Monday 2 September 2019

On Setting Things To Rights...

…Or Letting Them Go, 
           And Just
         Moving On

How many times have we heard, and do we hear, that ‘the Bill of Rights guarantees us our freedoms’?  But wait a minute: The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting” such-and-such freedoms.  That is to say, that the Bill of Rights is a statement of limitations on the federal government to not exceed its delegated powers - and even says, in the Tenth such amendment, as a form of summing-up of the constitutional situation: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  But hold on.  The 4th Amendment, for example, opens: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” etc.  Surely that was meant to apply to the States, too? not just to be an example of a limitation on the powers of the federal government??  And yet… the 5th Amendment, which opens with the same sort of general statement, “No person shall be held to answer for” etc. goes on to say: “…nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”  Now, where have we heard that expression before??  Ah yes: In the - subsequent - 14th Amendment, wherein it says, in part: “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without dues process of law…”  Implying - an honest observation - that up until that time, the several States could do that, because the earlier such stated prohibition only applied to the federal government.  Because the Bill of Rights was addressed to - and meant to be addressed to - the subject of limitations on the powers of the federal government….  

And not even to get, here, into the curious and allied matter that is called, by legal ‘experts,’  ‘incorporation,’ by which said legal beagles decided amongst themselves that all of the terms of the Bill of Rights were purportedly ‘incorporated’ into the 14th Amendment, as applying from the federal government to the States.  Although the 14th Amendment neither said, nor even implied, that ‘all the powers formerly reserved to the States or to the people shall now reside in the federal government’.  For it to have become the arbiter of all such questions.

And, if all that were not enough of a puzzlement, there is also the ‘little’ matter of the 14th Amendment apparently not having been ratified properly.  And as with some of the other Amendments…

It’s a good thing that we are about to move not just into a New Dispensation of Time, but a whole new realm/dimension of Being.  The U.S. Constitution was about to fall, as the rickety edifice that it has become, anyway.  

And in that regard, one final Question: Why bother with the likes of the ’nicety’ of an amendment to it - the 26th - lowering the voting age to eighteen, when ‘you’ have already decided that the eligibility terms for the office of the presidency don’t really require the occupant to be a ‘natural born’ citizen, that just any kind of citizen will suffice for that office??  Are we about to say, 'Hey, 16-year-olds should be able to vote, too.  Let’s just make it happen, in practice.  This is a democracy after all; right?’

Well, er, no.  Not right.

But then, why not.  When you are just playing a game with it all, anyway.

'It':

The rule of law.

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