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  • Writer's pictureDrunk Rothbard

Hey Joe: Amendments Aren’t Absolutes, But Rights Are

Two weeks ago, the buffoon some call president had a little something to say about the right to bear arms.


"No amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. You can’t yell 'fire' in a crowded movie theater — recall a freedom of speech. From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning that the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons."

Biden, a.k.a. “Sleepy Joe,” said this Thursday, April 8 after signing a series of executive orders on gun control. As he babbled about the absence of absolutes, what he failed to realize was that his very understanding of the relationship between the Constitution and rights was absolutely wrong.


I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. What do you expect from a Statist? After all, we are talking about the king of incarceration himself.


We can’t expect him to ever realize his own mistake. Old Joe has too many pills to swallow already. He simply doesn’t have room in his pill organizer for a red pill, no matter how badly he needs one.


What we can do is try to understand his misconception. This is an utter necessity. Unfortunately, so many people think the same way he does, either because they just haven’t thought about it or because they’re willfully ignorant.



Amendments are Actually NOT Absolute


Joe is right in some respects. I’ll give it to him there. Amendments may not be absolute. By amendments, Joe is referring to those, of course, in the U.S. Constitution. This is the same Constitution, however, that “grants” power to the federal government, specifically the power to interpret its own “constitutionality.”


No matter how many “checks and balances” it presumes to have in place, and no matter the intentions of the founding fathers, this is the Constitution that ultimately fell short. As I briefly mentioned last week, the United States was the grand experiment in limited government, an experiment that, 230 plus years later, resulted horribly in an intrusive centralized empire.


Even with the addition of a Bill of Rights that recognized particular liberties such as the freedom of speech and the right to bear arms, the Constitution has not nearly been enough to protect these liberties from the ever-expanding central state.


We are supposed to have certain rights protected, but even the rights I just mentioned are constantly being violated by the very people sworn to protect them. In the face of the 4th Amendment, for example, which was intended to protect against “unreasonable search and seizure,” we still have the PATRIOT Act and related legislation that permits warrantless surveillance.


And against the 10th Amendment, which proclaims “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” states’ rights are constantly disregarded.


For instance, the powers to regulate education, the environment and drugs are not mentioned or in any way alluded to in the Constitution. Yet, we still have the Department of Education (DoED), the EPA and the DEA, which all have armed federal agents. (YES, INCLUDING THE DOED!)


There are countless other obvious examples of how the Supreme Court and the rest of their Statist counterparts have sold out individual liberties over the years. I don’t need to point them all out.


And all this being said, I hope that we don’t treat amendments, other articles of the Constitution and especially the Supreme Court’s interpretations of them, as absolutes. That would undoubtedly make our situation even worse.


For instance, the Supremacy Clause in Article VI, is supposed to establish federal precedent over state laws. If I had to choose, I'd personally rather have the opposite.


And the only way I want absolutism involved in the 16th Amendment (which created the federal income tax) is if it’s absolutely eliminated.


Rights ARE Natural


So, if amendments are not absolute, where was Joe wrong?


Joe doesn’t realize that just because the amendments aren’t absolute doesn’t mean the rights they’re designed to protect aren’t as well.


We can’t forget that what Joe is arguing here – because amendments are not absolute, he is permitted to choose for us what means to defend ourselves we can and cannot possess – relies on the assumption that our rights are just whatever the State says they are.


That’s simply just not true.


Rights are not for people, nor the State, to pick and choose. They are not constructs of society or matters of opinion. Rather, rights are preexisting, objective and universal.


As a Christian, I would say that they are granted by God. Agnostics and atheists might say they are products of nature. But that’s not what I’m fighting here. Both camps can agree that rights are not something just “made up” by people.


This idea of rights as an element of natural law is directly contradictory to any idea of rights as “positive” law, i.e., a matter of statute decided by some sort of legislature.


The positive law theorist would contend that rights are exactly what the State wants them to be. That would mean that it’s pretty much the politically connected who get to decide the liberties of those who are not.


Natural rights, on the other hand, are unchanging. They don’t depend on popular or elitist opinion. Even if every single person in the world came together to oppose them, they would still exist. At that point, they probably wouldn’t be acknowledged, but it would not change the fact that not acknowledging them would be wholly irrational and indisputably evil.


And America, believe it or not, was founded on natural rights! In the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence, the very document that officially established our formal secession from the British Empire in 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote:


“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”


“Unalienable,” which means the same thing as “inalienable,” means “unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor.” These rights were said to have been “endowed by” a “Creator” as opposed to made up by our own will.


Natural Rights ARE Property Rights


But how can we understand what natural rights are, if we haven’t even talked about what a “right” actually is? As much as rights are talked about today, it’s clear that most people don’t understand them.


A “right,” put simply, is a claim to something. Some people argue that we have a right to healthcare, to education and to a job. But, really, the only thing we truly have a “right” to is ourselves, and all other rights are only a factor of that.


