From His Archives

Remember Ye The Third!

John Milton, the great poet and even greater republican theorist, gave us words to live by when he minted this classic aphorism: ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’. [1] A particularly worrying consequence of our national coma is neglect of the Third Amendment. There is no shortage of garrulous idiots invoking the First, and thank heavens there are still a few biorchous [2] males defending the Second, but the Third gets less attention than a fat sorority girl.

We can maintain the illusion that the Third Amendment does not matter because the country is not currently at war, and because even if we were at war the armed forces would not (we think) feel the slightest temptation to quarter any of their troops in our private residences. But we are forgetting the possibility, nay, probability, that this country will again be plunged into civil war, and that within the decade. My sources tell me that the liberals are planning to take the better part of the North-East, and that they have been assured the support of the Canadians. Quashing this rebellion could require major mobilization of troops on the continental United States: who knows what measures the Union generals might consider expedient during the war or in the tumultuous Reconstruction 'peace' that follows? We must make sure that the constitutional limitations on the Army’s power are to the forefront of the national consciousness so that we are never tempted into the hypocrisy of sinning against freedom while claiming to defend it.

The matter would be all the more urgent because we would presumably not have mustered the political will to get rid of the stupid ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy so proudly maintained by President Bill ‘The Adulterous Sexaholic Perjurer’ Clinton. It is enough to have to deal with the possible effect of virile young soldiers (who are not, if you will pardon the pun, uniformly honorable) on one’s womenfolk. One should not also have to worry that some of them will try to give your impressionable sons an impromptu Spartan initiation into army life.

Porterfield Higgins-Jones Jr.

Guest Editorial in Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald (American Edition), dated 20 December, 2000

[1] The quotation is not in fact from Milton but originally (circa 1808) from Wendell Philips, an utter nobody.

[2] ‘Two-testicled’. Etymology Greek. Compare with ‘orchid’.

-P.H-J. IV