Torture Can Be Used to Detain U.S. Enemies

But the Declaration is not the Constitution. It is not useful for the understanding of the Constitution. <>P

Agreed. The Consitution is perfectly clear on its face. It's the INTERPRETING of the Constitution which requires some objective and enduring basis of "human rights" on which to weigh the questions, say, of:

slavery
"women's" rights
affirmative action
abortion
legal birth control
welfare
faked childporn as "free speech"
"separation" (not "establishment") of religion
etc.
Ignore the Declaration which roots man's equality in his being "created" equal at your own peril.

Unless the courts are restrained by the Constitution we would end up grateful for the "warmth" of the court's hand- as in Stalin's lesson.

What in the Constitution has managed to keep the courts from turning this nation into a welfare state where the feds mandate evolutionism and sex-ed in the schools, intervene to divine a "right" to be unpregnant at will, artificially manufacture children, predetermine the sex of children, use excess manufacture for state-funded science experiments or view porn as "Free Speech" and grant special privileges to pornographers -- if not religious -- where freedom to speak, to back political candidates or even appear at all in the Public Square are concerned?

You need to think some more on this.

=== Strict constructionalism does not require one to infer into the Constitution what wasn't intended.

How does one know what was intended unless one understands the MORAL basis on which a people claimed for themselves the right to self-governance as part of those rights -- endowed by the Creator -- to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?

"that's a bit strong... the Declaration can illuminate basic principals"

I can't think of any basic principles of the Constitution in it that aren't better "illuminated" somewhere else. I dare say neither can you.
So, again, I don't know what to make of these Constitutional "Declarationists".
It's most ironic that they cite it's "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness " phrase as a constitutional "basic principle".

That approaches the blackest of black humor.
Obviously that didn't become a constitutional principle in specific cases until amendments were passed- and, incidentally, a terrible war fought.
So let them hang whatever they would on that phrase onto the fourteenth amendment and drop the "declarationist" stuff.

Obviously that didn't become a constitutional principle in specific cases until amendments were passed- and, incidentally, a terrible war fought.

What of it? Absent the Declaration's glaring everyone in the face with its Self-Evident truths, there's really no reason to believe slavery would be overturned.
(Just as there is no reason to believe abortion will be overturned so long as "conservative" strict-Constitutionalists bar the door.)
And if you think the War Between the States had jack to do with slavery, think again. Surely the Emancipation Proclamation both puts to rest that silly notion as well as evidences the "do as I say, not as I do" profiled of the Federal behemoth which vanquished perhaps forever all real Americans in that War.

You put me in mind of another Keyes quote (from his appearance at our Treason Rally against Clinton ... the "Evil Clinton" ... whom Bush has tapped for the occasional state duty and Dole invited as premiere speaker at Dole's institute).

But, you know something my friends, if we keep going the way we're going, persisting in the path that we have persisted in … then we, the very country that more than once in this century has saved the world from the shadow of the worst evils will no longer be there in the 21st Century to save the world from the shadow of evil.

And worse than that … we won't save the world from that shadow because we will be casting it.

We don't get it, do we? We are either going to continue to be the country that holds before the world those ideas and standards of godly justice and liberty and decency for which so many of our patriots dies or we are going to turn into that power which plunges the world into a maelstrom of evil like nothing we have ever seen.

I frankly don't think that for American there will be a middle way. And that's the truth of it. And we are already at it. For we've had an administration that has aided and abetted and promoted and coerced the culture of death in every continent and toward every nation on the fact of the Earth already.

Using our capital and our money and our clout they have forced other nations to take the same ungodly stance toward innocent life in the womb that they take now.

So my friends, don't think that this is just some future that we are talking about. We are already far down the road toward the destruction of our republic, our conscience, our decency. The question isn't whether we will choose that road but whether we will turn back now before we pass the point of no return.
But I believe we never shall—until we have restored in ourselves that sense of who we are that corresponds to the truth of our heritage and our history.
But I know, as a black American standing before you, there are many folks who would spend their time beating up on American … "oh, there was slavery!" and so forth and so on. I've got news for all of the people who beat up on this country because there was slavery in America: there was slavery just everywhere in the world in the history of the earth at all times and places that you can think of.
And my friends, you know what's remarkable about this nation? What's remarkable about this nation is that it was begun on a principle that cast the harsh light of truth on the oppressive institution of slavery. It was born on principles that kept alive the shamed conscience of American until, through the efforts and sacrifice and blood of thousands and tens of thousands, that wickedness was rooted out and destroyed in this land by the efforts of the American conscience.
We are not a perfect people by any means and we haven't always avoided injustice but, because we have lived under the banner of those principles of truth and moral decency that point us back in the end not to our own perfection but to the perfection of God's will and God's law and God's truth … Because we live under that banner, we have--generation after generation—found within ourselves the resources of heart and courage and mind and conscience to fight the battle for what is right.
I look at the course of this century and, you know, twice … twice we have indeed been the keystone of the world's struggle against the worst kind of oppression: Once during World War II and once again, of course, in facing the focus of evil that was the Soviet Empire. And the remarkable thing is that, in the course of those struggles, we achieved a position of such power that (at one point after the Second World War) we could very well have dominated the earth … called the tune and made everybody dance because we had what all the conquerors in the world had dreamt of … we had the thunderbolts in our hands. The fact that we didn't use them but instead offered a hand of help and healing even to our former enemies ought to remind you of the kind of people we are! And, being that kind of people, living under that standard and banner of justice, how is it that we have lost confidence in our decency? How is it that we have lost confidence in ourselves?
I believe it is because, though we have fought the shadow of evil abroad, we live now under the shadow of evil in our consciences and in our hearts at home. And we will not again reassert as we must our claim to liberty and self-government until we have restored our moral allegiance to those principles of truth.

As I quoted him above ... you've got to state those moral principles which inform your heart and are the impetus for your forming a more perfect union or setting forth a framework for just self-government and recognition of ills amended over time.

You don't find that in the Constitution.

Only those of the "depends what your meaning of Is is" crowd look no further than the Constitution for the foundation of their Godgiven rights and those universal truths on which was based our claim to liberty and initial framework -- long deformed -- for a constitutional republic.

what the heck ...

And that's why I say again: Whether it comes to our national security and finding the courage to get to the bottom of that betrayal which has set us up for a new century of fear or whether it comes to dealing with the problems of crime and violence in our street … whether it comes to dealing with the challenges of claiming our rights and defending our rights … none of it will work, none of it will succeed, not one element of that agenda of true conservatism and American principle will prevail unless and until we have fought and won the battle to restore this nation's moral heart.
That's the reason why, everywhere I go, I challenge people to make that the top priority in their political thought. Not because I think these other things are unimportant, but because I think liberty is so important. And I know that liberty cannot survive and will not be restored until we have restored our reverence for the fundamental moral truths which alone shape our conscience, our character and assure our better destiny.
Now that, to me, is in the end a great message of hope. But that hope does not come because I trust in our strength and our wisdom. Because I'm not sure I do. If we are as strong and as wise and as wonderful as some people try to claim we are because of our technological advances and all this … then we wouldn't have spent the last 50-60 years destroying our liberties. We would have been wiser and we would have been stronger than that.