Posted on 12/02/2001 8:50:01 AM PST by H.Akston
Bob Barr just said on Sam and Cokie's show that the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution, and the Constitution covers "persons", not just citizens, and "the Bill of Rights applies to all persons on our soil."
It is up to Iraq to protect a visiting Iraqi-citizen's natural rights. Iraq may choose to do this with an international agreement, which we should hold our govt. to, if it makes such an agreement. But when a non-citizen here can be deported, he has no liberty, much less rights under the Bill of Rights, here in the US. Before we deport him, we can bug his apartment without a warrant, without worrying about any rights he might try to claim under the BoR. If that bothers him or his country, he should leave, or they should conquer us, if they can.
A visiting Iraqi citizen has an inferior claim to the protections of the Bill of Rights. That's all I'm saying.
No radical extensions of protections should be provided to just any lowlife, just because he happens to be inside US borders.
Similarly, I don't expect my natural rights to be protected by foreign countries I may be visiting. I might like them to, but they owe me nothing, unless their Constitution or laws say they owe me something.
Our Constitution was written for the posterity of the people who are OF the United States, not non-citizens who are visiting.
I don't know what else can be said. It sure seems to me that you believe that all that nonsense about natural law that pervades the Enlightenment--all that hogwash about men being "endowed by their Creator" should be flushed down the toilet to be replaced by the more profound and metaphysically sound notion of rights by citizenship.
As a side note, the so-called "right to privacy" extrapolated from the 5th amendment is both an absurdity and impossibility. Privacy is a great thing and I really cherish it, but it can by no rational construct be construed to be a right. There can be no right to ensure a lack information in the minds of men. Therefore compiling information on people is NOT a violation of their rights. Violations of rights must entail actions or coercion against person or property. Illegal government actions are those the Constitution doesn't permit. I therefore don't see how compiling information on people is illegal either.
So, perhaps your real issue is in extending the privileges we usually expect to the category of rights in the case of aliens.
Not flushed down the toilet. Everyone has natural rights. We the Posterity of the Founders are privileged humans, who have established a government FOR US, that gives US exclusive protection of those pre-existing self evident natural rights. Natural Rights of foreigners need not necessarily be protected by my government.
Natural rights of foreigners should be protected by THEIR country's government. No free lawyers should be provided US enemies who are over here trying to kill US. I don't know how much plainer the truth can be.
Everyone has natural rights. Not everyone should be able to harness the US Government to protect those natural rights - only people who are OF the United States deserve that protection. The Constitution and its protections were established for people OF the United States.
No free lawyers for non-citizens who hate us. Z. Moussoui has inferior claim on the resources of this country being used to protect his natural rights. He's darn lucky there are so many do-good bleeding hearts in this, my, not his, country. As a US citizen, I have superior claim to the resources of this country, when my natural rights need protection. He ought to be in Gitmo.
The Bill of Rights does not require money to be drawn from the US treasury for lawyers for non-citizens over here who are planning to kill us.
...and the freedom to violate the natural rights of noncitizens in our country?
Natural law, the reason it is called natural law, is an argument of how each individual human should behave towards other humans, no matter what country he is in, or what planet he is on.
There are very few resources needed to indiscriminately protect the rights of all innocent humans within our borders. It does not raise the cost of national defense, and those who would commit crimes against noncitizens should be behind bars anyway.
The real "expense" comes from granting entitlements to noncitizens that even citizens don't have a (moral) right to.
It is to agree with the fallacy that God only grants inalienable rights to native-born Americans, while the rest of the world are subjects, serfs and slaves, by birth.
If this were not the case, the drafters of the Bill of Rights would have not used the word 'person' if they intended that section to apply only to 'citizens'. Legislatures are presumed to mean what they say and the fact that both 'citizen' and 'person' are used in the Bill of Rights must be interpreted to mean that the Congress intentionally used two different words to convey different levels of protection for the rights of 'citizens' than for 'persons in general'.
That says it all, unfortunately most don't understand.
