Quote of the Day
You do not have rights you cannot defend. Rights are asserted, not granted.
Dr. John ⚡️@dj_doctor_john
Posted on X, August 15, 2024
The Bill of Rights is worded as guarantees, not as grants. But enforcing those guarantees is the tricky part.
I have also learned, the hard way, that unless you can defend a contract it is worthless.
They are essentially the same thing. The Bill of Rights is a contract. If you do not have the power to enforce it then any infringement is possible, or more realistically, a certainty. Keeping and bearing arms is our ultimate long-term enforcement tool of the Bill of Rights.
Yes.
And enforcement always comes down to enforcers.
Now how do we get law enforcement to give up on enforcing unlawful acts at this point?
The communists/elitists want to turn America tribal so it easier to lord over.
We’re going to have to get even more so.
We need to be the AT. American tribe.
And anyone that doesn’t like the way we stand up for ourselves and our human rights? Needs to find another place to live.
And that quickly.
And if we have to start running in packs to do that? So be it.
If we don’t, we will lose everything that is good, true, and beautiful.
Neil Smith described the Constitution as a “blueprint”, which is a pretty good analogy. As a computer guy I think of it as a specification, same sort of thing.
He also points out that the Bill of Rights isn’t a grant of rights, or a guarantee. It is a list of prohibitions, and it could be called the Bill of Prohibitions — it lists a number of things the government is forbidden to do.
This point of view actually matters, because it addresses strawman questions like “at what age does the 1st Amendment (or the 2nd) start to apply to Americans?” Neil’s answer is “your question is not valid. The Amendments don’t apply to you or me at all, they apply to politicians and bureaucrats and they list things those people are not allowed to do to us, to any of us.”
And yes, a list of things politicians aren’t allowed to do isn’t very helpful if there isn’t a way to enforce those prohibitions, with real consequences. The US Constitution is not very helpful here because it doesn’t specify any consequences (more precisely, it occasionally speaks of possible consequences but never of likely or guaranteed consequences). A few laws do offer consequences (Title 18 section 242 comes to mind) but the problem is that no ordinary civilian can bring action under that section, and no politician will go against his peers by doing so.
It could be worse. We could have a “constitution” like the Dutch one, which explicitly prohibits consequences for violating the pretended restrictions, feeble as they are, that it imposes. You can read section 120 in the English translation to see for yourself; it boggles the mind.
Most people HATE this fact but the ONLY Rights you have are the ones you
are willing to fight for, die for and most importantly….kill for.