Posted on 06/08/2012 1:21:30 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
They delegated them to the general government, and to our state governments, via our constitutions.
All of which constitutions pay heed to the fact that our rights to life, liberty and property are inherent, not granted by government, and that the purpose of government is to secure those rights.
It's to amend the Constitution.
But not to amend the natural law.
If you try to amend the natural law by amending the Constitution all you could possibly accomplish is to make the Constitution into a lawless document, and thereby destroy the rule of law.
The US Constution and many State constitutions originally allowed the practice of slavery, and the constitution of the State of California does not and never has acknowleged the right to keep and bear arms.
People, and the constitutions they wrote and ratified are imperfect. We knew this going in - that's why we included the process of amendment.
Why has the United States government never explicitly declared abortion to be illegal?
"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested than in the protection of every individual's private rights.""Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
-- William Blackstone
Doesn't matter.
-- The Ninth Amendment"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Why has the United States government never explicitly declared killing internet posters who call themselves "tacticalogic" illegal?
Does "tacticalogic" nonetheless possess a God-given, unalienable right to live, as long as he isn't charged, tried and convicted of a capital offense?
Is "tacticalogic" intrinsically part of the language that is inclusive of all persons that we find in the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments?
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.""No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
It does if you're submitting that what you're intending is within the original intent of the Constitution. It means that we have to believe they intended to ban the practice of abortion, and then simply forgot to do it.
I think what you mean to say is that original intent doesn't matter.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to ... secure the Blessings of Liberty to ... Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
You haven't shown any evidence whatsoever that the framers, either of the original Constitution, or any of its amendments, intended to slaughter more than fifty million persons under the color of "law."
If the only thing you will consider is text then you're a textualist, not an originalist.
You can’t possibly discern intent without text, since you can’t speak directly with the framers, and no recording devices existed when our original Constitution, or the Fourteenth Amendment, were framed.
And you can’t legitimately argue from silence, especially when it comes to the equal protection of the supreme God-given, unalienable right of the people.
Read the Ninth Amendment again.
Their own actions - how they implemented the law after it was proposed, debated, and ratified can tell you what their intent was. This is what you say "Doesn't matter".
The only thing you will accept as being of any consequence is the text. No other evidence is acceptable to you. If the only thing that matters to you is the text, then you are a textualist.
Well, in the case of life, the text happens to be in perfect accord with the self-evident truths of the natural law, which precede and supersede all humanly-crafted laws, constitutions, or government.
And you have offered no proof that they intended to exclude some persons from protection, even though the text they wrote and drove through the amendment process makes absolutely no exceptions for any class of human persons.
There is no definitive proof of intent, only evidence. I have shown you the evidence that they considered personhood to be recognized at birth, not at conception. You offer no contradictory evidence of intent, but simply declare that the evidence that doesn't agree with you "Doesn't matter".
That's not something someone honestly wishing to determine original intent would do.
Actually, you didn't. You showed only that they only count born persons in the census. I'm surprised that you can't make the necessary distinction between counting someone, for the purposes of political representation, and killing them.
And I'm not surprised that you won't make the necessary distinction between the federal government leaving the decision to the States and killing them outright.
I also showed that they count a person's age from birth, not conception. How long has a twenty-five year old person been a person?
Pro-choice, in principle, and effect.
The abrogation of the republic's charter.
Then by your account, it was abrogated from the day it was ratified.
Under your rubric, other than the supreme right, the right to live, can you name another God-given, unalienable right, enumerated or unenumerated, that the States can alienate if they want to?
I cannot name any right it is beyond their capacity to attempt to alienate. Whether they are successful or not is up to the People.
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