RIGHTS WATCH

Monopoly Can Be A Deadly Game

DAVID CODREA - GUNS MAGAZINE Sep 2010

http://fmgpublications.ipaperus.com/FMGPublications/GUNS/GUNS0910/?...

“The question of whether armed citizens should be entitled to challenge the government with force is at the heart of the current debate over the Second Amendment in the Supreme Court case of District of Columbia vs. Heller,” Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Executive Director Josh Horwitz writes in a recent Huffington Post opinion piece.

CSGV, of course, is the kinder, gentler name giving PR cover for what was once called “The National Coalition to Ban Handguns.”

“The concept of a ‘monopoly on force’ might sound foreign or even frightening to Americans that take great pride in our revolutionary beginnings,” Horwitz continues, “ but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any political entity, including the United States.” To back up this assertion, he cites, “German political economist and sociologist Max Weber.”

What he doesn’t cite is Weber’s support for approving Article 48 into the Weimar constitution, establishing “emergency powers” to bypass Reichstag consent, and allowing Adolf Hitler’s rise to unchallenged power. Not to mention the  attainment of a “monopoly of force,” although Weber preferred the term “violence.”

But Horwitz has anticipated abuse by a dictatorship.

“This doesn’t mean that Saddam Hussein’s regime, or other totalitarian states, should be accepted,” he writes. “These regimes lack legitimacy, which is the key to Weber’s definition of the monopoly on force.

“If we value our democracy,” he concludes, “we should hope the Supreme Court agrees and explicitly quashes the DC Circuit’s assertion that there is an insurrectionary purpose to the Second Amendment.”

If I may: The word “democracy” appears nowhere in our Constitution, and the votes of many have no claim on the rights of those they outnumber—otherwise, we’re reducedto a tyranny of the majority. But if we’re going to play Horwitz’ deadly game of monopoly, we should remind ourselves that, per the BBC, Saddam received 100 percent of the vote in a 2002 referendum on his rule.

No fair? He cheated? Hey, that’s what happens when there’s a monopoly
of violence.

As for the guy Horwitz’s ideological mentor helped give “legitimacy” to, he didn’t bother with such pretenses. The lack of a German majority consensus for his party was no impediment for someone controlling that monopoly we’re told is such a boon to civil order.

The Founders made the whole purpose of having a government clear: “[T]o form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

And they were all keenly aware of this earlier caveat: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it….”

“Any.” These were guys who chose their words carefully.

They knew any government that ruled disarmed subjects would be able to condemn those labeled as trouble to the state “directly to jail.” Or worse. And they weren’t about to subject themselves or their Posterity to that kind of monopoly.