Too Many Bills Of Rights?
By John Longenecker (09/16/06)
There is only one Bill Of Rights. Everything else is a cloned error of nature. What’s a cloned error of nature? Well, it’s a natural mistake repeated and repeated, and a lot of Americans are making what you might call a natural mistake.
The Founding Fathers just don’t get enough ink. Our forefathers are pounded in this century nearly as much as in their time, poo-poo’d as obsolete, too young, insolent, unnecessary, over-reactive, their work product imitated if not challenged.
Yet the people who criticize them most live here, by choice, under the blessings of their forefathers’ endeavors and of their profound successes. Often, the critics imitate the forefathers’ finest product, the first ten amendments to the Constitution Of The United States. As a model, it is summoned by people seeking justice. Or compassion. Or cooperation. While ignoring the truth, wisdom and guidance of the progenitor of them all.
Are these sprouting Bills necessary in the workplace, the hospital or the campus? Can they be created, only to be a tool of political abuse under color of compassion and improvement?
Yes, yes they can. And with the force of law in some cases.
In 1975, Kalifornia Governor Jerry Brown supported and signed into law the Inmate Bill Of Rights, which was not about giving justice to inmates, but latitude in viewing pornography. Nice move, Jerry. That’s about the time when people were putting the K in Kalifornia.
Decency is a real problem in politics, isn’t it?
In 1982, Brown opposed the Victims’ Bill Of Rights as costly and confusing. [Search the Internet with Keyword Jerry Brown, Bill Of Rights for that source and more.]
Many states have a Psychiatric Patient Bill Of Rights.
There is a Bill Of Rights for kids.
Some college campuses have the Students’ Bill Of Rights.
More and more groups are demanding their own Bill Of Rights.
And this is at the heart of the complaint - too much departure from the original Rights as if they are not sufficient. Okay, John, how’s this a big deal?
It’s a big deal because the original Bill Of Rights is sufficient. The idea of introducing a Bill Of Rights to a group of persons might seem kindly at first, even bold, but it is separatist in its own way. Americans – decent Americans — don’t need to be prompted by a series of binding reminders to be compassionate or decent. I know that many of these Bills were written for clarification following years of practice which operated on science or rules more than patient contact or acknowledging the client. I understand fully that some persons in America may be forgotten. It was genuinely a colder system in business, in psychiatry, everywhere. There were and are decent, compassionate and genuinely talented practitioners, sure, but the whole of every system needed re-examination and clarification as a human endeavor. I know.
These Bills may strive to serve these Americans better, to facilitate hearing complaints and to make sure they are not forgotten or mistreated, but these formalized standards are certainly not rights, except the right to be treated like a human being. It is a misconstruing of what is a Right in this country, in that Rights are often confused with entitlement, courtesy, integrity and simply feeling for others – things which should already come from the profession.
If only it ended there, it might be harmless, but practices like this tend to mislead on the very concept of what a Right is.
Something new has been added which waters down the original Document and original intent, and that is seeing rights that aren’t there and / or extending rights to non-citizens.
Rights in America are things to be protected by government, and protected by advocates of principals, attorneys. Rights in original intent were meant to be enough to get one by, the rest being up to you. This is the part being dissolved. This is an American value based on our History being dissolved.
As a broader example, tort law shifted to a doctrine not of deciding on the basis of the merits of the interference complaint – where one’s individual rights were to be respected in the interest of justice – but shifted now to social engineering away from the concept of justice to a concept of social justice for groups to be assessed on the basis of who could best bear the brunt of the damages. This was a warped kind of Bill Of Rights for the disadvantaged, and opened the door to a great deal more injustices in nuisance suits and more. In effect, it weaponized tort law and it granted unjust clout.
As our Constitution places limits on government, so we must ourselves place limits in responsibility. I’m speaking, of course, about giving rights to terrorists, illegal aliens and others who make a joke of our sovereignty and administration of justice.
A few things need to be restated about the original Bill Of Rights if you’re going to be using it as a model for your industry, profession or political purpose.
1. Our Bill Of Rights was written for Americans, and for good citizens at that. Citizenship – good citizenship – is an important facet of personal responsibility, and this includes not passing out rights willy-nilly for political gain. It’s not good citizenship to work to hand out rights to those who have themselves demonstrate bad citizenship, merely because it feels good for you. [It’s almost a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, isn’t it? Your head tells you it’s wrong, but your feelings to surrender and cooperate seem irresistable.]
Make sense? Original intent? Stockholm Syndrome?
Handing out rights to terrorists, non-combatant or not, or handing out rights to aliens or handing out privilege masquerading as rights is an attack to dissolve the rights of the citizenry everywhere, and specifically not to share them properly. And on that subject of sharing, I’m afraid that they are not to be shared as some great sense of compassion and mercy: they are to be reserved only for the sovereign in America as an integral part of what defines our way of life. Any dissolution of that – irrespective of how it is stated or spun – is a subtle attack on our sovereignty by way of dissolving the social contract.
Is there a middle ground here? If there is, I am inclined to dissolve it. It’s one of those subjects on sovereignty not open to discussion. It’s one thing to extend courtesy and humanity to anyone who enters our country – as visitors or otherwise – and even Christian to visit those in prison, but when we surrender to feelings rather than good sense or cooperate with those who do, then we give away the nation for no worthwhile return. And we don’t get it back.
If you knew the price of such false justice or compassion, would you be able to stop?
I’m afraid that some against America do in fact know the price, and that they work for just that. They have weaponized the law, the concept of rights and the cooperation of the good-hearted to the detriment of the nation, and for their political gain.
2. The amendments are pretty much clear and not in need of tweaking. It is the people who are in need of adjustment after a look at how far we’ve left behind that values system over the last few generations.
You see the rights are quite clear, but they are fudged, parsed and totally misread for political advantage instead of to the interest of the country. In this, decency – or indecency in the form of bad faith politicking – plays a very important role in social engineering, driving the nation down.
Too many Bills Of Rights? Yup.
The rights you’re really looking for are already there in the original document, spelled out in other plain language, but clearly there. In many, many ways, friends, they are limited, limited by self-restraint. You can read it for yourself. It says that rights are accompanied by responsibility. And that good citizenship has the right to demand this of each of us.
And that Citizen is fairly defined, and that rights belong to citizens only. It’s all there. What you say you’re looking for ia already there. It’s limited, but there.
Additional Bills Of Rights may be well-intentioned, but they are not necessary, and like most things, can be abused and weaponized, as they are now in our dealings with enemies of America. They can be introduced as an emotional balm written to soothe, or they can find rights which do not exist, and give the flavor that they do, emboldening the enemy, summoning the good-heartedness of Americans to be used for their compassion.
I say stick to the original. It does many things for us, including defining what a right is, who has it and who doesn’t, and of who is a Citizen and who isn’t.
Why do you think Citizenship is sought so? Because it is precious.
Sorry, but you’re not a citizen until you’re a citizen. And if it means anything at all to you and to the rest of America, American Civil Rights belong only to the Citizen.
The rest may be decency, humanity and compassion, but it is not American rights.
There is a difference, and that difference is good for the country.
John Longenecker's Second Edition of The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry will be in bookstores soon. His website is www.TransferOfWealth.net
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