Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 13:33:42 :
In Reply to: I still have all the rights afforded by the Consitiution posted by jack cain on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 12:33:15 :
If you're happy with the "reasonable" limitations on every enumerated right (and by the way, why should I care if you have a howitzer so long as you don't injure any person or their property with it?), and you're okay with changing the meaning of the constitution from a document in which the people grant certain powers to the government to one in which the government grants certain right to the people, I guess you still have all your rights.
We're losing our rights by the death of a thousand cuts. The first amendment starts out with "Congress shall make NO law...", but we now have all sorts of "laws" about what people can't say or where they can't say it. Private property still isn't taken without compensation, in the sense of signing over the deed to the government, but it's usually regulated to the point where most practical uses of it are prohibited. In most places, most people still have the right to keep some sort of firearm, but only within tight regulations. In terms of states rights, I can't think of any power that the Feds truly believe is still reserved to the states. The feds regulate everything and woe be it to any state that doesn't toe the line. No federal highway money if they don't follow the fed's rules on speed limits, seat belts, drinking age, etc. No federal welfare money if they don't provide the kind of welfare programs the feds want. Same with education and environmental stuff. Even fish & game are subject to federal regulation now. I don't see anything about any of that in the constitution. And of course you're still protected against unreasonable search and seizure... except the warrant might come from secret evidence presented to a secret federal court, or maybe the president just approves it himself.
Like I said, if you're happy with your remaining rights, good for you. Truth be told, very little of these infringements effects me personally either. I've never tried to go to a peaceful demonstration to exercise my free speech rights and been hustled off to some "free speech zone" out of sight of everybody. I've never had my house raided because my busybody neighbor convinced the federales that I might be a terrorist. I don't happen to live in a place that puts a whole lot of restrictions on what I do with my land, except that every stream of water on it is somehow subject regulation by the Army Corps of Engineers because 100 miles downstream it connects with "navigable waters of the US". It doesn't personally hurt me much that I can't have an RPG launcher just for the fun of demolishing a junk car. So, one way of looking at it is that so long as what's left of the constitution is enough for my purposes, why worry? It's sort of like wearing a jacket that's full of holes and is falling apart, but thinking that the weather's not too cold and a lot of the jacket is still there, so I'm okay.
What's left of the constitution isn't good enough for me, however. When it says "congress shall make no law", I want that to mean "NO law". Likewise with all the other clearly-spelled out restrictions on the federal government. "Private property" means not only the deed to the ground, but what you can do with it, does it not, otherwise what would be the point of owning it? "Shall not be infringed" doesn't mean "can be infringed quite a lot so long there's a little bit of the right left". I could be selfish and say, "well, I can still do what I want so I don't care.", but what about the future? Do we want future generations to live in a country where everything that isn't specifically permitted is prohibited, where you have to show ID and get a permit to go anywhere or do anything, and where every transaction or communication could be monitored? Liberty and security usually move in opposite directions, and I expect I'll never understand the appeal of security at the expense of liberty. There's not a thing in this world that I could be afraid of that I think the federal government ought to protect me against -- not terrorists, not toys with lead paint, not foul language on TV, not tools and chemicals I might hurt myself with, not poverty in my old age, and not even nuclear war with enemy countries. Since they can't do me any good, then I'd like them to just stay the "heck" out of the way, like the constitution said they should.
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