Get a load of bit of idiocy from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, responding to Elon Musk’s speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend:

How is Jon Stewart wrong? Allow us to count the ways … 

Let’s start with something very basic.

Why does this author believe there is a right to bear arms in the first place? Abraham Lincoln once said that

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

And this author considers the philosophy of the Declaration to be central to our own politics. And the most basic thrust of the Declaration of Independence is that when you are oppressed, you have a God-given right to rise up in rebellion against that oppression.

We aren’t saying that we need to rebel right this minute. We personally don’t see cause for it. And even if you find yourself oppressed, you should see if you can get relief in the courts or by appealing to the public or some other peaceful means. But, for instance, we think Nat Turner was justified in attempting his rebellion here in Virginia in 1831, because back then a slave could get no relief through the courts of law or in the court of public opinion. And we will stress this is a natural, or moral right, and not a legal one.

But in order to have a rebellion, what do you need?

Well, weapons, duh. Thus, while the founders didn’t give us the legal right to rebel, they made sure the Federal Government couldn’t take away the means of rebellion, should it ever become necessary. That is why they put the Second Amendment in the Constitution.

Or to quote from a legal opinion we called the ‘Best Policy Argument for the Second Amendment:’

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

What Judge Kosinski was saying is that we might face a day where a would-be Ceaser attempts to overthrow our government, suspending elections and suppressing anyone who dares to speak against him. And on that day, we are going to be very glad the founders ratified the Second Amendment—if we are smart enough to preserve it.

And the irony of all of this is that the left constantly complains that Trump is that Ceaser. In fact, they often call him Hitler, another man who used the legal process to basically destroy his country’s Constitution and make himself a dictator. And Stewart has himself said that January 6 was an attempted coup and called Trump dangerous:

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So, what is the logic? ‘Trump wants to be a dictator … so let’s give him the power to take away our guns?’ It’s deeply confused thinking.

And we aren’t even done tearing apart Stewart’s commentary. Stewart says ‘our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed laid out through the Constitution. It’s not based on the threat of violence.’

But America has been made free and kept free by people willing to do violence to make it that way. And we don’t just mean by actually fighting wars. For instance, during World War II Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was quoted as saying ‘You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.’

Now, there is some debate over whether or not Yamamoto actually said that but … you have to think that anyone who has seriously contemplated attempting to take over America by force has thought something like that. Any rational person thinking of doing such a thing has to think ‘but even if we defeat their government, how can we ever suppress such a heavily armed population?’ And we don’t just mean foreigners like Mr. Yamamoto, but anyone who might try to take over America by force. Many American Presidents have been former generals, from Washington to Eisenhower, but if it even crossed their minds for a moment to try to make themselves President for life, they had to think ‘there would be a rifle behind every blade of glass.’

Because in the end a right is worthless if you can’t enforce it and the Second Amendment is the final enforcement mechanism in the Constitution. The Constitution is a piece of paper with some nicely written words on it, unless there are people willing to enforce it. 

Even without rebellion or other violence by private citizens, the violence of the state is often needed to enforce it. For instance, when the Supreme Court (correctly) ruled that our schools had to be desegregated, the 101^st Airborne Division was called in to escort the Little Rock Nine to previously segregated schools, under President Eisenhower’s orders. That is, Eisenhower ordered our military forces to stand ready to do violence to protect those kids. This author’s history books never mentioned whether or not they actually had to do violence, but we are willing to bet at least some violence was necessary.

Or take the example of Ariel Castro. In 2013, the world was shocked to learn that Castro had abducted three girls, Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus, and essentially held them as his sexual slaves in the previous decade. As this author noted at the time, this was not only illegal but actually unconstitutional—because the Thirteenth Amendment can actually be violated by private action (meaning not government action). What had happened was that Berry had somehow escaped with her child (fathered without her consent by this monster) and then went immediately to the police, who then (rightfully) used the violence of the state to rescue the remaining two girls. Castro later killed himself, and pardon us if we don’t shed any tears for him. But our point is that these girls rights under the Thirteenth Amendment had to be enforced with violence—first to free the remaining sex slaves and then, ideally, to prosecute Castro if he had lived long enough to stand trial. That requires constant violence and the threat of violence from the state and that violence is righteous. So, with or without the right of ordinary citizens to bear arms, our rights are constantly enforced through violence not merely through some vague concept of consent of the governed or social contract.

Then Jon Stewart has a near miss with another reason why the Second Amendment protects freedom of speech. He says: ‘Guns, from what I can tell seem to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun.’

Let’s back up for a moment, here. Stewart is one of those people who uses the terms 'the First Amendment' and 'Freedom of Speech' interchangeably. Of course, in the most technical way, the First Amendment only protects us from Congressional laws abridging freedom of speech. The law has extended First Amendment’s principles to the remaining two branches and to the state governments (long story), but Stewart goes further than that, talking about freedom of expression as being not simply a right to speak freely without facing the violence of the state. Stewart also seems to believe that freedom of speech includes the right to speak without facing the violence of private individuals. And this author agrees with that.

Thus, Stewart is right to focus on the fear of being silenced by private violence or the threat of private violence (again, meaning violence not committed by a government). Imagine if a private citizen points a gun at another private citizen and says ‘don’t criticize my favorite candidate for President or I will kill you.’ That isn’t a violation of the First Amendment, but it is a violation of that person’s Freedom of Expression and that’s still a problem in our society when it happens. Indeed, long before Hitler could use the violence of the state quiet his foes, his Brownshirts used private violence to intimidate his critics into silence.

