How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights
I ctrl+f&#x27;d &quot;natural rights&quot; and came up with nothing, which is how I knew from the start this wasn&#x27;t a very good article on the subject.<p>Look, here is the thing that people have forgotten, or were never taught (due to a failing civics education system):<p>People have natural rights, independent of any government, and governments are formed among the people in order to protect those rights. <i>The government does not grant rights!</i> <i>It can not take them without due process!</i><p>This is the fundamental principle of what I consider real American exceptionalism, and why American government at least in principle is the most free system of government in existence. (despite it&#x27;s failings to live up those principles often) It&#x27;s why Christopher Hitchens became an American and called it &quot;the last revolution that stands a chance&quot;.<p>This was the original debate about the Bill of Rights in the first place. That by listing a few important rights the government would then think anything not listed would be allowed for the government to violate. Hence the &quot;right to wear a hat&quot; argument. That&#x27;s not how things work though, and that&#x27;s not what our government was founded on.<p>I&#x27;ll give you a good example. Locke calls the right to self defense the first natural right. I agree. The second amendment is about defense against a tyrannic government. You could take it away and I would still have a right to bear arms independent of the (theoretically) absent second amendment.<p>Both parties hate stating this sort of thing out loud though because what they both are is authoritarian. For the conservatives, it would undermine all kinds of their moves like the drug war (unconstitutional abuse of commerce clause, states rights), and the same can be said of the left. This is why I get tired of all the cries anytime someone sees through the bullshit and calls them both equally corrupt, which they are, and are immediately hit with logically fallacious half-retorts of &quot;whataboutism&quot; and other rebuttle du jours.<p>I swore an oath to the Constitution, and I stand on those principles even when they make me uncomfortable. I&#x27;ll give you another example. I always thought FDR&#x27;s New Deal was one of the best things ever, a brilliant move we should seek to emulate in the modern day. When I dug into it though, I have to admit I have seen enough evidence that many of the New Deal policies were unconstitutional that I have an entire reading list prepped just to dig into the matter. So you can see how for someone who really wants more wealth equality how difficult it is to potentially admit minimum wage just might be unconstiutional. At least I am meeting those hard questions head on though, instead of burying my head in the sand.