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Sikhs Rearming The Second Amendment
In this Fall 2013 classroom discussion, University of Michigan students discuss the projected impact of Sikhs "rearming" for gurdwara security. This discussi...
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Sikhs Rearming & The Second Amendment - Video
"The Growing American Police State vs. The Second Amendment"
From traffic light cameras to phone tapping, from militarized police forces to targeting specific groups of people, the government is unfettered in its desir...
By: THEWNDTV1
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"The Growing American Police State vs. The Second Amendment" - Video
Abstract
Modern debates about the meaning of the Second Amendment have focused on whether it protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms or a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard. This question, however, was apparently never even raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted. Early discussions took the basic meaning of the amendment for granted and focused instead on whether it added anything significant to the original Constitution. The debate later shifted because of changes in the Constitution and in constitutional law and because legislatures began to regulate firearms in ways undreamed of in our early history.
The Founding generation mistrusted standing armies. Many Americans believed, on the basis of English history and their colonial experience, that governments of large nations are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. One way to reduce that danger would be to permit the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or similar emergencies, the government might be restricted to using a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received a bit of part-time, unpaid military training.
Using a militia as an alternative to standing armies had deep roots in English history and possessed considerable appeal, but it also presented some serious problems. Alexander Hamilton, for example, thought the militia system could never provide a satisfactory substitute for a national army. Even those who treasured the militia recognized that it was fragile, and the cause of this fragility was just what made Hamilton disparage it: Citizens were always going to resist undergoing unpaid military training, and governments were always going to want more professionaland therefore more efficient and tractableforces.
This led to a dilemma at the Constitutional Convention. Experience during the Revolutionary War had demonstrated convincingly that militia forces could not be relied on for national defense, and the onset of war is not always followed by a pause during which an army can be raised and trained. The convention therefore decided to give the federal government almost unfettered authority to establish armies, including peacetime standing armies. But that decision created a threat to liberty, especially in light of the fact that the proposed Constitution also forbade the states from keeping troops without the consent of Congress.
One solution might have been to require Congress to establish and maintain a well-disciplined militia. Such a militia would have had to comprise a large percentage of the population in order to prevent it from becoming a federal army under another name, like our modern National Guard. This might have deprived the federal government of the excuse that it needed peacetime standing armies and might have established a meaningful counterweight to any rogue army that the federal government might create. That possibility was never taken seriously, and for good reason. How could a constitution define a well-regulated or well-disciplined militia with the requisite precision and detail and with the necessary regard for unforeseeable changes in the nations circumstances? It would almost certainly have been impossible.
Another approach might have been to forbid Congress from interfering with the states control of their militias. This might have been possible, but it would have been self-defeating. Fragmented control of the militias would inevitably have resulted in an absence of uniformity in training, equipment, and command, and no really effective national fighting force could have been created.
Thus, the convention faced a choice between entrenching a multiplicity of militias controlled by the individual states, which would likely have been too weak and divided to protect the nation, or authorizing a unified militia under federal control, which almost by definition could not have been expected to prevent federal tyranny. The conundrum could not be solved, and the convention did not purport to solve it. Instead, the Constitution presumes that a militia will exist, but it gives Congress almost unfettered authority to regulate that militia, just as it gives the federal government almost unfettered authority to maintain an army.
This massive shift of power from the states to the federal government generated one of the chief objections to the proposed Constitution. Anti-Federalists argued that federal control of the militia would take away from the states their principal means of defense against federal oppression and usurpation and that European history demonstrated how serious the danger was.
James Madison, for one, responded that such fears of federal oppression were overblown, in part because the new federal government was to be structured differently from European governments. But he also pointed out another decisive difference between Europes situation and ours: The American people were armed and would therefore be almost impossible to subdue through military force, even if one assumed that the federal government would try to use an army to do so. In Federalist No. 46, he wrote:
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The Second Amendment and the Inalienable Right to Self-Defense
When asked about the origins of 11:11, the name for the much-ballyhooed collaboration between Sean P. Diddy Combs and Israeli DJ/producer Guy Gerber, the ordinarily loquacious entrepreneur was uncharacteristically reticent.
Some things are better left a mystery, he said, though his partner admitted the name comes from a date when two worlds collide and open a gate to another dimension.
The occasion was series of one-on-one conversations held in connection with the day long IMS Engage at the W Hotel in Hollywood, crawling with EDM types for the event, a spin-off of the Ibiza International Music Summit. Other pairings included David Lynch and Moby, moderator Pete Tong and Giorgio Moroder, Steve Aoki and YouTube founder Chad Hurley and Junkie XL and Hans Zimmer
Explaining the unlikely partnership between them, the scholarly, bearded Gerber described being summoned to New York to make music together by Diddy. He played me a track from my first album for inspiration, laughs the 27-year-old founder of pioneering record labels Supplement Facts and Rumours. And I gave him a big hug.
Diddy traced his own fascination with this kind of music to a trip to Ibizas famed DC10 Club, his own collaborations with Nellee Hooper and Felix da Housecat, and dancing on the dirt floors of to DJ Junior Vasquez at N.Y.C. clubs like the Sound Factory and Paradise Garage.
He went on to contrast his next level musical approach to the experience of going to his grandmothers Baptist church, where you dont know whats going to happen (You could get visited by the Holy Ghost, he joked) to the regimentation of the Catholic Church where he was brought up.
Its all about the spiritual aspect of this music, he says. Playing from the heart and experiencing true emotions.
I am always looking for DJ/producers without a set format, who arent afraid to clear the dance floor, who are fearless. I thought it would be cool to work with Guy.
I want to push peoples buttons, rather than make them love me, adds Gerber. I try to give the listener respect. Working with P. Diddy, he understood my music better than I did.
Diddy claims he has no commercial hopes for the album, which should be out for July, and even intends to give it away.
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Diddy, Guy Gerber, Steve Aoki, Chad Hurley at IMS Engage: Where Worlds Collide and Gates Open
By Sarah Gordon
Published: 10:43 EST, 17 April 2014 | Updated: 12:09 EST, 17 April 2014
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It is the trend that is encouraging New York yogis to bare it all, literally, and now it is making its way to Europe - in the form of a naked yoga retreat.
The unusual concept of stripping off to indulge in some downward dog has taken the Big Apple by storm, with classes at the Bold & Naked studio in Manhattan selling out.
Now luxury travel company Formentera Yoga has experienced similar success with its first all-naked holidays on the Balearic island of Ibiza.
Slice of paradise: The retreat, in Ibiza, follows the success of naked yoga practice in both New York and London
The retreat is open to both men and women and is on sale from 921. It will combine mixed yoga classes for the de-robed at a luxury finca (country house) set in 20 acres of fragrant pine forests on the north of the island overlooking the sea. The retreat has its own swimming pool and even a helipad for VIP guests.
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Naked yoga retreat in Ibiza that is a sell-out success