Dare I hope against hope that this country, on its 232nd birthday, is finally coming back to its senses? Dare I believe that the Constitution is actually simple ideas committed to paper in a unchangeable form with ink long since dried, and not a huge lump of clay which can take on whatever obscene shape a liberal judiciary can conceive in its perverted minds?

I have had a sense of hope about this recently, thanks to the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that the 2nd Amendment actually means what it says it means. It’s hard not to keep holding my breath, the vote was 5-4, after all, but it’s encouraging to note that if we can get McCain elected, and if he will appoint strict constructionists to the court — Ginsburg and Stevens can’t hold out much longer, I don’t believe — then we stand a good chance of saving this country from falling into the same shape that Europe is in with its massive taxes and entitlements.

States are even standing up for themselves these days, and thank God for it! Upon Montana’s admission to statehood in 1889, according to kxma.com,

the U.S. approved the right to bear arms in the Montana Constitution, guaranteeing the right of “any person” to bear arms, clearly an individual right.

Montana stood up and threatened to secede from the Union if this right was not upheld. We’re not talking the 1860s here, folks, we’re talking the 21st century, just a few months ago! Hooray for them! People tend to forget that the 2nd Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear arms to prevent an overreaching Federal government from usurping our individual rights. An astute observer will notice that had the Court not upheld this right, what would we have used to prevent them from taking other rights from us? Clubs and knives?

True, it’s my personal belief that few if any people would actually take up arms against an encroaching government, but it’s also my belief that there are enough people who would do it to keep the pressure on Washington to avoid another Waco-type situation.

Besides the spunk of Montana, Oklahoma has been kicking up its heels toward the Federal government lately, too. On June 16, WorldNet Daily reported:

Steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states’ rights, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives told Washington, D.C., to back off.

Joint House Resolution 1089, passed by an overwhelming 92-3 margin, reasserts Oklahoma’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution’s own language, is “serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates.”

The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Traditionally, this language has meant that the federal government is limited in its scope and cannot usurp the sovereign powers of states. In recent decades, however, as the size and reach of the federal government has expanded, many have come to question whether Washington has stepped on states’ rights and gotten too big for its breeches.

Did you notice the vote on that? 92-3! That’s a powerful message to send to the Federal government. It’s my hope and prayer that more states continue what Montana and Oklahoma have started. We need less Federal government and more state and local governments with the backbone to take on their own problems without farming them out to an overgrown, overblown, and overrated beauracracy in Washington.

As Mattie Ross might say, “These are states with grit!”

Oh, and check out the latest at StoptheACLU!

TD