Rights

We, us Americans, are fascinated with this concept of rights.  Perhaps it all began when the founders submitted their draft constitution to the 13 colonial and now state legislators for ratification.  The pushback was – what about our rights?

From whence came, the “bill of rights.”  10 amendments added to the new constitution just to get the needed 2/3rds (9 states) of the legislators to ratify all the other mumbo jumbo about checks and balances, federalism and separations of power.  We, us Americans, just love our rights.

Since then, the federal government set up by the ratified constitution has done nothing but peel back the 10 amendments providing us our “rights.”  Well that’s almost true in and of itself but something else has developed more recently – in the last 50 years.  And it seems to have all begun with the civil rights movement or whatever you may call it.

In 1964 black Americans got their very own legislation to confirm their rights – actually it was just federally enforceable law to implement a variety of equitable treatments such as openness in education, public access, voting, employment and other basic elements of societal behavior.   These so-called civil rights laws had two accompanying enforcement provisions that previously did  not exist.

1.    Penalties for those who could prove violations, and

2.    Federal bureaucracies to assist, even promote, compliance

We were now on the road to a very different form of separation of powers, checks and balances and federalism.  Rights trumped those concepts.

It didn’t take long for others to see the light – the light to federally enforced rights.  And lo and behold, the gates opened up.  We chose not to document the order because now it seems to be meaningless.  Here are just a few of the rights now permanently embedded in enforceable federal law:

·         Employee rights

·         Handicapped/disability rights

·         Health care access rights

·         Animal rights

·         Patient rights

·         Unionization rights

·         Immigrant rights

·         Education rights

·         Legal defense rights

·         Crime victim rights

·         Voting rights

·         Gay and lesbian rights

·         Student rights

So the bill of rights, those 10 amendments that were designed to keep government away from the people; those 10 that were solely designed to provide comfort to those asked to approve the new constitution by assuring them that government could not and would not ever enter the everyday comings and goings of law abiding citizens have now evolved into (here we are guessing) 10,000+ pages of laws and rules and bureaucrat gobbledy gook all designed to introduce a federal government oversight into our everyday life.

It’s almost funny to realize what we have done; to ourselves.  But we notice one thing is missing in all this rush to legislate rights.  One right has been ignored.  Do you know what it is?