Indeed, we saw a very horrific example of that kind of violation of Freedom of Expression on our soil a few years back …

That would be Salman Rushdie speaking on the horrific incident where Hadi Matar rushed Rushdie when he was on stage in New York State, and stabbed him repeatedly, plainly because Rushdie spoke his mind on matters of faith. That is, he allegedly committed blasphemy against Islam by writing a novel and he was nearly killed for it. We were frankly worried that he might have never been able to write again. We didn’t want Matar to have the satisfaction of feeling like he ‘won.’ But the linked article verifies that he is still writing. His continued safety and his continued ability to write is literally a prayer answered for this author.

But now imagine if Hadi Matar rushed the stage with a knife, and Rushdie pulled out a gun and shot him before Matar could do him any harm? Obviously, that would have been a better outcome than what really happened and, in that scenario, it would be correct to say that as Stewart put it, Rushdie’s gun ‘protect[ed] the speech of the [person] holding the gun.’ What Stewart doesn’t get is that this is why We the People should be allowed to have guns.

Of course, we should also hope that law enforcement will work diligently to protect our rights as well. But law enforcement can’t be everywhere and we don’t think most people would want them to be everywhere, including in their own homes twenty-four hours a day. And of course many of the same people who want to disarm us and make us depend entirely on the government for our safety, also shouted that they wanted to defund the police, too.

And not for nothing, but if Stewart doesn’t like people being silenced by threats of violence, he has had a funny way of showing it. A few of you might remember that Jon Stewart held a 'Rally to Restore Sanity' which was combined with Stephen Colbert’s weird, parodic 'March to Keep Fear Alive.' (It was strange times, what can we say?) And at one point they did a bit where Ozzy Osborne was brought out by Colbert to play ‘Crazy Train’ and a man identified as simply 'Yusef' was brought out to play ‘Peace Train’ as sort of a weird musical point/counterpoint. So ‘Yusef’ was supposed to represent sanity in that bit.

That would be ‘Yusef Islam,’ the man who used to be known as Cat Stevens who wrote and performed ‘Peace Train.’ And Mr. Islam was a vocal advocate of using violence to suppress speech. Specifically, when the Fatwa was first issued against Rushdie, he was an enthusiastic supporter. This video has almost completely disappeared from the Internet, but the Daily Mail still has it:

(Sorry if it autoplays. It is literally the only suitable video we could find.) The band 10,000 maniacs used to do a great cover of ‘Peace Train,’ but stopped performing the song when they became aware of these remarks. But that didn’t stop Jon Stewart from inviting him on stage and pretending he is the voice of reason. So much for Stewart’s commitment to freedom of speech.

Finally, Stewart complains that they are saying all of this in Butler, Pennsylvania, arguing that the prior assassination attempt is an example of a man with a gun trying to silence a major party candidate. Yes, a major party candidate for president is supposed to be one of the most protected persons on Earth and somehow law enforcement failed so spectacularly that a person was able to shoot at him repeatedly, hitting him once. Corey Comperatore was supposed to be safe simply because of his proximity to Trump, but instead he was shot to death while protecting his family with his body. And even now, after two assassination attempts, we are hearing that the Secret Service is still failing to provide full protection to Trump, and attempting to cover that fact up from auditors:

And Stewart thinks this is all an argument for gun control? No, if Donald Trump can’t depend on law enforcement to protect him, what chance does the rest of us have? We have to be allowed to have the tools to protect ourselves, which is another reason why the Second Amendment needs to exist.

And in all frankness, Trump should fire the Secret Service and provide his own protection. And what will that private security need? The Second Amendment, so it can have the guns it needs to protect him.

Obviously, it would be nice if we lived in some Shangri-La, where violence is never necessary to protect our freedoms, but we don’t live in that world. And in the real world, sometimes violence and the threat of violence is necessary to protect all of our rights, from our right not to be robbed, to our right to speak freely. The Second Amendment, therefore, is sadly necessary to protect all of those rights. We can't let a naive desire for utopia blind us to that reality.

In any case, you can be sure the Second Amendment advocates showed up, including a man attached to an epic mustache:

The cut off text reads:

That constitution does not, however, create those rights and neither does ‘the consent of the governed’. Those natural rights come from God.

The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence is that certain God-given rights cannot be rightfully violated by any government. For instance, if the government attempted to murder everyone belonging to a particular ethnic group simply for their ethnic identity, it doesn’t matter how democratic the process was in forming the policy. It would still be wrong and just cause for rebellion. Our Constitutional Republic was the founders’ best idea for a government that would protect such rights, but the founders always believed that their plans might fail and this government might still become tyrannical. They did their best, but they didn’t believe they were perfect.

Exactly.

And one year before the Second Amendment was extended to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

The cut off text reads:

a morally assertive citizenry with sufficient force to correct the abuses of power.

In other words, it is not violence that sustains just political systems, it is the unspoken threat of correction from a people who understand the ethical limits of power. Stewart's unwillingness to recognize this demonstrates his lack of first-principles based thinking.

The cut off text reads:

Thinking that could never happen here is breathtakingly arrogant. History is littered with governments tyrannizing their own people, or a foreign invader doing the same.

And this is so elementary, Stewart really should understand it. Frederick Douglass wrote ‘A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.’ What does Stewart think he meant by that?

We’d be surprised if he was aware of the quote. 

Finally:

Fair enough.

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