on the use of the criminal law against political offenders who have succeeded in obtaining popular sympathy. - U.S. v. Wilson, 629 F.2d 439, 443 (1980). U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania - The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium than print, the village green, or the mails.... Speech on the Internet can be unfiltered, unpolished, and unconventional, even emotionally charged, sexually explicit and vulgar—in a word “indecent” in many communities. But we should expect such speech to occur in a medium in which citizens from all walks of life have a voice. We should also protect the autonomy that such a medium confers to ordinary people as well as media magnates... the Internet may well be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion... Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects. - ACLU v. Reno, Case Nos. 96-963, 96-1458. U.S. Marine Corps (Results of a May 10, 1994, “Combat Arms Survey” report conducted by Lieutenant Commander Ernest Guy Cunningham which asked active duty marines at the USMC’s Air-Ground Combat Center in Twenty-nine Palms, California the following: “The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale, transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. A thirty (30) day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to the local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms. Consider the following statement: I would fire upon U. S. Citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government.”) - 42.3 percent of the marines surveyed strongly disagreed with this statement; 19.3 percent disagreed; 18.6 percent agreed; 7.6 percent strongly agreed; and 12.0 percent had no opinion. Lieutenant Commander Ernest Guy Cunningham concluded that “a complete unit breakdown would occur in a unit tasked to execute this mission.” A footnote in the report quotes a sampling of what some of the marines wrote next to their response: “What about the damn Second Amendment?” “I feel this is a first in communism!” “Read the book None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen.” “I would not even consider it. The reason we have guns is so that the people can overthrow the gov’t when or if the people think the gov’t is too powerful.” “Freedom to bear arms is our Second Amendment. If you take our Amendments away then you can take this job and stick it where the sun don’t shine!” “It is a right to own firearms for defense (2nd Amendment); I would fight for that right!” - this report is available from the library of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORTS - From the 1940s through the 1970s, more than 4000 radiation experiments were conducted on tens of thousands of Americans. Some of the experiments have resulted in huge lawsuits. At Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, one lawsuit claims, 829 pregnant women in anemia studies were fed radioactive iron without their knowledge. ... Another lawsuit claims that doctors in Rochester, NY, secretly injected patients with plutonium. And yet another says that physicians in Cincinnati gave cancer patients heavy doses of gamma rays. ... The patients “were never asked by anybody.” The poor were also fair game. They almost always received free medical treatment, noted Dr. Paul Beeson, chairman of the department of internal medicine at Yale from 1952 to 1965. “We were taking care of them and felt we had a right to get some return from them.” ... One doctor, Robert Stone, was uneasy about his TBI [total-body irradiation] experiments at the University of California Hospital. His records referred to his patients only by their initials. “With the initials removed,” Stone wrote, “there will be no means by which patients can ever connect themselves up with the report.” That, he said, would avoid “either adverse publicity or litigation”—a major government concern then. - Tales from the Crypt, September 18, 1995. U.S. Supreme Court - [I]t is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand presumable, that the court [sic] are the best judges of law. But still, both objects are lawfully, within [the jury’s] power of decision. ... The jury has the right to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. - Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. (3 Dall. 1, 4) (1794). U.S. Supreme Court - [Trial by jury] uniformly was regarded as a valuable privilege bestowed upon the person accused of a crime for the purpose of safeguarding him against the oppressive power of the King and the arbitrary or partial judgment of the court. - Patton v. United States, 281 U.S. 276, 292-97 (1930). U.S. Supreme Court - A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the government. Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. ... Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased or eccentric judge. If the defendant preferred the commonsense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it. - Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 156 (1968). U.S. Supreme Court - An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. - Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, 442. U.S. Supreme Court – The federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program. - New York v. United States, 1992. U.S. Supreme Court - The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. - New York Times v. United States, 40 U.S. 713, 717 (Black, J., concurring) (1971). U.S. Supreme Court - To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. - Loan Association v. Topeka, 87 U.S. 655, 664 (1874). U.S. Supreme Court - When an act of congress is appropriately challenged in the courts as not conforming to the constitutional mandate the judicial branch of the government has only one duty—to lay the article of the Constitution which is invoked beside the statute which is challenged and to decide whether the latter squares with the former. - United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 62 (1936). U.S. Supreme Court – When juries differ with the result at which the judge would have arrived, it is usually because they are serving some of the very purposes for which they were created and for which they are now employed. - Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 147 (1968). Vatican – (on the four mandatory conditions necessary for the use of military force under Christian ethics): 1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; 3. there must be serious prospects of success; 4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. - Just War Doctrine of Christian ethics issued by the Roman Catholic Church. Wallop, Senator Malcolm (Founder of Frontiers of Freedom, rancher, businessman, former U.S. Army Officer) - In fact, Roosevelt’s New Deal made the federal bureaucracy into a corps of millions who have been remaking America in accord with their material self-interest, social self-image, and collectivist ideology. Liberal government employees hire their own kind, buy schoolbooks written by their own kind, and fund hundreds of advocacy groups, endowments for the art and humanities, and their own radio and television network. - February 21, 1995 at Hillsdale College’s Shavano Institute for National Leadership Seminar “Taking on Big Government: Agenda for the 1990s,” in Dallas, Texas. Wallop, Senator Malcolm (Founder of Frontiers of Freedom, rancher, businessman, former U.S. Army Officer) - Within living memory this was still the free country described by Tocqueville 150 years ago, where families could make new lives without the interference of armies of bureaucrats. But, over one generation, government has doubled the amount of money it takes from us, has increasingly deprived us of control over our own lives, has turned our public spaces over to criminals and our public schools into factories of ignorance. It has driven us apart on the basis of race and even of sex and, in the name of tolerance, has made us intolerant. - February 21, 1995 at Hillsdale College’s Shavano Institute for National Leadership Seminar “Taking on Big Government: Agenda for the 1990s,” in Dallas, Texas. Wallop, Senator Malcolm (Founder of Frontiers of Freedom, rancher, businessman, former U.S. Army Officer) - But the most corrupting thing about entitlements is that when individuals look to the state to perform functions that they or their families ought to perform, families decay and personal responsibility shrinks. - February 21, 1995 at Hillsdale College’s Shavano Institute for National Leadership Seminar “Taking on Big Government: Agenda for the 1990s,” in Dallas, Texas. Wallop, Senator Malcolm (Founder of Frontiers of Freedom, rancher, businessman, former U.S. Army Officer) - Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that anyone is entitled to the earnings of others. - February 21, 1995 at Hillsdale College’s Shavano Institute for National Leadership Seminar “Taking on Big Government: Agenda for the 1990s,” in Dallas, Texas. WASHINGTON TIMES - Whatever you think about guns, without them there would never have been any liberty in the United States. - May 11, 1993. Washington, George - Precedents are dangerous things; let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the Constitution be reprehended: if defective let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon whilst it has an existence. - 1786. Washington, Pres. George - Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it. - Farewell Address. Wayne, John – Republic ... means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Webster, Noah - [L]iberty is never secured by such paper declarations; nor lost for want of them. WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY (1828; published by Noah Webster) - Jury: A number of freeholders, selected and sworn to inquire into and try any matter of fact and to declare the truth of the evidence given them in the case. Grand Juries consist usually of 24 freeholders at least, and are summoned to try matters alleged in indictments. Petty Juries consist usually of 12 men, attend court to try matters of fact in civil cases, and to decide both law and fact in criminal prosecutions. The decision of a petty jury is called a verdict. Weinberg-Brodt, Chaya - Juries have the absolute constitutional power to nullify in all criminal cases. ... In the United States, a jury may acquit in every criminal case, and this acquittal is final and unreviewable. A judge