This principle of self-ownership contends that my mind, my body and, consequently, my labor are all rightfully my own property. No one else owns me, but me. It is the very opposite of slavery.


Our ownership also extends into what we use our labor to create. And we are free to exchange what we own with other people.


I don’t want to go into laying out a complete theory of property rights here, but I imagine that property rights will most definitely be a topic for some, if not many, future blogs. It’s the very keystone of liberty and if it’s something that interests you, and you can’t wait for me to write about it, I would check out Murray Rothbard’s “The Ethics of Liberty.” You can get a free audiobook here.


What’s important to recognize here is that human rights are property rights. They are entitlements to possess our own selves. We have these rights and possess our own selves and the products of our own labor. If we didn’t have these rights, we’d be possessions of someone else. In other words, we can either be free individuals, or we can be slaves.


When one contends that we have a “right” to education, healthcare or employment, they are, in turn, arguing that someone, when deprived of these things, has the authority to use force and fraud to compel another to provide them.


In other words, they are arguing that one rightfully owns someone else as much as is necessary to be taught, cared for and employed.


They could go about this in many ways. For instance, if you truly do have a right to education, you could point your guns at a teacher and demand that you be taught. Probably a more effective way to get your schooling, however, would be to point your guns at your neighbor, seize his wealth and use it to pay the teacher to teach you.


Of course, you might find it even more convenient to hire someone else to do your bidding for you, such as the State.


Hopefully it’s pretty evident to you that this is totally contradictory to self-ownership. Under self-ownership, you would never be allowed to use force or fraud to seize someone else’s property or compel someone else to do something, unless that person is (or is threatening to) do the same to you or some other person.


So, the only thing we have a right to, in reality, is to be left alone – to not be stolen from, killed, kidnapped, raped or enslaved. The only way we can have a right to what someone else owns is through a contract.


For example, if I give you ten dollars today for you to cut my grass tomorrow, once you take my ten dollars, I have a right to you cutting my grass. If you no longer wish to cut my grass, you owe me back my ten dollars, plus likely further compensation for my trouble.


There’s no conceivable way for you to be obligated to cut my grass if you never agreed to the deal. To say otherwise, would be a complete and utter denial of your right to self-ownership.


Property Rights ARE Absolute


Now that we’ve established that true rights are both natural and rooted purely in self-ownership and, consequently, private property, we can get into the major problem with Biden’s argument.


You either own your whole self, part of yourself or none of yourself. There is no fourth alternative. That being said, you are either not a slave, partially a slave or wholly a slave. I don’t know about you, but I would contend that slavery, to even the most minimal degree, is horribly evil. The right to self-ownership, then, must be absolute.


That’s not to say these amendments are absolute. Maybe they’re fallible due to the fact they were invented by men and are interpreted purely by the same organization they are designed to protect against. But that doesn't deny the fact that the rights they were designed to protect - those that were derived from private property rights - are immutable, objective and unchanging.


Biden, regardless of how important he or any other Statist thinks he is, does not get to decide how much of me is owned by other people or the State. That has already been decided, and the answer is none. I own myself. No part of me is a slave, and to treat me, or anyone else at that matter, like we are is a surely diabolic act.


What Biden argues here – his authority to forcibly compel me not to use my own money and labor to acquire the firearm of my choosing – is ultimately contradictory to the natural property rights that I am objectively entitled to.


Yes. Our supposed “right to free speech,” as his example explains, probably does not allow us to yell fire in a crowded theater when, in fact, there is no fire.


But, understood under the context of private property, we have “free speech” because we have property rights. That “freedom” extends to our own property. I am certainly free to say whatever I want in my own house and on my own land, but I am also free to tell someone else to leave my house and land if they’re saying things I don’t like.


Unless the owner of a theater doesn’t give a rat’s ass about his business, it’s in his best interest to prevent people from not yelling fire, unless there actually is a fire. Or else, customers won’t feel as safe and satisfied with their experience, and his business will suffer.


If you’re on the theater owner’s property, you’re entitled to abide by the theater owner’s rules. If you refuse to do so, and continue to stay there, you’re trespassing.


This doesn’t take away from the absoluteness of the fundamental private property rights. Instead, it's a consequence of its absoluteness.


When applied to guns, I would not be entitled to use someone else’s guns without their permission. Nor would I be entitled to shoot somebody with my gun, unless they were violating my right to property (or someone else’s) – threatening to kill me, threatening my family, breaking into my home, etc.


But provided that I earned $800 and used that to buy a new gun, that gun is mine. I have a right to it. The State is not entitled to take it. No amount of fearmongering and pointing fingers at deranged lunatics can change that.


Of course, like I said, I don’t expect Joe to change his mind anytime soon. If he actually accepted property rights and their absoluteness, he’d not only have to turn against his anti-gun rhetoric. He’d also have to resign. I mean, he is the face of the State after all, which is founded purely in opposition to private property.

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