"But I would not go into a court of law and claim that the Declaration of Independence grants me the right to do anything."
And that is EXACTLY the problem. The men who started this nation thought that these things would be so freaking obvious that the dimmest person would be able to grasp the concepts laid out. They didn't even bother saying that the citizens had the right to their own life, they thought it to be THAT obvious. Some even fought against the Bill of Rights, fearing that they would be considered an enumeration, a list, of rights, and it turns out that they were both right and wrong. I shudder to think of how far we would have fallen if the BoR wasn't there. (The right to life doesn't show up until the 14th Amendment's ratification in 1868, by the way). They never concieved that a person would be stripped of their life by judicial fiat after they had set the nation upon its course.
If you read the history of that time, you will find that the Founders literally hanged judges for this very reason. Judges that had 'followed the law' to the letter.
The Constitution hasn't lost its way, we have. Legions of lawyers and judges have beseiged it, and twisted its words, read certain portions out of it by their 'legal opinions', and generally made mockery of it.
Yeah, I'm a true believer in the meaning of the Founders words. Too bad I seem to be in a minority, now.
But again, the problem is that my pursuit of happiness is not necessarily yours. What if what makes you happy, deprives me of my pursuit of happiness?
Did the framers believe the First Amendment would take away prayer from the schools, or allow state secrets to be published, Satanism allowed as religion.
Did they anticipate the types of weapons we current are able to produce when they wrote the second?
No
Did they think the Fifth Amendment would allow crimes to go unpunished because people wouldn't testify?
Probably not.
They also thought public scurgings and whippings were not "cruel and unusual."
And are those people who seemingly disagree with you truly disbelievers?
I found this quote from Jeb I found quite interesting:
"We never said that unilaterally we would do something that's against the court," he said. "I've been asked to do it by a lot of people – a lot of the advice I'm getting over the Internet and over television and the like. I know that there were lots of rumors of things that aren't accurate. I have a duty to uphold the law and I have been very consistent about that. It seemed like a big story that never was confirmed because it wasn't true. If we had that ability to do it, if there wasn't an injunction, we would do it right now. We would stabilize her by giving her hydration. We couldn't put a feeding tube in. There was already a court order in place. The opportunity we had was appealing his decision."
If you swear an oath to God to uphold a set of rules, the Constitution, are you not moral obligated to uphold those laws even if you disagree with them?
I'm not sure I quite agree with this assesment. The best evidence I can offer is the early voting rules. No women, and only landowners, those of sufficient means to have a stake in what a legislature was up to. I would not be at all upset to see the same rules re-applied. It would eliminate part of the problem.
Too many voters spoil the soup, and too many voters with an agenda foreign to the cause of liberty, can result in the ultimate destruction of what the founding fathers and mothers, sacrificed their lives and fortunes for, as they pledged to each other their sacred honor. Your paragraph 4 is unarguable, and well stated.