I want to be sure that I am understood in this context. I love my country and will die for it. I have never, however, been in the military or been elected to public office. There has never been an opportunity for me to take an oath to defend the Constitution. I am sure that I would.
The point I am trying to make is that the founders of our government developed a structure that prevented the government from intruding into the inalienable rights of the citizenry. Freedom of the individual was paramount in their minds and is demonstrated clearly in the documents they created.
This inalienable freedom, not granted by the Constitution but recognized as granted by God, has been sullied in recent decades by the imposition of a government sanctioned set of freedoms.
Abortion is a prime example. It denies the inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when that individual is utterly dependent upon another for its survival. This turns the Constitution on its head.
The recent case of Terry Schaivo is a similar case in which the life of the individual was sacrificed to the convenience of others.
The Constitution is perfectly clear in the matter of individual freedom. It is not in the provenance of the government to restrict individual freedom unless that individual has broken their social contract by acting in ways that are morally repugnant.
When we dismiss the social contract and ignore morality we are left with a "living constitution" that must define these terms for a benighted people.
The volume of statutes and caselaw which have accrued over the years is, IMHO, obscene. But that's what happens when man tries to define moral principles as law.
You claim that the Constitution is perfectly clear, -- that it is in the provenance of the government to restrict individual freedom when that individual has broken their social contract by acting in ways that are "morally repugnant".
Who gets to define what is morally repugnant? Congress? The USSC? A majority?
When we dismiss the social contract and ignore morality we are left with a "living constitution" that must define these terms for a benighted people.
Ignore morality? Whose version/vision of morality is ignored?
Aren't you also allowing some group of people to "define these terms"? And if so, where in the constitution is their power to so 'define morality' enumerated? 'Morality' is not constitutionally defined, and no person or group is empowered by the document to define it.
We have decided to allow groups of our peers [juries] to decide matters of guilt or innocence, using due process of law in the case at hand. But even juries are not allowed to define moral issues. Their decisions only apply to the criminal issues of the case presented. They do not make moral law.
No one in our constitutional system is empowered to make "moral law" for the rest of us, or to decree what is to be "morally repugnant".