The 9th Amendment to the Constitution for the united States of America is the one that is NEVER talked about in legal or political circles. It's the one [they] don't want you to think about.
It preserves ALL rights that ALREADY existed before the Constitution was created, with the only exception being those rights that were delegated to government by the Constitution.
The 2nd Amendment is about We the People fighting off enemies, foreign or domestic.
But the right to self-defense, gun ownership in general, and all the rest are in the 9th Amendment.
Remember: All of the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments) are to LIMIT THE POWERS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and NOT to "create" any new rights of the people.
Most people do not know there even is a preamble to the Bill of Rights, much less have ever read it. Here is the Preamble:
The conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.
Catch that? RESTRICTIVE.
The Bill of Rights are ALL restrictive, as to what the federal government is NOT permitted to do.
The 1st: Congress shall make NO law ...
The 2nd: ... shall NOT be infringed.
The 3rd: NO quartering of soldiers ...
The 4th: ... shall NOT be violated ... (btw: "unreasonable" search or seizure means without a judge's signed warrant)
The 5th: NO person shall be held/compelled/etc. ...
The 6th: The government SHALL provide several protections to anyone accused of a crime.
The 7th: Anyone involved in a civil case SHALL have certain rights preserved.
The 8th: Excessive bail shall NOT ...
The 9th Amendment says that ALL rights of the People, that ALREADY existed BEFORE the government was created, were STILL IN EFFECT AFTER that government was created. Here is the 9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Get it? RETAINED.
Originally, Madison wrote 17 amendements, mostly modeled after George Mason's work on the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He scaled that down to 12. He did not omit anything, but merely rearranged them so that some of them were consolidated from two or three into one. The 5th, for example, has several restrictions of the federal government included within one amendment, rather than having them each in their own separate amendments.
The 12 amendments were presented to the States, and 10 were approved. The other 2 had to do with the number of representatives in the House, based on population, and congressional salary increases not taking effect until after the next legislative session. Those 2 did not pass. However, the one on salaries was given new life more than 200 years later, and was ultimately ratified in 1992, to become the 27th Amendment.
The 9th Amendment is KEY. It preserved ALL rights that humans had before the government was created.
https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/billofr_.htm
As the Declaration of Independence stated (which was written just 13 years earlier), certain truths are SELF-EVIDENT. Namely, that we have rights that existed BEFORE the government existed, and for which the government shall never be permitted to violate (inalienable/unalienable). And ...
... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Government does not grant fundamental rights. Those rights existed before the government existed, and those rights were used to CREATE the government in the first place.
Once created, government CAN create "civil rights," which are rights that are really privileges, and can be regulated by their creator (the government). But the government cannot create civil rights that supercede natural/God-given rights, because those rights are inalienable/unalienable (untouchable).
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That’s fair. I will not expect a response, but I wrote some things before I got to this point, so I will post anyways. Plus this stuff is really helpful for my book. Making arguments for really difficult concepts (like Natural Law, Rights, Sovereignty, etc.) works out so much better if I have to make the argument against a hostile intelligent audience (hopefully not too hostile).
I defined the word (idea) of Law in the beginning of my last post using BLD. I then showed that the Natural Laws were exactly the same as our Civil Laws in their construction. The only differences between Natural Law and Civil Law are; who is the “controlling authority,” what phenomena and actions are allowed, what is the punishment, and what force binds those actions. The BLD definition of law applies perfectly well to all Laws, including Natural Laws.
I also went through and explained all of those differences. They really are very similar. The biggest difference is, there is no punishment for breaking a Natural Law because you can’t. Because you can’t break a Natural Law, all actions are in congruence with Natural Law. That is so fundamental. You keep saying all these reasons why “that’s not Natural Law” or “Natural Law is this other thing.” What you want Natural Law to be is not what it is. It is exactly and precisely the Limits (Restrictions) of allowable action. (I’ll take away “Grants.” I meant it a little bit differently than you suggested, but I’ll concede your objection).
