Not a Buffet

Monday 31 December 2012 - Filed under Uncategorized

The Bill of Rights is not a buffet from which one can pick and choose what they like and leave what they don’t.

A few days ago CNN host Piers Morgan got into it with the head of a gun-rights group. Now more than 87,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that Morgan, who is British, be deported for his “hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution.” But the First Amendment does not exempt British nationals, which means those signing the petition are also committing a hostile attack against the Constitution. The irony is probably lost on them.

Of course gun rights conservatives aren’t the only ones guilty of rationalizing reasons to disqualify or minimize the importance of other rights.

Gun opponents, of course, do precisely the opposite. Reciting a common talking point among advocates of gun control, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof recently wrote: “There’s a reasonable argument that the Second Amendment confers an individual right—to bear a musket. Beyond that, it’s more complicated.” A great many members of the press agree with him. But none of them would say: While the First Amendment arguably protects the right to a goose-feather quill, the Founding Fathers never imagined letting people have email, video games, or cable TV shows.

Liberals say many things about Second Amendment rights that they would not say about other rights. For instance: Nobody “needs” a semi-automatic rifle. True enough. But what other people need and do not need does not define what the government should and should not ban. Nobody needs Twitter, but it doesn’t follow that Congress may therefore outlaw tweeting. Liberals also point out, correctly, that no other nation has anything like the sort of gun rights – or gun mayhem—that America does. True also. But no other nation has an exclusionary rule, either. Anywhere else in the world, improperly obtained evidence will land you in the slammer. In the U.S., it will get you out. Uniqueness is not an indictment.

And of course we ought not forget that our politicians do the exact same thing. They claim a “gun problem” for which the only solution is to curb the right of access of law abiding Americans to guns, while crushing the 4th Amendment in new bills like FISA, or destroying all sense of due process with the killing of American citizens without trial.

If you’re not protecting all of our rights, you’re effectively protecting none of them.

2012-12-31  »  madlibertarianguy