Frenchman Z. Moussoui's computer could have been searched, and we quite possibly could have gained information about the terrorist attack in time to prevent it, if people in this country were not so concerned with our enemy's fictitious "4th Amendment rights". The Constitution does not necessarily protect persons who are not "OF THE UNITED STATES". It says in the preamble who it was established for.
We're going to commit suicide, if we extend BoR protections to all "persons" who are not PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, blindly. After we're vaporized in a mushroom cloud, who's going to uphold the Bill of Rights? Or maybe you're counting on the mushroom cloud not to get you? Survival is priority one. Grant unto the foreign, visiting, terrorists with their illegal visas, the same rights they granted to the citizens in the WTC.
This means that Bush can send the FBI to search foreigners, such as Z. Moussoui, and his computer, without a warrant, as otherwise required by the 4th amendment.
Or would you rather just die at the hands of a Frenchman or a Tarabist because of some liberal bleeding heart judge's apprehension over 'probable cause'?
Our lives trump his foreign butt's right to not be searched.
It restricts it from doing certain things to people who are OF THE UNITED STATES.
The 4th Amendment does not cover Z. Moussoui, French waste-product, unextraordinaire.
The Constitution confers no rights on Candian or French citizens when they are in their own country. But some portions of the Constitution apply to everyone who is physically in the United States, whether or not a citizen.
Take, for example, the French citizen who comes here as a tourist and commits a crime. At his trial, he gets the rights specified inthe 5th Amendment (which says that "No person" shall be deprived of certain rights) and the 6th Amendment (which specifies the rights of "the accused" in "all criminal prosecutions.")
The people who wrote the Constitution sometimes used the word "citizen" and sometimes the word "person"; they knew what they were doing.
Slaves were not citizens, but they were "of the United States". They were Persons held to a term of labor or service - deprived of liberty under due process of law. Negro slavery was lawful, but slaves were not considered citizens. This use of the term "person(s)" in the Constitution, instead of "citizens", was primarily the Founders' attempt to be inclusive of all people of the United States. They hoped to see a peaceful end to slavery, and give it as little endorsement in the Constitution as possible without jeopardizing ratification. Slaves had been refered to implicitly as "persons" in the proposed Constitution, and when the Bill of Rights later was penned, that convention was carried through.
You forget there was a time (i.e. prior to the Squalid 14th Amendment) when the population had large quantities of people in it who, though OF the United States, were not citizens. The Founders' use of the term "persons" was a commendable and visionary, if naively optimistic, attempt to inspire States to recognize the inherent rights of Negroes (persons), but it certainly was not to protect foreign enemies like ZM, despite the misguided, erroneous, smug, contemporary, politically correct interpretations that appeal to you.
God didn't say we couldn't search ZM's computer before the attacks. God gave us the unalienable rights to life (Thou shalt not Kill), liberty and property (Thou shalt not Steal), and we should do our best to secure them.
The subject is the Bill of Rights. The 4th Amendment right to not be searched on a whim may not be a divinely endowed right. I don't think it is. It doesn't kill him or steal from him, to violate it. Searching ZM's computer in violation of his fictitious 4th Amendment rights would have helped secure many other lives and lots of property in downtown Manhattan. Bob Barr made no exceptions for the 4th Amendment. He was therefore wrong.
The right to bear arms is one of the rights in the Bill of Rights, surely you agree.
It just goes to show you how, in the wrong hands, the Bill of rights has the potential to harm an innocent American. Barr's view that the entire Bill of Rights protects foreigners on our soil, is like a loaded gun being in the wrong hands. Giving the Constitution to someone who doesn't understand it, is like giving a loaded gun to Bob Barr.
If you're in a no passing zone, it doesn't matter who the driver of the car ahead of you is. You aren't allowed to pass. If you get pulled over, you can't say the no passing zone doesn't apply to drivers with out of state plates: it applies to you. Likewise, the government is not allowed to do certain things. Period. It doesn't matter who those things are done to. The Bill of Rights "applies" to the government.
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