How to Misread the Constitution
The police in the United States are out of control. The President should bring in the military as part of a nationwide effort to reign in these rioting police forces. US Senator Tom Cotton agrees. In his recent New York Times Op-Ed, Cotton states:
“This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s. But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence.
On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction. These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives. One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.
In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.” The federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder.”
Of course, Senator Cotton is advocating no such thing. By taking parts of his Op-Ed out of context, ignoring other parts and willfully misinterpreting his intent, I’ve taken Tom Cotton’s opinion in a direction he never intended.
Armed with nothing more than the cut-and-paste function of my word processing software, a willingness to ignore anything which doesn’t suit my purposes, and absolutely no legal training, I can turn any bit of law on its head. This is especially fun when it comes to the Constitution.
For instance, the 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.”
Ignore all that pesky stuff about well regulated militias and presto change-o:
“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Suddenly, the Founding Fathers, originally stressing the necessity of a well-regulated citizens’ militia to offset the threat of a national standing army to the freedom of a free people, now support any random yahoo owning any piece of military hardware that makes them feel better about their poor life choices.
The rest of the Bill of Rights has already undergone extensive cherry-picking by those who analyze the Constitution in bad faith. Now is apparently the turn of the Third Amendment, another amendment intended to curtail the activities of a standing army concerning the citizens it represents.
“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
The Third Amendment can be traced to the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed the British to house troops in unoccupied buildings at colonial expense. This is a rare case in which it is virtually impossible to find any constitutional scholar who disagrees with the accepted interpretation — one being that troops cannot be housed and deployed within an American jurisdiction without its consent. One of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence is that the King was “quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”
Completely disregarding the intent of the Third Amendment, President Trump last week deployed active duty military personnel to the District of Columbia — against the wishes of the city — ostensibly to perform crowd control duties. Adding insult to injury, the troops were to be housed in empty Washington hotels at the expense of the city. It’s difficult to imagine a situation in which the White House could have created a more perfect storm of Third Amendment abuses, intentional or not.
The most exasperating aspect of this serial erosion of the rule of law and the Constitution is that it is typically presented by proponents as bolstering the very principles it undermines. Up is down. Left is right. War is Peace. This is all more Orwellian than even Orwell could have imagined.
