LTE: In Response to Del. Holmes Norton

Posted July 25, 2010, 5:03 p.m.

I have just submitted the following Letter to the Editor to the Washington Post in response to a piece by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) on D.C. voting rights. Holmes Norton is Washington, D.C.’s non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives.

Hopefully the Post will choose to publish it tomorrow. If they do, I’ll post a link.

I applaud Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s tireless devotion to the cause of D.C. voting rights. I believe, as she does, that the citizens of the District should have some form of representation in Congress (as, ultimately, should those from other U.S. territories like Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

In D.C.’s case, the most plausible way of doing this would be through retro-cession of most of the District to Maryland, following the pattern laid by the retro-cession of Arlington to Virginia in 1847. Then citizens of the District would enjoy the representation of Maryland’s two Senators and, after redistricting, one or more representatives in the House. Retro-cession, statehood, or a Constitutional amendment are the only three ways to give D.C. a vote that pass Constitutional muster.

I do, however, find it curious to read Del. Holmes Norton clamoring for ‘equal citizenship rights’ for the people of the District while, at the same time, defending D.C.’s unconstitutional and ineffective gun laws. The people of Washington, D.C. do indeed deserve equal citizenship rights—citizenship rights that include the right to keep and bear arms.

The gun amendment Holmes Norton speaks of would not have ‘proliferated guns through the city.’ Guns are prolific in Washington already, but only in the hands of criminals and the likes of Det. Mike ‘don’t bring a gun to a snowball fight’ Baylor. Responsible, law-abiding citizens, however, go unarmed and do not get to enjoy their ‘equal citizenship rights.’

I urge Del. Holmes Norton to keep up her fight for equal citizenship rights for the people of Washington, D.C., but I urge her to include both voting rights and the right to keep and bear arms under that heading. The people of the District deserve to have all of their civil liberties protected.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son.

John the Apostle

The ballot box produces conformity without unanimity; the marketplace, unanimity without conformity.

Milton Friedman

We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.

Calvin Coolidge

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Do whatever [Jesus] tells you.

Mary (Blessed Virgin)

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you start with nothing, demand 100%, then compromise for 30%, you’re 30% ahead.

Saul Alinsky

A man without God is not like a cake without raisins; he is like the cake without the flour and milk; he lacks the essential ingredients of happiness.

Fulton Sheen

You could compile . . . the worst book in the world entirely out of . . . passages from the best writers in the world.

G.K. Chesterton

All the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.

Nikola Tesla

God has created me to do him some definite service. . . . I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

John Henry Newman

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

John Henry Newman

Real power begins where secrecy begins.

Hannah Arendt

We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment’s hesitation.

Teddy Roosevelt

Totalitarians are fond of saying that Christianity is the enemy of the State—a euphemistic way of saying an enemy of themselves.

Fulton Sheen

If the goods and services available . . . are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a [trade] ‘deficit’ or a ‘surplus.’

Thomas Sowell

As a general rule, it’s always smarter to criticize people who aren’t around.

Scott Adams

The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you.

Jordan Peterson

It appeared to me that there were two paths to truth, [science and faith,] and I decided to follow both of them.

Georges Lemaître

Only crime and the criminal . . . confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

Hannah Arendt