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“[Dr. Mark Green’s] military awards include the Bronze Star, The Air Medal, The Air Medal with ‘V’ device for valor under heavy enemy fire, and numerous other medals for service. He also was awarded the Combat Medical Badge, the US Army Ranger Tab, and The Expert Infantryman’s Badge, among many others.” [Photo: MarkGreen4TN.com]
by: David Codrea
“Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green (R), President Donald Trump’s nominee for Army secretary, strongly believes that citizens should be armed ― and not just with any ol’ guns,” HuffPost Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor Amanda Terkel snarks. “They should be able to possess whatever weapons the military has, because an armed citizenry is the ‘ultimate checks and balances’ against the federal government.”
It’s almost funny—a liberal arts major with experience limited to leftist agitprop making fun of a man who … well, take a moment and read his professional qualifications for yourself. He was a West Point Graduate with an economics degree, a Masters degree in Information Systems from USC and a medical degree from Wright State. He served his country on covert missions and received plenty of decorations for being in harm’s way. He’s a successful businessman. He’s a board member for humanitarian organizations “focused on caring for soldiers and their families as they return with the unseen scars of war.”
So Terkel’s needing to resort to Alinsky Rule 5 ridicule is understandable; it’s all she’s got. Compare her education, experience and achievements with Green’s CV. And note she previously “served as Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and the Managing Editor of ThinkProgress.org.”
Per Discover the Network:
“Think Progress is a ‘project’ of the American Progress Action Fund (APAF), a ‘sister advocacy organization’ of the John Podesta-led Center for American Progress (CAP) and CAP’s entities such as Campus Progress. It also draws freely on the resources of the George Soros-funded Media Matters website edited by David Brock.Yes, that would be “spirit cooking” dinner invitee John Podesta…
And Terkel’s hoplophobia is also understandable. After all, “She is a graduate of Colgate University,” and that school just went on a four-hour meltdown over an art student with a glue gun.
What she’ll never admit—because she probably doesn’t know, is that Green’s understanding of an armed citizenry is consistent with Founding intent, as expressed by Tench Coxe:
“As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” (Tench Coxe in ‘Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution’ under the Pseudonym ‘A Pennsylvanian’ in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1)
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…. [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” (Tench Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.)
It’s also consistent with Supreme Court opinion. In Miller, the court found a short-barrel shotgun could not be determined protected under the Second Amendment because the court had no evidence its possession had “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia [or] that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”
That’s a key point. The function of the militia was — and is — to field citizen soldiers. And these citizens bore arms that were suitable for that purpose, “ordinary military equipment” intended to be taken into “common defense” battles. The militia came with the intent to match and best a professional military threat.
“[T]he citizenry should be allowed to maintain whatever weapon the federal government has,” Terkel quotes Green, looking for another way to point and laugh. “If they can have an aircraft carrier, I ought to be able to have an aircraft carrier.”
Privateers, indeed, at one time operated vessels of war. And granting Letters of Marque and Reprisal is still a Constitutional power of Congress, even if it does ignore it, along with its power to “provide for calling forth the Militia [and] for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia.”
As for the “private nuclear weapon” strawman, Green never argued for that. While no specific power appears to have been delegated in the Constitution to authorize forbidding such private ownership, it does raise questions on how the purposes of the Preamble could otherwise be fulfilled. I haven’t spent a lot of time mulling this over, but could a case be made that Congress is the entity authorized “to raise and support Armies,” and that would be the equivalent of an unaccountable standing army? Another article seems in order to invite discussion on that.
But the nuke issue is a diversion anyway, from Terkel’s main beef, and the real reason “progressives” are outraged over Green. He dared to repeat that the psychiatric establishment considered transsexuals to suffer from Gender Identity Disorder. That the American Psychiatric Association changed its position in 2012 had less to do with new research and discoveries than it did with lobbying by “progressive” political advocacy groups. Also, the guy he’s replacing, Eric Fanning, is openly gay, so that’s another “progressive strike against Green.
If Green is to be faulted, a better reason than his being considered “mean spirited” by “progressives” would be because he misstated a point:
“The Second Amendment, while it allows citizens to protect themselves from other citizens, goes well beyond just allowing us to defend ourselves from a criminal,” Green said at a pro-gun rally in 2013. “The men who penned and ratified this document gave us the right to keep and bear arms as an ultimate checks and balances against the federal government. When considering magazine size and weapon type, comments like, ‘You don’t need a 10-round magazine to hunt deer’ completely misses the point of the Second Amendment.”
They didn’t give us any rights, and Green no doubt understands that. That’s something even the Supreme Court understands:
The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed …
That Green misspoke about something he clearly understands (see video below) can be fixed with a reminder that words have meaning. In the mean time, the facts that he’s for the right of the people to keep and bear arms – and that “progressives’ have their knives out for him – seem like pretty good reasons to welcome his appointment.
It also may explain why John McCain is making noises that don’t, and why CNN is helping pile up on him for speculating on inconsistencies between evolution and his faith.
I guess they’d rather not have someone who understands the Constitution in any position of responsibility:
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