Life, liberty, property. - Some of these, -- our inalienable rights, -- are enumerated in the BOR's. Most are not, as the 9th makes clear. I am not confused on this issue at all. You are, and its becoming quite apparent.
The Bill of Rights was adopted to make sure the Federal Government did not transgress certain parameters. It is in the form of prohibitions on the exercise of Federal power, except when you get to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Exceptions only you see, I'm afraid. Never heard that exact 'penumbra' before.
(Congress "shall make no law," didn't mean that the States couldn't. And in fact they did until the Warren Court--with one of the Founders of the ACLU, dishonorably participating--remade American Constitutional law on the subject of "religious freedom.")
Granted, the USSC makes unconstitutonal decisions. Repeating this fact to me doesn't make your case that our BOR's is 'busy body' bull.
The 14th Amendment was not adopted for any other purpose but to punish the South and enable Carpetbag and Scalawag rule in the former Confederate States. (It disenfranchises their old leadership, and makes citizenship in a State dependent upon geographic birth alone and/or Federal citizenship. That is a radical idea. (See Immigration & The American Future, for a discussion of the nationality question.)
You are convinced the 14th is 'evil'. Fine. Dream on.
On the subject of inalienable rights, I would agree with you that the right to have arms is such a right. You do not need the Fourteenth Amendment to make the argument that a Californian should have the right to protect himself. I am hardly a foe of you on that issue. Just don't throw out the baby with the bathwater--i.e. the concept of limited Federal power, in order to vindicate a natural right of man.
Never have, never will.
You however, seem to see portions of our constitution as your enemy. In that it is you that has 'abandoned the baby' -- and become my foe.
I pledged to protect & defend back in '55, and meant it.
You are simply misconstruing the function of the Amendments. Consider, if you think that the Federal Government was intended to Police the States, why you had an 11th Amendment, soon after the Bill of Rights, which specifically denied the Federal Courts the right to even entertain suits by citizens of other States against any of the States?
Whereas Congress was given specific powers to deal with the intended functions; before the 14th Amendment, Congress was not given any power to enforce what you claim was intended. The Document was much more precisely constructed than your interpretations would imply. You are simply taking ideas out of their proper context.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site