Rights

This particular rant is a long time coming, but (IMHO) relevant.

There's a bunch of discussion today about rights, legisation of and about rights, and the granting of rights.

Let's understand one thing - rights aren't granted, they simply are.  Anything a government, organization or person grants to you is at best a privilege, subject to removal.  Rights preexist governments.

Rights cannot be legislated - if they could, they could be legislated away. If what you may do can be legislated away by your government, you are not a citizen, you're a subject whose very life exists at the whim of someone else.

The Constitution does not either create or legislate rights.  What it does is to recognize that rights exist, and they existed before its writing and acceptance.

Congress cannot grant you a right.  The President cannot grant you a right.  Not even the Constitution can grant you a right, although it can and does recognize rights that already exist.

Anything granted is at best a privilege - and they can be taken away.


Pay attention - this is important, because people who want to tell you what to do will try to convince you that they are creating new rights for you, and they're not - they're creating privileged groups - and theise groups can become non-privileged just as soon as they start to become uppity.