Define which rights and whose rights. The govt is actually the ref with
the striped shirt and the whistle when it comes to rights. After all
giving the rights to one takes from the others. What our current
masters in Congress and our beleaguered and out of his depths president
is doing takes away from of those of us who take our responsibilities
seriously and giving the fruits of our labor to those who do not. That
is not something I am in agreement with. And they are doing it by the
parsing this Constitution to try to bend it to say what they want it to
say. Words matter and this crew is trying to redefine all the words and
we are going to be the losers for letting them even be in the positions
they hold.
THE ANNOINTED ONE wrote:
> To answer those questions:
>
> Is freedom a reality or a myth?
>
> Myth, as it stands.
>
> Are the rights guaranteed in the Constitution real or just a
> pretense?
>
> It is, after all, "just a piece of paper". That would make it pure
> pretense.
>
> Isn’t the whole purpose of government in a free society to uphold
> rights rather than interfere with them?
>
> Not according to the government.
>
> Sir Thomas More was morally correct (as a Catholic that granted the
> Holy Mother Church and its teachings and edicts superior position to
> the English Democratic Monarchy that still exists today) but morally
> wrong to ("protestants" and C of E followers) and legally wrong
> according to the House of Lords, Lord Protector (read Prime Minister)
> and His Monarch to whom he owed earthly fealty.
>
> On Mar 19, 7:50 am, "M.A. Johnson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Can Congress Write Any Laws It Wants?by Andrew P. Napolitano"Some men think
>> the Earth is round, others think it flat… But, if it is flat, will the
>> King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command
>> flatten it? … NO."When Robert Bolt wrote that truism in his playA Man For
>> All Seasons, his protagonist, Thomas More, was attempting to persuade the
>> jury at his trial for high treason that all governments have limitations,
>> and that the statute he was accused of violating was beyond Parliament’s
>> lawful authority to enact. Sir Thomas was there appealing to the natural law
>> as well as to the common sense of his jurors: The government can’t change
>> the laws of nature. As we know, he fared no better than those who today
>> argue that Congress is not omnipotent, has natural, moral, and
>> constitutional limitations on its power, and every day fails to abide them.
>> Jefferson wedded the natural law to American law in the Declaration of
>> Independence when he wrote that our rights are "inalienable" and come to us
>> from "Our Creator." Not only does federal law recognize that, but the whole
>> American experience recognizes the natural law as the ultimate source of our
>> freedoms and as a restraint on the government. Thus, the traditional panoply
>> of American rights is ours by birthright and cannot be interfered with by an
>> act of Congress or order of the president, but only after due process.
>> Two of those rights are speech and contract. A law enacted by Congress
>> punishing speech (such as the Patriot Act provision that declares to be
>> felonious speaking about the receipt of certain search warrants) is no law
>> at all, since the law itself violates the natural right to speak freely,
>> which is expressly protected in the Constitution. The Framers fully
>> understood this as they wrote in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make
>> no laws … abridgingthefreedom of speech." I have italicized the wordtheto
>> make my point. The framers accepted the natural law premise that freedoms
>> come with and from our humanity.Thefreedom of speech obviously preexisted
>> the constitutional amendment insulating it from government abridgement, and
>> the Framers’ use of the articlethereflects their unmistakable acceptance of
>> that truism.
>> Similarly, a law changing the terms of a private contract is no law since it
>> violates the natural right to make binding agreements. The Framers knew that
>> as well. The Constitution specifically forbids the states and, by requiring
>> due process and expressly forbidding taking property without just
>> compensation, the federal government, from "impairingtheObligation of
>> Contracts." This, too, is a personal natural right that pre-existed the
>> constitutional clauses that bar the government from interfering with it.
>> The Constitution sets forth just 17 discrete delegated powers on matters
>> like currency, interstate commerce, the post office, the judiciary, and
>> national defense. The Constitution also interposed two precise brakes on all
>> federal powers: The Ninth and Tenth Amendments together state that the
>> powers not enumerated in the Constitution as given to the federal government
>> are retained by the people and the States.
>> The whole purpose of the Constitution is, was, and has been to define the
>> government, to impose restraints on the government, and to guarantee
>> personal freedoms. It specifically diffused power between the States and the
>> central government and, within the federal government itself, it separated
>> powers among the three branches.
>> It is elementary to state that the Constitution mandates that Congress
>> writes the laws and decides how to spend tax dollars, the president enforces
>> the laws as Congress has written them, and the courts interpret the laws as
>> they have been written and enforced to assure their compliance with the
>> Supreme Law of the Land.
>> As elemental as this sounds, it is hardly recognizable today. After 230
>> years, we have come to a point where a president declines to enforce laws he
>> has himself signed, directs his Treasury Secretary to make laws interfering
>> with private contracts, and signs executive orders that invade privacy,
>> restrict speech, and appropriate property. Today, we have a Congress that
>> delegates to the president its power to spend taxpayer dollars and money
>> borrowed in the taxpayers’ names, has written laws regulating the air you
>> breath, the water you drink, the words you speak, and relieving the persons
>> with whom you have contracted or to whom you have loaned money from
>> complying with their agreements. And our courts from time to time have
>> raised taxes, run prisons, re-cast the boundaries of school districts, and
>> declined to right obvious constitutional wrongs committed by the other
>> branches.
>> The oath to uphold the Constitution that everyone in government takes,
>> though solemnly delivered and publicly sworn to, like an oath to tell the
>> truth in Court, is simply not taken seriously. Notwithstanding the plain
>> language of specific grants and general restraints, notwithstanding a
>> careful compromise between the Hamiltonians who wanted all power to be in
>> the federal government and the Jeffersonians who wanted all power in the
>> States, and notwithstanding our inalienable rights from our Creator, the
>> federal government today simply recognizes no limits on its power.
>> But the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. We will have chaos if
>> those in whose hands we repose it for safekeeping intentionally violate it
>> with impunity. A government that violates its supreme law becomes arbitrary,
>> and arbitrary rule becomes authoritarian, and authoritarian rule will
>> trample our freedoms. Just six weeks into its four-year term, the Obama
>> administration and its allies in Congress, just like the Bush administration
>> and its allies, have acted like they never heard of the Constitution. They
>> have attempted to control salaries of private banks, change the terms of
>> private mortgages, enter the marketplace by nationalizing banks and the
>> world’s largest insurer, and investing taxpayer dollars in companies whose
>> products consumers reject and investors eschew. This is theft of liberty and
>> theft of taxpayer property.
>> Is freedom a reality or a myth? Are the rights guaranteed in the
>> Constitution real or just a pretense? Isn’t the whole purpose of government
>> in a free society to uphold rights rather than interfere with them? If the
>> answers to these questions are no longer obvious, it is because we have a
>> central government whose only self-acknowledged limitation is whatever it
>> can get away with.http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano5.html
>>
> >
>
>
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