Thread by @OfficialCWATSON

It hurts my heart to see ignorance trend. In their rabid response to the Supreme Court executing it's proper duties - that is, defending the constitutional ethos - many leftists are quibbling over the #2A use of "well-regulated" to justify gun control. This is trickery. THREAD:

I will make two points in this thread, one which may be common, and the other more philosophical: A. Anyone claiming that "well-regulated" refers to gun control, or undue restrictions on the right to self defense, is wrong. And B. They are using "proximity ethics" to 1/

make their claim, making it not only factually inaccurate, but philosophically erroneous, too. Let us begin.

The 2A says: "A well regulated millitia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." 2/

It would make little sense to view the previous statement as a single sentence. Indeed, the second amendment is divided into two parts: the section which references the millitia, and the second which refers to the "right of the people" to "keep and bear arms." 3/

both of these sections have their own unique histories. The first is a statement of political strategy, the second is the recognition of a universal natural right, not subject to political quibbles. The left's refusal to distinguish between the two corrupts the debate. 4/

As David Hardy points out in his essay "The UnAlienable Right To Self Defense and the Second Amendment," both sections have their own origins. The first section, which refers to a "well-regulated millitia," emerges from a longstanding critique of royal absolutism 5/

which was translated into the American political context during the Founding. Note: a well-regulated millitia is not used in a vaccum, it is said to be necessary for the "security" of a free state. It's use in this contet takes us back to classical Republicanism. 6/

In short: "Republican" forms of government throughout political history opposed tyranny from within and subjugation from without. "Republics" provided structural guardrails to check the tyrannical impulses of leaders and hold them accountable to the citizenry. 7/

Tribunals, judges, councils, laws, constitutions - all of these political mechanisms (and prototypes of them) - were characteristic of early Republics, such as the Roman Republic. Hardy also points out that classical Republicanism did not necessarily emphasize the individual /8

as much as it did the "free state." Yet, despite some characteristic differences with what would eventually become the United States, the Founding Fathers looked at classical republicanism as a blueprint for the American state. Our founders brilliantly took the "stuff" 9/

of Republican regimes throughout history and "merged" them with the proper moral framework: the rights of the citizenry derived from nature, God, the universe - NOT the Republic's lawmakers. Now, during the continential congress in 1776, factions formed on these lines. 10/

Some states supported strict classical republicanism (structure), whereas others were more concerned about rights first, structure later. The classical republicans wanted millitia clauses in the Constitution, since they saw rights as flowing from property ownership. The 11/

rights-centered draftsmen, in the tradition of Jefferson, stressed a natural right to arms and self-preservation. Some individual states adopted both models. Virginia recognized a declaration of "rights" tied strictly with millitia representation, whereas Pennsylvania 12/

endorsed the Jeffersonian model. Thus, there were two models for the Constitution: the Virginia model, which stressed structure (the millitia) and not the individual, and the Pennsylvania model, which tied the right to bear arms to inalienable natural rights. 13/

Sidebar: This sounds a lot like the post-liberal vs classical liberal debates of today, does it not? As the years went on, there was a switch. Many former classical Republicans, like Patrick Henry, agreed that all men should be armed. George Mason, who was the architect 14/

of Virginia's focus on structure and the "free state," also changed his views. Post 1787, Mason was now fully on the side of the inalienable right to self-defense. But there were still two sides to the debate. So how did the founders rectify this problem? Simple, recognize /15

both the millitia *and* the individual's inalienable rights. This was known as the Virginia proposal, the great compromise which laid the foundation for what became the Bill of Rights. Madison pieced together the musings of all the parties involved and drafted /16

what is now the "Bill of Rights," where the second amendment vivaciously lives and thrives. The term "well-regulated" has nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with syncretic notions of "classical republicanism" merging with natural rights theory. /17

Now, time for more philosophy. What leftists have done here is use "proximity" to discern the second amendment's meaning rather than looking at historical context. "Proximity" is a poor way to understand the content of a particular idea. I have seen this phenomena occur /18

so frequently that in my videos I routinely refer to it as "proximity ethics," a coin I termed. "Proximity ethics" is when one deems an action good or bad on the basis of what it is close to (not associated with), rather than it's content. This differs from guilt by /19

association because association is more intimate than proximity. For example: Kanye West's exhortation that "George Bush hates black people" because he flew over Louisana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is classic proximity ethics (and ad hom, too!) Bush /20

was bad for many reasons, but that was not the worst event of his nearly decade-long presidency. Anyway, leftists have used the word "regulation" and it's proximity to gun control (since gun control is a modern form of regulation) to assume the meaning of a document /21

written in the 1700s. This shows an unwillingness to engage with the limitations of their knowledge. By extension, a refusal to acknowledge limitation is also an inability to be an ethical person. Ethics can only exist if man recognizes he is limited, in both space and time, /22

by objective rules which are inherent to reality. They are not "social constructs" or "cultural relics," they are barebones processes of the universe which bind us indefinitely. Proximity "ethics" rejects this truth and takes a very intellectually lazy route. /23

if you cannot understand a topic, and rely on your preconceptions (proximity) to guide you through reasoning, you will end up at a dead end. Leftists are using dead-end thinking to abridge an intractable, definitive, and inalienable right. We must stand against it. /THREAD OVER