Heller Shatters the Myth of "Collective Rights"

The Heller decision recently announced by the Supreme Court is a landmark decision, for it enshrines the rights of the people to bear arms as an individual right. This is a huge victory for those Americans who believe that the purpose of the Constitution is to secure and guarantee our rights as individuals. 

For decades now, the left in this country -- building from their inheritance from Progressives, Pragmatists, socialists, communists, and fascists -- has argued in favor of the emergence of "collective rights", granting new "discovered" rights to groups of people.  They ready dismiss the notion of individual rights, because individualism does not serve the purpose of the state. In fact, the notion of individual rights is an anathema to the Progressive.  As Herbert Croly wrote, "An individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his indivuality has been formed."

The great Progressive President (and unapologetic racist) Woodrow Wilson even went so far to say, "You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible... But that time has passed. America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise."

Group rights, however, serve the needs of the state.  Groups can be controlled, manipulated, and brought into compliance much more effectively than individuals.  As Mussolini remarked, "Everything within the State, nothing outside the state."  Group rights can be changed, mutated, regulated, added to, and withdrawn.  Groups can be brought together, and divided up.  They can be pitted against one another, or brought together.  Groups make it easier to concentrate power, and group rights make it easier to take power from individuals.

By declaring that the 2nd Amendment -- like the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights -- represent an individual right, the Supreme Court has established that entire Bill of Rights represents a firewall of individual rights against intrusive state power. 

The consent of the governed, indeed.   Our consent is something that has been long missing in this country. Oh yes, we have elections.  But the Soviet Union had elections.  Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were elected.    Hugo Chavez was elected. Iran has elections.  Elections are not the alpha and omega of republican democracy.

Heller establishes the primacy of individual rights over collective or group rights in the Constitution.  Would that more decisions being eminated from the Marble Vatican be of such profound effect on the quality of our liberty.