If you have been watching FOX News lately, you’re either a detractor or a supporter of that particular organization. If you’re a supporter, please read on. I hope this makes you think a bit more than you’re used to. If you’re an opponent, you’ve seen what any logical-minded person would see – a fallacious set of arguments concerning the United States Bill of Rights and how they ought to be applied to some, and how they ought not to be withheld from others.
Now, I’m no Constitutional Lawyer, nor am I an “American.” But we either live in a Global Village or we don’t. It can’t be “nothing but a family thing” when you don’t want to talk about it. I’m not going to turn a blind eye if a guy at Walmart is beating his kid just because it’s not my kid. I won’t turn a blind eye to you beating yours.
But that’s beside the point. What’s on point is that FOX and the pro-gun people defend the rights of gun owners while shitting on the rights of anybody who disagrees with them, and in so doing, they are treading on a very slippery slope. I feel like it’s my duty to point this out.
The Bill of rights, for those of you who don’t know, is a collection of Amendments to the United States Constitution which specifically addresses certain inalienable rights that all people possess.
All people. This is important. I’ve read the document several times. I have not seen a reference to “us guys” or “except for those guys” anywhere in the text. Also, having a smattering of knowledge of US history, I seem to recall that exclusionary practices of rights extended to certain groups of people was something the Founding Fathers were a little testy about. Something along to the lines of Separation of Powers and personal freedoms.
What is happening over at FOX is a culture of qualification – that certain rights are, in fact, alienable; that certain people don’t get those rights if honoring them is unpropitious.
Basically, they want to make the Bill of Rights the “Bill of Privileges.”
And, boy howdy, haven’t systems of privilege always served us well in the past?
Specifically, there is a push to suppress the following Amendments.
First Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition.
There is nothing more annoying than people who speak out against the things that we hold to be true. Namely, that all men should have been created white, rich, and Christian.
Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
Wire-tapping and spying on mosques? I vote yes! This is just common sense. As we all know, ALL Muslims are closet-terrorists, just waiting to blow something up – often themselves! We’d better listen in at their places of worship because that’s where most people talk about government overthrow and killing other people.
Fifth Amendment – due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain.
Miranda warnings are SO annoying! If you don’t tell people of the rights they already have, then maybe they’ll tell you stuff that you can later use to punish them. After all, when it comes to brown people, my policy is “guilty until you can’t prove your innocence.
Sixth Amendment – Trial by jury and rights of the accused; Confrontation Clause, speedy trial, public trial, right to counsel.
Let me sum this one up as: No, nope, nuh-uh, doubtful, and abso-fucking-lutely not. Locking people up indefinitely for the purposes of prolonged interrogation is HOW YOU GET RESULTS, people! If they get to know who is asking the questions, have a lawyer and “the Law” to hide behind, and have a transparent trial process, we are going to be spinning our wheels. It’s a completely un-American value, but so is terrorism! Look it up! It’s in the Bible!
Eighth Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.
Enhanced interrogation is both not torture and a lot like extra flavoring on chips. It’s delicious, it doesn’t hurt anybody, and it always makes things better. AND … it’s also torture. Win-win.
Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
Dress for the job you want, not the job you got. If you don’t want to be TREATED like a suspect, then stop DRESSING like one. I couldn’t agree more with Ann Coulter’s position of putting people in jail for the clothing they wear because other people who have worn that same clothing have been bad guys in the past. Kind of like how we now lock up everybody who has a moustache because of Hitler and Stalin. This really is a no-brainer.
Now we get to the one that brings it all together, and I’m not going to give you my two cents on gun control – that’s not what this is about. But I want you to consider the folly of insisting on one while revoking ANY of the others.
Second Amendment – Militia (United States), Sovereign state, Right to keep and bear arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You know, that “free State” that locks you up for your beliefs, the way you dress, spies on you at church and in your home, denies you due process, “enhances” you into cooperating with it, and imprisons you for no other reason than suspicion? THAT free State? We are going to need our guns when our self-fulfilling prophecy comes true!
Right?
Rights are rights. They are not allowances that parents give to children who behave themselves. This isn’t an American issue. This is a global one.
And not for nothing, but these rights apply to everyone, everywhere, being that “All men were created equal.” Being that the “Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”
The United States of America was built as a beacon of freedom. That beacon has shone on the rest of the world, giving it hope, making it brighter. And you seek to hide that light under a bushel in Cuba?
The more you squash down the rights you feel to be inconvenient, the more you damn the Great Experiment. The more you fight for your right to fight, the more you bring about its eventual necessity.
As Thomas Paine wrote, in Rights of Man:
Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few… They… consequently are instruments of injustice … The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a contract with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
That which is yours cannot be taken away by another. This is the basis for the formation of your More Perfect Union – that all people are born with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
These are your own words and they are so good.
Do not seek to squander them.
