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To: SampleMan

"You've concurred that not every action is a right, so list your criteria for an unenumerated right, and back that up with the Constitution please."

A RIGHT is anything you, as an individual, can do BY YOURSELF or with likeminded others who are capable of giving voluntary consent to whatever it is you are doing, with outside individuals having only the responsibility to leave you alone to exercise that right or perform that activity. Rights do not include activities which would require the INVOLUNTARY participation of others (such as rape or incest/child molestation or welfare or "free" medical care or similar things).

Premier among rights is the right to ownership of your own life, the right to own and control your life, your body and your justly-acquired property.

Society MAY hold that certain activities are not appropriate IN PUBLIC, and government may enforce that. However, what you do in private, consistent with what I stated earlier, is your own business, period.

I hold that the language of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments is sufficient to prove my thesis here.


264 posted on 10/27/2006 11:17:17 PM PDT by dcwusmc (The government is supposed to fit the Constitution, NOT the Constitution fit the government!)
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To: dcwusmc
Again, I should have said "uninfringable right" vice just "right". When corresponding in lengthy ongoing posts, I start assuming a level of understanding on the other's part that I shouldn't. That's not a slam, its a self-confession that I have yet to master this form of communication, as I have speech, because I continue to make assumptions that people will build their understanding of what I'm saying. As I had explained myself on rights multiple times, I assumed it was clear that with the term "right" I meant an "uninfringable right".

Let's look at drunk driving. Is it an uninfringable right? Some here have said "yes" in the past. They argue that being drunk while driving doesn't hurt anyone, only crashing into them does, and there are already laws against that. If this is how you look at "harm" then pot would be an uninfringable right. Some are attracted to this approach because it allows no judgment of harm until the egg is broken.

I don't concur with this, as I don't think the concept and an orderly society can coexist. It also assumes that the People are too stupid to recognize harm before it kills them. I believe that willful endangerment with a high probability of harm, is harm. Like juggling chainsaws over the heads of toddlers or building a nuclear reactor without safety backups.

I think the limit set by the People on drinking and driving, .08, is below my level of impairment, but I know it is above others. However, I accept it as Constitutional.

Do you believe that actions of willful endangerment can be restricted?

267 posted on 10/28/2006 4:42:32 AM PDT by SampleMan (Do not dispute the peacefulness of Islam, so as not to send Muslims into violent outrage.)
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