There are no rights granted by the Constitution. None. Nada. We casually speak of being granted our rights, but that is not the way the founders of our nation saw it.
They saw the rights we cherish as coming not from them or any human agency, but as coming from the Creator, and growing out of the nature of mankind. To them, "granting" people rights in the Constitution would have not only seemed as absurd as "granting" people brains or five fingers on each hand, but would have been an usurpation of the prerogatives of the Creator.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not grant a single right. They do list rights, and they say that Congress, which is established under the Constitution and controlled by it, cannot take away those rights. But nowhere is the word "grant" to be found. As important as it is to understand this concept, it is equally important to understand another. If the rights of mankind are not granted by a human agency, they cannot be taken away by a human agency.
Even if the Constitution is amended out of existence, even if the rights become hollow shells because the means of exercising them is denied, even if every copy of the Constitution is burned by government edict, those rights will still exist.
Freedom of the press is the right of the people to be informed of the approach of tyranny; the right to bear arms is nothing more than the right of the people to resist it. A tyrannical government can take away the means of exercising rights, even the basic right to vote, but it cannot take away the rights themselves, since it cannot take away what it has not given.
These are things to remember, things forgotten by most of our judiciary, none of whose hidebound minds can even begin to understand the lofty ideas of men like Jefferson and Madison.
They saw the rights we cherish as coming not from them or any human agency, but as coming from the Creator, and growing out of the nature of mankind. To them, "granting" people rights in the Constitution would have not only seemed as absurd as "granting" people brains or five fingers on each hand, but would have been an usurpation of the prerogatives of the Creator.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not grant a single right. They do list rights, and they say that Congress, which is established under the Constitution and controlled by it, cannot take away those rights. But nowhere is the word "grant" to be found. As important as it is to understand this concept, it is equally important to understand another. If the rights of mankind are not granted by a human agency, they cannot be taken away by a human agency.
Even if the Constitution is amended out of existence, even if the rights become hollow shells because the means of exercising them is denied, even if every copy of the Constitution is burned by government edict, those rights will still exist.
Freedom of the press is the right of the people to be informed of the approach of tyranny; the right to bear arms is nothing more than the right of the people to resist it. A tyrannical government can take away the means of exercising rights, even the basic right to vote, but it cannot take away the rights themselves, since it cannot take away what it has not given.
These are things to remember, things forgotten by most of our judiciary, none of whose hidebound minds can even begin to understand the lofty ideas of men like Jefferson and Madison.