Reply #20: Thank you. Pet Peeve of mine.

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If the govt gives you a "right" it isn't a right. Anything the govt can give it can later "ungive".

The founders believed we had certain inalienable rights. Everyone has them not just Americans. The founders today would say the citizens of China has a right of freedom of speech, and press, and religion. The tyrannical Chinese govt simply infringes upon those rights.

The Bill of Rights is was a promise to that first and every subsequent generations of Americans that the US govt would never infringe upon these (and other enumerated) rights. If the govt does then it has lost the legitimacy of rule and the founders had a solution for that too (it involved the second).