Our Freedoms - A Misnomer

   ...Sort Of

I keep hearing commentators on the Internet, from both the Right and the Left (the Left worrying these days about Pres. Trump seeming to be assuming dictatorial powers, and all of a sudden alert to the fact that that sword - of unruliness; of unlimited power, which BHO assumed, via E.O., when occupying that office - can cut both ways, not just when they are in positions of power to wield that sort of sword), invoking the Bill of Rights, and especially the First Amendment thereof, in these times of quarantine, and serious questions regarding the duration thereof.  A word to that subject.  A long overdue word, to all appearances.

We can assume that the individual states’ constitutions cover the same sorts of freedoms of The People as contained in the federal Bill of Rights, which, after all, simply bars the federal government from denying them.  (The Bill of Rights being a set of examples of the sorts of powers not being ceded to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution; not a definitive collection of them, and as clarified by the 9th and 10th Amendments, whereby it cannot be assumed that the federal government can do anything in that line that is not specified in the Bill, rather, it has no such powers outwith the Bill’s restrictions.  Is limited to the enumerated powers in the Constitution.)  But that would be merely an assumption, until the individual states’ constitutions clarify the matter.  This being a federal constitutional republic, built on the premise of the rule of law, as applied as well in the several States (which are guaranteed by the federal Constitution a republican form of government, cannot go off and do anything that they may wish to, in their individual form of government).(1)  

  

There is no rule of law without a coded set of laws.  Thus, to invoke ‘our First Amendment rights’ is a misnomer.  As with all the others.  They must be secured in each State’s constitution.

Now, I admit that the Second Amendment is ambiguous in this regard.  When it talks abut “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” it is confusing, seems to assume that each State’s constitution allows and secures that right.  But it is, at best, misleading in that regard.  The same with the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”  So, people have had a, er, ‘right’ to assume that the federal Bill of Rights applies to the States as well.  But consider: The Fifth Amendment, which opens with the words, “No person shall be” and includes the phrase, “…nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law” only applied to the federal government, as clarified by the latter phrase’s wording in the later, post-Civil War 14th Amendment: “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law…”  Thus, any State could do that up until then, depending on the citizens’ rights as protected - or not -  in their State’s constitution.(2)       

 I could go on.  (There are other Amendments that weren’t properly ratified, e.g.)  But you get my drift.  That it’s time for

a change.  And  - lo and behold - Time for  

the Change.  Into

The New.

All ashore who are going ashore into this New World.  Which is just, now, on the verge

of commencing.

Sort of like

a Commencement Ceremony.  

In, and to, a World that embodies not just Love.  (The Love of the Creator, not just innately, but for our Creator’s creation.)  But Truth.

Without which it cannot endure.  And it is

timeless, in its essence.

—

footnotes:

(1) Art. 4, Sect. 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of government:.  Oh - and what’s this?  That declaration goes on: “…and shall protect each of them against Invasion…”

   Methinks it is time, and past, for the federal government to go into, say, California, and clean it out of its invasion by illegal aliens.  A definition of the term that is easily understandable, and applicable.  Especially as such criminals - i.e., law-breakers - can be shown to be costing the American taxpayers a huge amount of money, in all of their welfare goodies.  Which is akin to robbery.  Another offense. 

   But to continue.

(2) That phrase in ‘the 14th,’ along with its continuing statement “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” has been taken to mean, by legalistic prestidigitators, a huge amount beyond both their wording and intent, in a ‘principle’ called incorporation,whereby such falsifiers have managed to convince weak-kneed justices that all of the terms of the Bill of Rights have been ‘incorporated,’ via ‘the 14th,’  into applying from the federal government to the States.

   The 14th does no such thing, auto say, in effect, ‘All the rights and powers formerly reserved to the States or to the people shall now reside in the federal government’.  if the authors and ratifiers of the 14th had wanted it to apply in that way - i.e.,across the board - they would have had it say so.  They did not.  Therefore it does not.

   Plus, there is some legitimate question whether the 14th was properly ratified anyway; which opens up another can of worms.  A good thing, therefore, that it is all - all - about to become moot.

   But to continue.