FTA: So we cycle back to the point about political judgment. If Swalwell wants to be more grown-up than the tweeps, one thing he could consider is gaining insight about why America’s Founders thought of the Second Amendment as a basis for the people to hold the federal government accountable, and force it to stay within its constitutional limits.
It wasn’t because the Founders thought local groups of armed citizens could prevail in combat against the full resources of the central government. Even in a world without A-10s, armored tanks, networked surveillance, and over-the-horizon targeting of precision weapons, the Founders didn’t expect that.
Their expectation was instead that armed citizens would be a continuing deterrent to government excesses. The cost of trying to ram through overreach on an armed people would be too high, and the central government would rarely if ever be willing to start that fight.
It’s hard to say which realm Eric Swalwell of California shows worst in with his latest tweet series: political judgment, understanding of the Constitution, or understanding of the impact of a nuclear detonation.
On Friday, as part of an ongoing Twitter dialogue on gun confiscation, Swalwell tweeted the following in response to a tweep angry about the “confiscation” threat. The tweep — @Rambobiggs — had vowed to fight back against any such attempt.
The “common ground” reference is a nice — if laughable — touch, after Swalwell acknowledged favoring gun confiscation in an earlier tweet exchange:
But more fundamentally, Swalwell clarified that he can’t be taken seriously by going high-order so promptly with the allusion to nukes. In terms of political judgment, “We’ll nuke you, fool — but hey, I’ll signal virtue here; let’s find common ground” is not impressive diplomacy with angry citizens.
Nor is blanket endorsement of bans and confiscations a good sign that Swalwell understands the U.S. Constitution and can be relied on to uphold it. It’s rather the opposite. Apparently, Swalwell urgently demands to do something that the Constitution would stop him from doing.
by J.E. Dyer
