On the Evening Before Heller

It appears that the Heller decision will be announced tomorrow - Thursday, June 26th.

This essay by TheGeekWithA.45 sets the stage nicely. An excerpt:

***
Tonight, in the slanting light of a pleasant evening much like any other, I paused, as day segued into night.

Soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow, the Supreme Court will render a judgment on the meaning of twenty seven words. This judgment will either be fundamentally consistent, or fundamentally inconsistent with the belief that as Americans, we specifically retain unto ourselves the right to own, possess, and have with us, available for instant use, formidable arms; that this right is ensconced in our highest law; and that this ensconcement actively protects that right, today, with as much force and vigor as any and all other enumerated rights.

The sun has set, unmarked in the minds of far too many.

Tomorrow, it will rise, and we may learn something of the state of our beloved Republic. The ruling could blatantly stand against us, pronouncing a non right. The ruling could also embrace any of a number of possible perversities, pronouncing an impostor who wears the clothing of a right, but whose exercise in some way comes to a nullity, either by cunningly disguising a highly conditioned privilege, or by some other swindle.

The odds of a perverse ruling are slim, but not zero. History tells us that the Supreme Court has pulled some doozies in the past.

If the outcome is perverse, then the sun has truly set on anything recognizable as our free Republic of free humans.

{With thanks and apologies to Lincoln & Jefferson:}

Eleven score and twelve years ago, our founding fathers risked it all and won big, bringing forth something truly new and just and good under God's sky: a nation conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the astounding proposition that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

We have been fighting to keep this, ever clawing our way to "a more perfect union" ever since, and we have come close to losing it on more occasions than any of us are comfortable admitting.

Upon emerging from Independence Hall after the Constitutional convention, it is said that Ben Franklin answered a passer by's question as to what sort of government they had made, and his simple, terse response, "A Republic, if you can keep it". This statement has built into it the implicit question as to whether such a Republic can be kept, a question reiterated in Lincoln's day, and echoed in our own.

It may well be that but for the stubborn refusal of some number of Americans throughout history, the answer would be "No"...
***
Read the whole thing, please.

Highly recommended also is David Hardy's note re different perspectives on Constitutional analysis.

Interesting times, indeed...

Tempus fugit.