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Don’t let the NY Times redefine it. Or Chuck Schumer. The militia referred to in the Second Amendment is not the National Guard or the U.S. Military.
Hamilton pointed out the great, centuries-old historical definition of the militia. It is a huge group of citizens. It is everyone but the politicians. It is the armed neighborhood. It is “the great body of the yeomanry,” he wrote, “and of the other classes of the citizens.”
Hamilton favored the idea that some of that militia is further selected-out into a national military corps, and Federal law reflects this definition in Section 246 of Title X of the US Code: “The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.”
Then, it further divides the militia into two distinct parts:
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
Both groups are part of the one nationwide, American militia.
According to Hamilton, both groups are indispensable. A small “select corps” will lessen the need for a standing army because it gives the federal government a military force to call on if needed, for the defense of the nation against invaders.
Hamilton is careful to recognize that the citizen militia is a check and balance against tyrannical politicians or a tyrannical military. Citizens, well-organized at the local level, can always fight back against a federal military with their own military grade weapons if and when tyrannical politicians force soldiers to oppress citizens.
He put it this way: “That army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.”
Notes:
Yeomanry definition: generally, it referred to middle class, responsible, civilian citizens, all of whom were armed with military-grade weapons.
Second Amendment: “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.”
See Federalist 29 here
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-21-30#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493342
Fixing immigration policy will require intelligence, delicacy and patience. A government truly determined to stop the boats and to deport illegal entrants will need to derogate, at least in part, from numerous international treaties – not just the ECHR, but all those cited by pro-immigration judges, including the Refugee Convention and possibly the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It will need to scrap a mass of domestic laws, including the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. It will need to override the current system of judicial review and create a mechanism to remove partisan judges.
Doing these things will make Brexit look straightforward. The human rights Blob will fight tooth and nail to maintain, not just its influence, but its livelihood. Overcoming that resistance will consume most of a new government’s energies for an entire Parliament and will require immense tactical dexterity.
The trouble is that almost no one is interested.
-- Daniel Hannan, UK House of...
According to a barely-publicized Treasury report, the actual grand total of Uncle Sam’s obligations is more than $151 trillion.
That huge discrepancy springs from the fact that the federal government doesn’t hold itself to the same accounting standards it imposes on businesses. Rather than using accrual accounting — which recognizes expenses when they’re incurred — our Washington overlords self-servingly use simple cash accounting, only recognizing expenses when they’re paid. As a result, discourse on federal obligations solely focuses on the national debt, comprising Treasury bills, notes and bonds.
-- Brian McGlinchey
ChatGPT Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study:
"Of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and 'consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.'
Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.
"The task was executed, and you could say that it was efficient and convenient," Kosmyna says. "But as we show in the paper, you basically didn’t integrate any of it into your memory networks."
