>However, I am with Rorty, who agrees with Q & D about
>meaning (which I do not), and likes Derrida DeMan and
>Heidegger -- and thinks that politics and law should
>absolutely NOT NOT NOT be based on anything so
>contentious and deep as theses in the philosophy of
>language.
What a weird separation. So meaning is only uncertain in things that don't matter, like literature, but when it comes to law, everything is fixed and crystal-clear? Why do we even need courts to interpret law, then? Shouldn't the meaning be self-evident?
>The 2A is in the middle, but I think it is leaning
>towards the first sort, the one about which the
>meaning is pretty obvious. Take the principle that the
>you read the whole thing together, you ask, why are
>they talking about well regulated militia and the
>security of a free state? How does that relate to the
>right to bear arms?
As the bit of the U.S. Code <http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/311.html> that Jordan cited has it, you & I are members of the unorganized militia. What's that mean? Is it clear and stable to you? I didn't know of this status until about an hour ago. I want to go somewhere and claim my gun.
>So my reading is not driven by policy. It's just the
>language of the 2A. Anything else just seems tortured
>and implausible to me.
Did you really type this with no sense of doubt or irony? That's just the way it is. Case closed. Never mind that millions - including lawyers, political scientists, and historians - disagree.
This is a weird sentence to think you've got a lock on: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The militia isn't defined. What is it? Something different from a standing army, but what? The national guard? Mark from Michigan's outfit? Lazare's piece goes into how the 18th century used the word - but we don't need to worry about that, because the meaning is self-evident over 200 years later. Here's the def from the American Heritage:
>1. An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
>2. A military force that is not part of a regular army and is
>subject to call for service in an emergency.
>3. The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for
>military service.
So is it 1, 2, or 3? Or none of the above. A committee that Madison passed his draft language along to defined it as "composed of the body of the people." Male people, presumably. So that sounds like definition 3. But who needs earlier versions, since the final version, which interprets itself, is all we need! And in Madison's original, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" came first, and "a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country" after the semicolon. That changes the meaning, doesn't it?
And what about "State"? The United States? The individual states? Madison originally said "country" - the Consty says "state." Does that matter?
Dan Lazare's piece is also an attack on constitutional fetishism - the touching belief that that sacred document holds all the wisdom we need in troubled times. Who needs politics and history? It's all there, frozen timeless wisdom from a century or two ago.
Doug