Let’s get this straight: the Bill of Rights is not a list of rules that dictate what we as citizens are allowed to do.
I feel like I have to state that because a lot of people (particularly those on the left) are confused about the purpose of those first 10 amendments to the constitution. They aren’t a list of things WE can and can’t do, but rather things that the GOVERNMENT can and can’t do.
Take the first amendment for example:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
For the intellectually impaired, “shall make no law” is a direction for the government, not the governed.
You see this same type of rhetoric throughout the Bill of Rights, but for some reason, people are conflating God-given rights with the law. The law does not say “everyone needs a gun,” but rather allows people the ability to get them. Huffington Post ran an article with the headline: The Constitution Gives Gun Owners Greater Rights Than Women.
What in the actual f*** is this idiocy?
Yeah, I know, it’s HuffPo. The article was written by an Emily Peck who looks like she probably owns a lot of cats, so it’s not exactly a shock that something like this would get written. The problem is there are so many people who think this way.
These people don’t understand that the Bill of Rights are rules for the government, not the governed, and that’s a huge freaking deal.By their logic, the law would have to include one’s right to breathe air, or one’s right to consume food and water. These folks think that we need rules for literally every single situation. We don’t. That would take an insane amount of time to compose. I have my own theories as to why many in society insist on thinking this way (they are stupid sheep following the herd of other stupid sheep before them), but rather than shit on them, I am going to calmly explain why they are wrong.
This is a new type of argument from the left: total distraction from the issue at hand.
Rather than stick to the issue of gun-control, or even school safety, we have “journalists” (really, just bloggers) bringing women’s rights into the conversation… As though the two have anything to do with one another.
Exactly what rights do gun owners have that women don’t? Are there laws on the books that say “hey, we need to treat women different”? Historically, yes. Women didn’t have the right to vote, and this is brought up a lot, but they also NEVER participated in the draft… Golly, I don’t recall hearing about feminists marching for their right to die in war…
So, historically, women have been treated differently, but what about today? What laws in 2018 say that a woman should, nay, is REQUIRED, to be treated differently than a gun owner? There aren’t any… Which makes this particular article nothing more than utter garbage. My issue isn’t with the writer or even HuffPo. I get that they pander to their audience for clicks… That’s how they make their money. Hell, I used to do it when I wrote super conservative articles for boomers. It’s all a game.
My issue, or really my question, is… do people really think like this? I mean, seriously… Do people just have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights? That definitely appears to be the case, as the title of the aforementioned article says the constitution GIVES rights when really it just lays them out and says what the government can and can’t do.
Here’s a quote taken from the article by Jessica Neuwirth, president of the ERA Coalition:
“On the moral plane, there’s a sense in which the Constitution sets forth our human rights and to not have the human rights of women in there is a gross omission.”
That’s a dangerous misconception. The constitution was written to set up the government. The tenth amendment states plainly that “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.” The constitution gives power to the government. It doesn’t lay out our rights, it tells the government what it can and can’t do. We are not the government.
I recognize I’m preaching to the choir, but it’s still worth discussing. There are tens of millions of people living here who have a fundamental misunderstanding of our country’s founding document. To make matters worse, they think it’s a debatable subject. All people have to do is actually read the damn thing. Until they realize that the constitution was written to tell the GOVERNMENT what it can and can’t do we will never be able to have an actual conversation.
And here I was led to believe liberals were the intellectual ones…
Garrett Vascil is the Associate Editor of RevengeOfTheCis.com. You can find him on Twitter by CLICKING HERE.
