Lawrence Auster at VFR (http://www.amnation.com/vfr/_) wonders whether a Constitutional amendment is necessary to prevent jihadists from being allowed to exercise a supposed right to advocate jihadism. The answer is definitely not. The First Amendment, as interpreted somewhat reasonably by the Supreme Court, bars calls to violence (by even jihadists) in the here and now, which is the essence of jihadism. So the potential problem is not the Constitution but the interpreters.
Many think the current interpreters would be put in their place (as I wish) with an amendment. Such thinking leads dogs to chase their tails. It would never end. The Constitution is a broadly worded document capable of reasonable interpretation of everything we have been dealt (except the pill and maybe nuclear weapons). Exaclty where is baby killing constitutionally protected, where is Christianity barred from public places, etc.?
The problem is deeply systemic. For at least sixty years, five liberals created by chance or a liberal legislature or a liberal presidency or some combination, are helping to destroy the country. Now perhaps the founders erred in declaring the interpreters as co-equals or maybe it is all in the interpretation that has gone awry. But the Constitution is sufficient to quell jihadism, if only the interpreting oligarchs will see the light before it is too late.
The fix we are in is a political fix not a legal (that is, constitutional) fix. Newt Gingrich had an interesting idea recently, which I and no doubt most knowledgeable Trads would agree is interesting: arrest and attempt to impeach federal judges who issue ridiculous political decisions. Limiting their jurisdiction, in my view, is the best and most constitutionally sound way of corralling the most dangerous branch of government of late.
A concrete example is the pre-Civil War USA. The North dominated the South politically and by numbers. Southerners, living among huge numbers of blacks, intuitively knew no appeal to a supposed co-equal branch known as the Supreme Court was going to save them and their culture from the subsequent carnage that is occurring every day as a result of the Civil War. The nearly conclusive proof that has recently come to mind is Lincoln’s declaration of martial law (tyranny) but mainly his defiance of the Supreme Court with his Emancipation Proclamation, which ignored the Dred Scott decision.
The North had the population (and still does, particularly with the ever more powerful West), and therefore, all three branches of the government. To the extent there are many Southerners in the Northern legislature today, the Southerners would not be there but for their allegiance to Northern interests (as I suspect was common pre-Civil War). Like the South’s opposite error, the modern white-conservatives’ error is a belief it is too weak to separate or a belief nonwhites are essential or a failure to drive out most nonwhites or some combination.
The solution is counter-revolution, as has been proposed many years earlier. Revolution is not to come about only by living conservative lives, which by osmosis the rest of society will be overcome. Living conservative lives is essential but insufficient. The American Revolutionaries would have gotten nowhere by osmosis. The answer is everyday conservatives sacrificing their careers and fortunes and futures. Almost all signers of the Declaration ended up penniless or dead because they signed.
Violent revolution is unnecessary at this time. It is not that bad yet, just as it was not bad enough before Fort Sumter. For goodness sake, the South still had beauty and culture and plenty of young men. After its revolution, the South had much less. The South should have boldly talked about and prepared for independence with the fervor of revolutionaries. The North would not have reacted sufficiently because the North would not have been threatened with aggression. But if violence must be avoided, action must be taken now.
Paul