Values and the Constitution

Last month, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech which included his thoughts about values:

We have common values that go far beyond the Constitutional right to bear arms....we absolutely have to reassess a number of our society's value choices on issues like easy access to guns....

Yes, Mr. Secretary, we have "common values."

We value our lives and the lives of our children enough to say that waiting 20 minutes for the police to stop a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School is unacceptable.

We value our "easy access to guns" because we know that guns are the only tools that enable our teachers, our children, and us to live long enough for the police to arrive and take over the fight against evil.

Our values are enshrined in and protected by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- not in the statist pontifications of elites in government office like you. Please understand that this is why we, and the Constitution, require people like you to swear an oath to "support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." We require that oath because we know that your values (power of the State) are not our values (value of the individual).

For example, we know the values held by the State and by people like you include the concept that police exist firstly to protect the State (ie enforce mostly arbitrary mala-prohibitum laws) -- not to protect our children, our teachers, and us from deranged murderers. Sure, your law-enforcement officers will come to the aid of our children when they can, but too often they arrive just in time to draw chalk outlines, take photos, do autopsies, and otherwise conduct an investigation. Sandy Hook proved that to us -- again.

Our values, as expressed in the 2nd Amendment, demand that our right and ability to protect ourselves and our loved ones be unimpeded. Your values are threatened by self-reliant people and by the resistance to tyranny posed by those same arms of self defense.

The Constitution says that our values trump yours. Unfortunately, half the voters are on your side. We need smarter voters.