Tuesday, April 24, 2007  The Second Amendment: The Constitution,
In Miniature  "We are here now to protect you, and no one has a
need for a weapon any more.” --  A Khmer Rouge soldier sent to
disarm Cambodian peasants, as recounted by a survivor of the
Cambodian genocide; The New Yorker, January 24, 1994  It is
because Daniel Lazare makes no effort to disguise his contempt
for the US Constitution that he enjoys the luxury of candor
about its provisions.  In his 1995 book The Frozen Republic,
Lazare assailed the Constitution for “paralyzing democracy” --
which was one of the key objectives of the Framers, who did not
share Lazare's enthusiasm for “majoritarian absolutism” (as one
critic aptly described the author's philosophy).  To his credit,
Lazare doesn't claim to have found some previously concealed
progressive subtext in the Constitution, or offer flatulent
platitudes about the “true” meaning of the “living” document. He
admits that the Framers created a system in which the powers of
the State were to be