Rights

The subject of rights is one that has been hotly contested in recent years. In an effort to simplify matters the first concept that should be understood is that Constitutional rights work together and complement one another, they do not counteract and contradict- one’s freedom to exercise their right does not, nor must not, deny another person of their rights. Secondly, there has been a gross misunderstanding regarding the difference between a right and a choice. People have the ability to make numerous choices in their lives (an implied right of self-determinism), but just because one can make a choice doesn’t mean that the choice they have made is a right (as to be protected by law to be without infringement.) This is intuitive with the most grievous of choices that an individual may make, which certainly will not be protected by the law. The only right in such cases is the right of self-determinism, but not the right of the particular choice an individual may choose to make. Furthermore, there has been a complete avoidance in recent legal discussions on rights to address the fact that choices (far too often misidentified or redefined as rights) have consequences, and the consequences for those choices cannot be nullified by attempts to merely rename choices as rights.

Certain rights, though, were so decidedly important that the Constitution clearly articulated and identified those particular rights. The most notable include the free exercise of religion; freedom of speech, the press, to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government; the right to bear arms; security in one’s homes from unreasonable search and seizure; protections in judicial matters; that the people still retain all other rights (beyond those named) which clearly included life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (more commonly known as opportunity) that had been previously identified in the Declaration of Independence; and that those powers not delegated to the United States (federal government) were reserved to the States, or to the people. As the years passed, certain other rights were also articulated through the passage of additional amendments. One of particular importance is the 14^th amendment, and most specifically section 1. While the amendment has very clear language, it has been the subject of some of the most flagrant misinterpretation in the history of the Supreme Court, far exceeding the language of the text, and without any clear case to support the decisions of judicial activism that came from such loose and stretched readings.