by Levar Cole
Some Vermont legislators appear eerily similar to the old segregationists who refused to integrate public schools.
Vermont is adopting that tradition of massive resistance when it comes to further restricting firearms ownership by its law-abiding citizens. Like the segregationists, certain legislators seem to thumb their nose at and ignore the state constitution, federal law, and recent US Supreme Court rulings as they continue to propose legislation further restricting firearm ownership by residents.
The governor, who in recent years yielded to the legislature on this issue, commented on the unconstitutional nature of recent laws, and noted how they would be challenged in court. This is important whether we own firearms, don’t own them, or don’t care, principally because our legislators appear perfectly happy to set law without limit, and legislate based on feeling and emotion rather than respect boundaries in our state and federal constitutions and by our nation’s Supreme Court.
Apparently, our legislators see the boundaries and shrug them off. This is akin to me getting elected and proposing a ban on all abortions despite the recent limits on abortion restrictions Vermonters put into the state constitution.
Like current legislators, I could just ignore law, push a proposal that feels good to me, and then opine, as Senate President Pro Tempore Philip Baruth said about firearms, that people have gone through a transformation where we realize we don’t want to live in a country where access to abortions is so ubiquitous.
Then, a future governor would just let it become law, and comment that the courts will have to deal with it, as those seeking abortions must travel elsewhere as the lawsuits wind their way through the labyrinth of state and federal courts.
We must remember, legislative majorities change from time-to-time. These days are trying for all of us. We can see it in ourselves, our families, and we can see it in our neighbors. Political affinity, rural or urban, religious or non religious, sex, gender–that feeling of being under siege is felt by many of us.
We have an obligation to limited government. This has been and should be the nature of our republic. And it’s not just for the federal power, it’s for states, and local governments too. Limited government consists of respected boundaries. Feelings-based government is tyranny.
The author is a former selectboard member for Chelsea and 2020 candidate for Vermont House of Representatives. Following his career with the federal Inspectors General, his family moved to Chelsea. He and his wife grow vegetables and homeschool their 5 children.
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Categories: Commentary
Today’s Milgram Experiment
The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:
Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).
https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot
Well said, Levar. Good luck in your run. Our legislature needs more representatives and less shilling bureaucrats.
Good luck Mr. Cole!
Thank you Mr. Cole.
What a beautiful man!
I hope you run for office again. Our state desperately needs your ideas and values.
Welcome to the party Mr. Cole. We are dealing with communists that are purposely ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights hoping we will voluntarily give up those rights. As you have stated we now have legalized abortion that is enumerated in the Vermont Constitution. But remembered prior to that when the pro-abortionists called Roe v Wade “settled law”. After Roe v Wade was overturned and went back to the states, they put it in the state’s constitution. Using the same 10th Amendment argument, they legalized marijuana in VT. My point being is that they use the Constitution only when it benefits them. Using their “settled law” argument how do they getting away with circumventing real “settled law” as set down by the Supreme Court in various decisions on firearms. 2008 Heller v the District of Columbia, Private citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia. 2010 McDonald v Chicago affirms that the people’s right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and that citizens are allowed firearms in common use, those small arms or those that operate like them and are issued to our National Guard which comprises of citizen soldiers. 2022 NYSRPA v Bruen, The Supreme Court ruled that New York’s law requiring a special need for self-defense to carry a concealed firearm violated the Second Amendment. All of this is settled law yet the communist politicians of this state refuse to follow the law. They defy it, which is why they are “domestic enemies”.
However, here is the real problem. What consequence do they face for violating our rights. Under Section 56 the Vermont Constitution it is perjury to violate your oath of office, yet there is no mechanism to bring charges to these politicians we know have violated their oath. We have to go thru the courts and even if we have a ton of money we still have to wait for the court to hear it and then they ignore the courts decisions again because there is still no consequences for their action. The only thing we can do is to disobey all of these unconstitutional laws and circumvent them whenever possible.
“All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void”.
Marbury vs Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their ‘constitutional’ right of amending it or their ‘revolutionary’ right to dismember or overthrow it.” – Abraham Lincoln
Well said sir! Good luck and Keep fighting.. There are more like minded people here than the libs realize.. They have no power when we stand together.