Washington, Arizonans And The Primal Right To Self-Defense

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August 10, 2010

Washington, Arizonans, and the Primal Right to Self-Defense

By J. Robert Smith

Based on the people's primal right to self-defense, the Obama administration's lawsuit against Arizona is a declaration of moral abandonment. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton's ruling that stays portions of the Arizona illegals law abets the administration's moral abandonment -- and not incidentally, stands good law on its head.





The Obama administration asserts the de jure paramountcy of the national government in the enforcement of immigration laws and border defense, yet de facto, the national government has been wholly inadequate in executing the aforementioned duties. Its inadequacy flows chiefly from political reasons, rather than reasons of resource or competence. The national government stands accused of a failure of will. Thereby, the Obama administration and the national government are defaulting in a basic duty to the people: to attend to their defense.





The obscenity of the Obama administration's lawsuit against Arizona is that, in practical terms, it asserts the legal right of the national government to do as little as it chooses to provide for immigration enforcement and border defense. The administration's underlying argument topples common sense and common decency. The lawsuit makes national immigration laws mere facades -- if Washington chooses. It argues that the people have little say in securing the nation's borders.





The right to self-defense -- individually and collectively -- is fundamental and ancient, long predating government. It's premised on the right of the individual to life and property. The Declaration of Independence explicitly acknowledges the primacy of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It is no accident that the Declaration posits "life" first.





Where there is life, there's a right to its perpetuation. Where there are threats to life, there is a right to self-defense. Property is an outgrowth of a life. Where property is threatened, there's a threat in varying degrees to life. (Long ago, Mongol invaders burning crops and slaughtering livestock threatened the lives of those who depended on the crops and livestock for their existence.) Through time, the human being has sought to better defend his life through collectivities: the family, clan, tribe and the nation.





A shared defense of life means that the individual cedes some of his authority for his defense to a collective. The collective -- in modern times, the nation and its subsets -- attends the responsibilities and duties of protecting the individual. Where government can't or won't provide for a common defense, it again falls to the individual to defend himself -- and, if warranted, to seek out those combinations that provide for his defense. Hence, for example, a person has a right to a gun in America, and can hire a security service and work in concert with his neighbors to form a block watch. Or form a Minuteman Project.





When Washington fails in its basic obligation to protect the people, the people have a right to attend to their own defense. That's not an argument for vigilantism. In fact, Arizonans' response to Washington's failure hasn't been vigilantism -- an extreme response usually taken up in the complete breakdown or absence of government (think the Old West).





The people of Arizona, through their elected representatives and the law, are asserting their right to self-defense, and -- to repeat -- are doing so only in the teeth of the manifest failure of the national government to make good its obligation to protect Arizonans. Yet Arizona's immigration law in no way attempts to supersede or nullify national government law. It provides only a support and enforcement mechanism for exiting national immigration laws. Arizonans are merely attempting to do the job that Washington is tasked with doing but is electing not to do.





In fairness to President Obama, Washington's immigration enforcement and border security failures are, through the years, the shortcomings of Democrats and Republicans alike, who have calculated that proper immigration enforcement and border security will alienate Hispanic voters. Or who believe -- in the case of the Democrats -- that today's illegal immigrants are Democratic voters tomorrow. Illegal immigrants also provide a cheap source of labor for businesses. That, too, is part of the political calculus.





Arizonans have exercised great forbearance waiting for Washington to meet its constitutional obligation to unreservedly and fully see to their defense -- and so have a solid majority of Americans, who watch with mounting frustration and anger as the Obama administration acts to obstruct the Arizona law.





The millions of illegals who have poured across the nation's borders -- the harder criminal elements among those illegals -- daily pose threats to American citizens; first and foremost, to Americans who reside in states along the nation's southern border. This isn't conjecture. Crime against Arizonans by illegals, for instance, is reported regularly. Homicides, gang violence and kidnappings are in the news. The state's sheriffs -- Joe Arpaio, particularly -- and police attest to it. Arizonans are quite vocal in expressing their fear and outrage about the danger in their midst.





Government can't confer what it doesn't create. Government doesn't create life; nature and nature's God do. Government doesn't confer liberty; liberty issues from the natural right to life. Government doesn't create the people; the people create government. The people are organic; government is the invention and tool of the people. The people expect -- no, demand -- in increasing numbers that Washington act in accord with their will, and that it discharge its duties to provide for their defense.





In Washington today, and for too many years, in fact, the government, for reasons mean and shortsighted, has chosen to defy the people's will by not faithfully and vigorously enforcing immigration laws and properly defending the nation's borders from the illegals' invasion.





The Arizona illegals law is no outlier. It conforms fully to the rule of law and seeks only to uphold national law. Arizonans are in the vanguard by insisting that Washington do its duty to protect the nation's borders. It's the Obama administration and the national government that's failing the people -- failing in the constitutional mandate to uphold the people's fundamental and ancient right to self-defense.