THE DREAM IS DYING: "John Edward Emerich Dalberg, better known to history as Lord Acton, once described liberty as that which was not, until the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century in Philadelphia." Now we may redefine liberty as that which ended in the first quarter of the Twenty-first Century in New Orleans.

Soldiers and police confiscated guns from homeowners as they went house to house, trying to clear the shattered city of holdouts.... As many as 10,000 people were believed to be stubbornly staying put in the city, despite Katrina's filthy, corpse-strewn floodwaters and orders from Mayor Ray Nagin earlier this week to leave or be removed by force. ...


Some residents said they left under extreme pressure. "They were all insisting that I had to leave my home," said Shelia Dalferes, who said she had 15 minutes to pack before she and her husband were evacuated. "The implication was there with their plastic handcuffs on their belt. Who wants to go out like that?"

Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Jason Rule said his crew pulled 18 people from their homes Thursday. ...


Police and soldiers also seized numerous guns for fear of confrontations with jittery residents who have armed themselves against looters. "No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons," Riley said.

On Thursday, in the city's well-to-do Lower Garden District, a neighborhood with many antebellum mansions, members of the Oklahoma National Guard seized weapons from the inhabitants of one home. Those who were armed were handcuffed and briefly detained before being let go.

Some of our ancestors fought a British empire over far less oppressive violations of our rights than these. The proper response to this theft and confiscation, leaving people defenseless not only against roving criminals, but against the badge-wearing thugs who will come back later to forcibly evacuate innocent people to detention camps, is found in Article II, Section 4, of our rapidly vanishing Constitution. But remember: