Honest servants have nothing to fear from a just people. And in America, the citizen is the sovereign. In every nation, the sovereign has the monopoly on lethal force.
Not all governments are bad any more than all servants are bad. Governments - or I should say individual officials - go bad when they forget they are servants and get cocky. Founders of all nations ages ago learned what America today is just now rediscovering: that those who are empowered by their sovereign - whether it is delegated by a people or from a throne - soon begin to assume powers not granted by the people nor by a throne. They want more, and, without consent or without anyone paying attention, they take it.
One of the best examples is the monopoly on lethal force in this country. In America, the citizen is the sovereign, and this means the citizen has the last word on the subject. Refusal to recognize this gives away the hand of officials who think otherwise, whatever their reasoning.
But there is an added safeguard against so-called sensible gun laws: the law, and the fact that the second amendment is absolute and made impervious to ordinary due process, and the fact that it is among the inalienable rights. This is primarily why gun bans are struck down and why forty-eight states respect the second amendment much more than America's troubled major cities do.
How does this work to get us back to safer streets if you are not a gun owner? How does this help those who are against guns?
First, everyone wants safer streets, do we not? If I showed you how drinking spicy tomato juice would make for safer streets, would you have some?
This November, we're going to have to vote for the right people this time. But even more, we're going to have to know them. We may have to shape them and groom them. Teach them. Instruct them. Remember that [in the words of Justice Robert H. Jackson] it is not the government's duty to keep the citizen from falling to error, it is the citizen's duty to keep the government from falling into error.
Only from an understanding of who is the sovereign could we have survived so long. Losing that understanding that we are the sovereign supreme authority is killing the country.
How candidates enunciate their position on the second amendment will tell us what we really want to know, gun owner or not. Any candidate who is shy about this won't be good enough.
Why not? Because this is not a matter of our being able to trust them with power or lethal force, it is a matter of whether they trust us with lethal force. It's been put many different ways, but is the same concept: government is the servant and they do not have the right nor the authority to take guns from the sovereign under our system. The very idea that they wish to does not bode well for this country.
At this time, forty-eight states get it. They affirm the concept of the armed citizen. The United States is not an anti-gun country, not by a long shot. But other offices and candidates still have yet to check in this election season, a season that has seen two Supreme Court reversals of gun bans. And changing the system itself is presently at work.
This November, we need to make sure that our servants cannot change the system. We like it the way it is. Don't let them tell you it's broken. As I repeat often, it does not take courage to change America, it takes courage to keep it.
Gun owner or not. How the public servants feel about the second amendment and whether they will trust you with lethal force and protect that right first is all you need to know about whether they can be trusted with powers of office. __________________________________________
Like many Democrats over the past 40 years, Barack Obama has hoped that his association with unpopular liberal positions on cultural issues would be outweighed by pushing economic policies intended to benefit the ordinary person. 
Last Thursday, a who's who of the progressive movement met for a conference call organized by Families USA and hosted by the advocacy group for government-run health care, The Herndon Alliance. The Alliance's partners include AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others. Democratic pollsters John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg were the call's main event, and they were there to deliver some bad news.
