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on the Right to Terror:

It is the official position of the United States Supreme Court, the final authority on the Constitution, that you do not have a guaranteed right to own a firearm. The second amendment is officially interpreted to merely guarantee the right of states to maintain militia; private citizens are entitled to own firearms to the extent that their doing so is requisite to States' militia-maintenance ability, which it isn't.

It is also worth noting (you'll see why) that any sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence or the preamble to the Constitution has been ruled to be legally non-binding; in other words, the Supreme Court has declared "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" to be just so many words.

The more Libertarian interpretation, of course, would tend to object; not that that this isn't how things are, but that this is not how they should be. The stereotypical far-right caricature would object that owning a stockpile of automatic weapons is strictly necessary for a man to defend against the government when they start encroaching by, for instance, trying to take away one's stockpile of automatic weapons. The principle is that armed insurrection is every citizen's right, and thus the means of insurrection are sacred cows (metaphorically).

This speaks to the legally non-binding sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence: that when a state fails to adequately secure the rights (that it legally doesn't have to), it is the right of that state's subjects to "abolish it" (thus delighting countless schoolboys over the years when they discovered a musty historical document containing the phrase "a ball 'a s**t" wink . Hypothetically, if this were an accepted legal principle, pretty much anyone would agree that it couldn't really be the state who decides if the state needs to be overthrown: fox guarding the henhouse and all that. This obviously ties into the idea that any institution's true purpose is it's own preservation, rather then whatever noble cause it was founded to advance.

Unfortunately, the government has declared overthrowing the law to be illegal, curiously; any armed insurrection thus has no form of legitimacy: in the eyes of the law, no States have ever seceded, since that can't, legally speaking, happen; some States merely neglected to send legislators to Congress for a few years (thus making the existence of the Great State of West Virginia a legal Gordian Knot not resolved until basically never).

Of course, since it has been interpreted by the Constitutional Authorities (and thus enshrined in Constitutional Law) that there is no right to sedition, secession, or insurrection, it logically follows that that the Revolutionary War was entirely unjustified and illegitimate, and thus, from the perspective of Constitutional Law, the Constitution invalidates itself. On the plus side, this means now Arnold Schwarzenegger can run for president, because why the ******** not? Go ahead and let a charismatic Austrian guy run your country, what's the worst that could happen?

There are alternative interpretations. For instance, one could argue that although establishing the Constitution has, as I have said, no basis in the Constitution, it wasn't illegal until the Constitution went into effect, and thus the crime has immunity under the Constitutional protection against ex post facto laws. On the other hand, how can the protection for things made illegal after-the-fact be extended retroactively? It's like the last-to-first principle invoked when more than one "fast-effect" are played in "Magic: The Gathering."

Given the self-immolating consequences articulated above if no legal right to revolution is acknowledged, and the fox+henhouse argument that it can't be the government being revolution'd that determines whether or not a revolution has a legitimate grudge, not only are the crazed gun-nuts thus vindicated, but indeed one would actually have to legalize any number of attempts to overthrow the government, and (currently illegal) literature on how to do so, etc., but only if they seem like they might actually work. Obviously, futile rebellion would still be illegal, as it constitutes a meaningless waste of life and other resources. Any loss of life or property in a successful revolution, however, would be retroactively justified by those who led the revolution; consequently, any loss of life or property in a revolt that's run properly, in a manner that could legitimately lead to the overthrow of the government, would thus be preretroactively justified.

And of the methods that, historically, have been shown to be most effective for use against an entrenched power such as the US, right at the top of the list would be the techniques of insurrection (or "asymmetrical warfare" wink collectively referred to in the vernacular as "Terrorism." Terrorism (the use or threat of violence by non-state actors against victims outside the scope of traditional combat with the intent to produce fear in the audience of the violence such that their behavior is altered in keeping with the ideals or agenda of the agents of the violence) is in use around the world primarily because, when used with a specific territorial agenda or other limited objective, it tends to be generally effective over time. Since any and only effective means of resistence would be legitimate under the principles previously mentioned, terrorism is, therefore, the inalienable right of each and every American.

So, this year, instead of bothering with all the hassle of voting, I say go strap some high-yield explosives to your chest, blow up a crowded bus, and God Bless America.