When it’s licensed, restricted and controlled by the government. When those strictures are applied, “rights” are simply privileges granted by the state, not truly rights.
This thought was, of course, spurred by the upcoming Supreme Court case concerning Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. The specific comment in the recent WaPo article that turned my crank was,
“But even fundamental rights are subject to government restrictions… ”
Yep. That’s so. Suppose your pastor were to make comments from the pulpit about the record of a political candidate revealing that person to be unfit for government service because of specific biblical references to the nature, scope and limits of civil government. In fact, such arguments are completely religious, spiritual and proper from a Christian pulpit, and past generations of Americans would have easily recognized that fact (largely because past generations of Americans–whether they were Christians or not–were far more literate than contemporary Americans and well-versed, even the most anti-christian among them, with the Bible). Today, we have bought the communist-socialist (hence, ACLU dogma) lie that such comments are disallowed by the First Amendment.
Poppycock! Only an illiterate (or lying) person could in any way, shape, fashion of form misread that amendment to get such a result.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… ”
And yet, Congress has passed laws into effect and empowered government agencies to do exactly that. You are free to practice your religion only so far as it does not impinge itself directly upon the practice of politics in any meaningful way.
And what of the other, enumerated, rights of citizens found in the Constitution?
All “subject to government restrictions” of course, because they are no longer recognized as rights but privileges granted by the PTB.
Or, twisted to meaninglessness by liars, poltroons and fools to match up with their own agendas. Just take the First Amendment for example. It was specifically drafted to prevent the federal government from interfering in any way with the practice of individuals in matters of religious conscience, speech and behavior. (For now I’m going to sidestep the abortion of Constitutional precepts embedded in the 14th Amendment.) And what else does it deal with?
POLITICAL speech (read the Framers before you try to argue with me on that one).
The PEOPLE’s rights to assemble peaceably and to seek redress for federal government oppression/mistreatment (wanna join a march for freedom from IRS bullying? Right. I thought not. Don’t want your name on THAT list *sigh*).
A press unencumbered by federal restraints.
But as you well know, freedom of speech is now applied in ways the Framers would find inexplicable, abhorrent, stupid. Trivializing freedom of speech is useful to those who want to restrict the freedom of political speech, and such as McCain-Feingold is but one result.
Heck, the only part of the First Amendment still standing nowadays is freedom of the press, and that’s likely because the press is almost all on the side of tearing down real freedom and replacing it with Orwell’s 1984.
So, as the monkeys on the SCOTUS consider what the Second amendment means, follow along and allegorically apply the G.K Chesterton quote in my right sidebar:
“Though drinking may be a caprice, it is a caprice that cannot be forbidden to a citizen, but can be forbidden to a slave.” G.K. Chesterton
Since the federal government seeks to make slaves of us with its unconscionable prying into our lives on serious matters (like restricting the ennumerated rights in the Bill of Rights that the document says the federal government can NOT), just watch all the other rights we have eaten away as they are deemed either capricious or dangerous by TPTB.
Chattel slavery wasn’t the only thing that was formally ended at Appomattox:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Remember,
“Though drinking may be a caprice, it is a caprice that cannot be forbidden to a citizen, but can be forbidden to a slave.”
I’m just waiting for the SCOTUS to deem “keep[ing] and bear[ing] arms” a caprice that’s no longer necessary (or a right that is too dangerous) for citizens to retain.
Headed down the road to slavery. Not chattel slavery, exactly, but worse in some ways.
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