{"id":41470,"date":"2014-01-28T08:07:20","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T14:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41470"},"modified":"2014-01-28T08:10:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T14:10:36","slug":"of-the-people-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41470","title":{"rendered":"Of The People"},"content":{"rendered":"

(SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is sitting on a chair at a book store, trying to figure out which Reagan biography to buy. \u00a0Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, a twenty-something graduate of Saint Olaf, and of Camp Wellstone, sits at the next chair. \u00a0She gradually notes BERG’s haul of books). \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0You should have no right to read that garbage.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Huh. \u00a0Well, fortunately, “rights” aren’t granted or denied by “the People”.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0 Yes they are.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Um, what?<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0 Read the Constitution. \u00a0It says “We the people”. \u00a0Rights come from The People.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Er, the founding fathers understood rights to come from The Creator.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0Hah! \u00a0You mean religion? \u00a0That’s what the founding fathers were fighting against. \u00a0That’s why we have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, administer the Oath of Office.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0That’s completely irrelevant.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0 Of course it is. \u00a0Our Constitution gives us freedom from\u00a0<\/em>religion.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0That’s the French constitution. Not ours.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK. \u00a0John Hancock was a lawyer, not a minister!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Also irrelevant. \u00a0The “creator” who endows our rights might be God, Allah, biology or random coincidence; it doesn’t establish a state view of what Our Creator is.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0It doesn’t matter! \u00a0Read the Constitution! \u00a0It starts with “We The People”. \u00a0 Rights come from people!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 \u00a0That’s exactly what the founding fathers fought\u00a0against<\/em> – the idea that rights come from people, rather than from being born a human being.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0So where does it say that in the Constitution?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 It doesn’t. \u00a0The idea that Freedom and Liberty are “inalienable” human rights – that humans are born with, not granted by government – comes from the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers and the other writings that set up the intellectual framework for the Constitution. \u00a0“We the People” were forming a goverment to, as the Preamble to the Constitution continues to say, “secure” the blessings of Liberty. \u00a0In other words, the freedoms are ours because we’re born human. \u00a0Our government’s job is to protect those liberties. \u00a0And ideally no more.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0Yeah, but the Constitution said nothing about slavery! \u00a0They were hypocrites!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Well, no – it was a huge argument in 1789, and it stayed a huge argument until 1865.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0Slavery was ended by the 13th Amendment. \u00a0Who enacted that Amendment? \u00a0The People!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Was slavery right\u00a0before\u00a0<\/em>The People enacted the 13th Amendment?<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0Of course not.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0The People said so?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 How about\u00a0before\u00a0<\/em>The People said so?<\/p>\n

Let’s try an experiment, here. \u00a0Let’s say that 51% of the people agree that the First Amendment is wrong, and there\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>no right to speak freely, and government has the right to censor speech. \u00a0Is that right?<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0Well…no.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Why? \u00a0If rights come “from The People”, then “The People” can take them away.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0But the founding fathers were wrong about slavery!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 That supports my point, not yours. \u00a0The Founding Fathers realized how very imperfect humans were. \u00a0Slavery would be a key example of this. \u00a0It took fourscore and seven years, and the bloodiest war in US history to fix the mistake. \u00a0Now – if rights come “from The People”, all it would take would be a repeal of the 13th Amendment to make slavery legal.<\/p>\n

And the fact is government\u00a0could\u00a0make all these rights illegal – but that would be illegitimate, and make the government illegitimate.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0So what about countries that don’t recognize rights like trial by jury?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 They have their own constitutions. \u00a0They are, however, wrong. \u00a0The idea that other countries are wrong about human rights is one of the reasons we had a Revolution, and started a country based on the ideal that human rights precede and are superior to government power.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0 Pfft. \u00a0Where does the Constitution say anything about how to run a just society?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 It doesn’t. \u00a0It enumerates the powers government has, the powers reserved to the states, and reserves all others to The People. \u00a0Or at least that’s what the Tenth Amendment said, before it got gutted.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0Hah! \u00a0So rights\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>get abridged by The People.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Yep. \u00a0And just like slavery, it’s illegitimate.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0You’re a Tenther!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Damn straight. \u00a0Anyway – if you believe that rights come from government, or even The People, then there is logically nothing that says we can’t revoke free speech, religion, press, assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, due process in criminal cases, and the whole shebang with a 51% vote.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0 Sure there is!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 What?<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0People want to be freeeeeeee!<\/p>\n

(BIRKENSTOCK gets up, and dances away up the aisle)<\/em><\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0 Wow.<\/p>\n

BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0(Yelling in the distance<\/em>) Why do you hate womyn?<\/p>\n

(And SCENE<\/em>)<\/p>\n

(Note – for those of you who think I try to make my antagonists in these little dramatizations sound “off”? \u00a0This conversations is a virtual word-for-word recreation of a conversation I had on Twitter with a DFL operative. \u00a0There are liberals who actually believe this).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is sitting on a chair at a book store, trying to figure out which Reagan biography to buy. \u00a0Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, a twenty-something graduate of Saint Olaf, and of Camp Wellstone, sits at the next chair. \u00a0She gradually notes BERG’s haul of books). \u00a0 BIRKENSTOCK: \u00a0You should have no right to read that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-41470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41470"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41475,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41470\/revisions\/41475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}