On the Freedoms We Can’t Have
The Constitution enshrined the Bill of Rights into the first ten Amendments as follows: Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition; Right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well-regulated militia; No quartering of soldiers; Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; Right to due process of law; freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy; Rights of accused persons, e.g., right to a speedy and public trial; Right of trial by jury in civil cases; Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments; Other rights of the people; and Powers reserved to the states. Later Amendments abolished slavery, protected against state infringements, had post-Civil War abolishment of slavery and assured black voting rights, gave women the right to vote and lowered the voting age to 18.

Here are some claims of freedoms and rights you will be hard pressed to find in the above. #1.The right to infect others. #2. The right to threaten, intimidate, stalk and kill people you don’t agree with. #3.The right to deny selected groups of citizens the ability to vote. #4.The right to collect most of the nation’s assets into the hands of less than 10% of the citizenry. #5.The right to deny workers the practical ability to challenge their employers. #6.The right to demand people must work. #7.The right to require women to bear children. #8.The right to ban the teaching of historical facts that you don’t like. #9.The right to continue to destroy the planet’s ability to sustain human life. #10.The right to lie with impunity. #11. The “catchall” right to do any damn thing you like. This list is growing daily.

You might notice that our actual freedom’s and rights don’t mesh very well with the newly-minted ones. Our Constitution and Amendments were designed to protect the individual citizen from the excesses of our government and protect from the excesses we might visit upon each other. The “new” asserted freedoms and rights are the exact opposite, although their proponents loudly insist they protect “individual” liberty. We are challenging the idea that an individual’s “rights” can not infringe on anothers. That’s a pretty basic fissure in our national consensus about citizenship.

We seem to believe that we can have unlimited personal rights without any responsibility to others, or consequences. That’s fine if you live in the middle of the desert and don’t interact with anyone else. It doesn’t work with 330 million people occupying 3.8 million square miles of property.

The result is that our social fabric is straining, ripping, tearing. Those who’s actual rights are being trampled, are increasingly mounting resistance to those whose demand for individual irresponsibility impacts them. That resistance is resulting in redoubled efforts to implement the “new freedom” agenda.

It’s a sophisticated effort to change the meaning of American freedom. Through a sustained and well-funded campaign, politicians have been elected who are sworn to redirect our laws, the courts have been filled with truly revisionist judges and the economy has been bent to assist in this reformulation of American ideals. The basic complaint is that our 200 years of defining American freedom and rights no longer serves us in today’s world. The answer, the new-rights-claimers insist, is to curtail the actual freedom of some, while vastly expanding the “freedom’s” of an every more select part of the citizenry. Since history shows this will destroy our nation, this is a drive for “freedoms” and “rights” we can’t have. Can’t have, if you believe a democracy is a better form of government than a fascist, authoritarian one.

ihg 11-14-2021
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