New York Times Editorial: The Philosophy That Makes Amy Coney Barrett So Dangerous; Do we really want our rights to be determined by the understandings of centuries ago?

New York Times ^ | 10/22/2020 | Erwin Chemerinsky

[Lurker]

Yes, that’s what I want.

L

[100American]

Understand, I have a friend who I nicknamed the Spoon..

He would be at an event and roll up on a conversation and after a short time say something provocative i.e. stirring the pot and then roll away while the fire he started kept on

As you say not nefarious, all one need do is read and run what he posts and not register a reply

[Still Thinking]

Do we really want our rights to be determined by the understandings of centuries ago?

Uh, yeah! (duh) Centuries ago was when people smarter than you understood the principle of rights.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. -- Jonathan Swift

The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement. -- William Pitt (1763)

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. -- James Madison (1788)

[T.B. Yoits]

So, Erwin Chemerinsky of the NY Times asks, "Do we really want our rights to be determined by the understandings of centuries ago?"

There is no timeline on inalienable rights.