never may direct the jury to convict, even where the facts are not in dispute and the defendant is guilty as a matter of law. Similarly, a judge never can vacate an acquittal even if the verdict is clearly against the weight of the evidence; nor may a prosecutor appeal an acquittal on grounds of judicial error or erroneous jury determination. - NOTE: Jury Nullification and Jury-Control Procedures, 65 N.Y.U.L. REV. 825, 826, 828 (1990). Weinberg-Brodt, Chaya - Jury nullification is not a new phenomenon. Its roots may be found in medieval criminal law and the English common law. The absolute power of English juries to nullify without fear of punishment was established in 1670 in Bushell’s Case. - NOTE: Jury Nullification and Jury-Control Procedures, 65 N.Y.U.L. REV. 825, 829 (1990) referring to Bushell’s Case 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (1670). West Virginia Supreme Court - W.Va. Code, 61-7-1 [1975] thus prohibits the carrying of weapons for defense of self, family, home and state without a license or statutory authorization. Article III, section 22 of the West Virginia constitution, however, guarantees that a person has the right to keep and bear arms for those defensive purposes. Thus, the statute operates to impermissibly infringe upon this constitutionally protected right to bear arms for defensive purposes. - State v. Buckner, 377 S.E.2d 139, 144 (1988). Who will guard us from the guardians? - Ancient Roman proverb Wigmore, John H. – We want justice, and we think we are going to get it through “the law”, and when we do not, we blame “the law.” Now this is where the jury comes in. The jury in the privacy of its retirement, adjusts the general rule of law to the justice of the particular case. Thus the odium of inflexible rules of law is avoided, and popular satisfaction is preserved ... That is what the jury trial does. It supplies that flexibility of legal rules which is essential to justice and popular contentment. - A Program for the Trial of Jury Trial, 12 J. AM. JUD. SOC. 166, 170 (1929). Williams, Senator Harrison (Senator - NJ, strong promoter of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) - How can the language of equality favor one race or one religion over another? Equality can have only one meaning, and that meaning is self-evident to reasonable men. Those who say that equality means favoritism do violence to common sense. - during the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Williams, Walter - During the 1913 legislative debate on the income tax, congress promised that the top tax rate would never exceed 7 percent, and that was on incomes over $500,000 (over $5.5 million in today’s dollars). The personal exemption for a single person was $3,000 ($34,400 in today’s dollars) and for a married couple $4,000 ($45,900 today). In 1913, only 4 percent of the population earned enough to file a tax return. The 16th Amendment would never have been ratified had Congress sought the tax code we have today. - THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, July 16, 1994. Williams, Walter - Each of us is duty-bound to read and understand our Constitution. If we do that, we’ll realize Washington has little or no moral authority. Its authority rests mostly on intimidation and force of arms. And like the founders, we should adopt the attitude that “There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.” - Corrupting the Constitution, CONSERVATIVE CHRONICLE, November 1, 1995. Williams, Walter – No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong. Williams, Walter - Only resolute ignorance leads one to believe that minimum wages are an anti-poverty weapon. If they were, we could eliminate world poverty simply by telling the legislatures of countries like Haiti and Bangladesh to enact high minimum wages; then they’d be as rich as we are. - Minimum wage, maximum folly, CONSERVATIVE CHRONICLE, p. 23, April 17, 1996. “In criminal cases, a jury is entitled to acquit the defendant because it has no sympathy for the government’s position.” United States v. Wilson, 629 F.2d 439, 443 (6th Cir. 1980) You, the jurors, are the conscience of the community. In addition to deciding the facts in the case, you are also here to provide a check and balance against the possibility of unjust laws or an over-zealous prosecution. You must accept the law as I have given it to you, however, if you believe the law itself is unjust, or that the law produces an unjust result as applied to the facts of this particular case, you may vote your conscience to acquit. - Nullification instruction. Zelman, Aaron and Richard W. Stevens – “Gun control” advocates help criminals by creating conditions favorable to criminals. America is supposed to be the land of the free, but law-abiding Americans increasingly are not free. Instead, they huddle behind locked doors, window bars, alarms, and security guards. Criminals seem more free to do what they please, to whom they please, where they please, when they please, and as much as they please. This sad state of affairs results from mistakenly showing compassion to violent criminals. - DEATH BY “GUN CONTROL” 220 (2001).

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