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The War Between the Amendments

Original Saepe_Expertus Wrote: Jan 17, 2013 10:12 PM
Solzhenitzyn On Self Defense At Leningrad Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn...................."And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers.....

The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives; it also pits the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution against each other.

Apparently, in the sequential thinking of James Madison and the Founding Fathers, the right to free expression and the guarantee to own arms were the two most important personal liberties. But now these two cherished rights seem to be at odds with each other and have caused bitter exchanges between interpreters of the Constitution.

Many liberals believe there is...

Wednesday, May 22 | 07:56 AM ET
Wednesday, May 22 | 07:56 AM ET
Wednesday, May 22 | 07:56 AM ET
Wednesday, May 22 | 07:56 AM ET