If The Right Doesn't Like The Right To Choose... They Should REPEAL The 9th Amendment

[eniwetok]

Last edited Wed Mar 22, 2017, 09:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Dems have been fools to let the Right's anti-Ninth arguments take root the past 40+ years. It seems to have started with Bork who tried a clever argument that we can't know what the Ninth means. Bork was rejected but Scalia used the same arguments from the bench.

The Framers believed rights were secure, at least for free persons, because government powers were DERIVED from the People... and the government wasn't given direct powers over any right not surrendered to create those powers. Madison even believed to enumerate some rights would place unenumerated rights at risk. He included what became the Ninth out of "greater caution"... but it seems even with the Ninth... social conservatives will always attack right they don't want others to have.

The GOP can't have it both ways pretending they actually believe we have a limited government of defined powers... then claim the government DOES have powers not in the Constitution to limit rights they don't want people to have... like privacy beyond the 4th Amendment such as the right to same sex marriage, birth control, the right to choose, whatever.

The Dems should INSIST that if this is what the GOP believes... they must either pass an amendment to give government the power to invade privacy... or repeal the Ninth Amendment. Otherwise, unenumerated or not... THESE RIGHTS MUST BE ASSUMED TO EXIST.

[DK504]

1. This is the very definition of what the Repukes have become.

Their hypocrisy truly knows no bounds. The Dems do need to start calling these criminals out and now.

[eniwetok]

2. adding injury to insult: corporate personhood!

The GOP wants to limit some personal rights... but they want expanded freedoms for corporations!

I'm not a fan of the Constitution because it's antidemocratic and makes a mockery of self-government... as the Trump presidency proves. But it revolves around the idea that people have natural rights and government only gets its power from a surrender of some rights. But otherwise THEY ARE ASSUMED TO EXIST.

Corporations do not exist in nature. They have no natural rights. They are CREATIONS of government. They should have no rights beyond what's necessary to perform their chartered functions.

[eniwetok]

3. Dems don't think strategically

Hell... in 35 years they STILL can't take on Starve The Beast even if it poses an existential threat to their signature safety net programs.

[eniwetok]

4. We Would Have Been Better Off If The 9th Was Written Like This:

From the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man.... (French 1789) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.

instead of...

Amendment 9
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.