All phenomena follows Natural Law. All phenomena in society follow Civil Law, except those that don’t. When they don’t (and someone is caught) a person is punished for not acting according to Civil Law. That’s really the difference in the levels of Law. In order to enforce Natural Law, Nature just says “no.” There is no punishment because the statement is just “no.” The Authority is Complete. In order to enforce Civil Law, society also says, “no,” and we get a spanking if we choose to say “yes.” The Authority is incomplete.
All of your suggestions of Natural Law being something else require a choice. There can be no choice in Natural Law. You keep ascribing all these other things, and saying “but intelligence” etc. Yes, intelligence is a part of it, but that has nothing to do with what is allowed action by Nature, i.e. the Laws themselves.
The key is the word “allowed”. Your objections of “evil justifications” replace “allowed” with “support.” A person enslaves another by suggesting Natural Law supports (encourages) their action. Natural Law doesn’t give a fuck either way. It only restricts some actions. It obviously does not restrict slavery.
We The People have been enslaved for at least 5,000 years by the exact same group of people. That is how long The Matrix has kept us enslaved, in many cases throughout history (like today) without most people realizing it. My book will show the minutia of this slavery in great detail. It is going to shock a lot of people to see the evidence of the extent of The Matrix. The Matrix I define as: the Intentional beliefs systems, placed over the entire world, in purposeful opposition, through propaganda (half-truths and lies, through control of the “trusted leaders”/media, etc.), to enslave people and make them believe Reality is one way, when it is something very different.
I won’t be talking about the evidence going back too far, because the exposition is intended to avoid as much cognitive dissonance as possible (or feed it in at levels a person can reasonably handle, slowly reaching the full exposure of The Matrix). I start about 200 years ago, and work forward towards the present, but the evidence, once you dig in, supports the Cabal having created or subverted all of our societies, all of our works, all of everything (including things like the fuckery in our Constitution), for a minimum of 5,000 years (Sumerian/Babylonian Empire).
We The People, of the entire fucking planet (not counting places like the Amazon Rainforest, etc.) have been living in Slavery for at least that long (and we still do). So obviously Natural Law allows for slavery, and really doesn’t give a fuck about it, because you can’t break Natural Law and the entire human race has been enslaved for all of what we call "human history."
I want to address some sticking points. While you kinda started to appreciate what I am about to say at the end of your last post, I think you are confusing some fundamental things about how we describe Nature. I do not blame you, that is a purposeful fault of our education system (part of the fraud).
Neither of those things are "laws." I don’t mean they aren’t “laws” like you suggested (i.e. they are forces of nature), I mean they aren’t Laws at all. There is every indication that our actions are not “restricted” by gravity or time in any way. “Restriction” is fundamental to the definition of Law.
That was what I was trying to explain to you with my physics explanation in previous posts. We don't have any idea what "time" is (the driver of what we call "cause and effect"). We don't have any idea what “gravity” is. We have no idea if we can "overcome" either of those things or not. Indeed, our physics models suggest we can very well overcome them both, even if we don't know exactly how to do so with the technology we have at our disposal. It could very well be that the Natural Laws allow us to overcome them without any technology at all (not that I am suggesting that, I’m only saying we have no idea what the true Limits of Natural Law are).
While I hate to use credentials instead of argument, in the interest of time, one of my degrees is in physics. My senior paper was on manipulations of spacetime through certain solutions of General Relativity (AKA warp drive and wormholes AKA "overcoming" both gravity and time). I will be happy to present a more complete argument if you wish, but for now please allow me to say, physics has nothing definitive to say about any "law" of the universe, including gravity, or time or anything. We have useful models and axiomatic philosophies. We know exactly Jack and Shit about The Universe or the specific allowances or limits of Natural Law... and Jack left town.
I assert again (which you did not address) that this is an assumption that is not supported by the facts. I suggest you look deeper into what it means "to think" and what "instinct" means. There is not one type of decision that we make that (higher) animals do not make. There is not one type of action we can do that animals do not show the exact same behavior. For example, they can choose to not work (sustain themselves e.g.) they do it all the time. They can choose to not get food and to just lay there. There are experiments that show that given the option, that is exactly what certain animals will do, because it is more "fun" to do whatever they are doing. You think it's “instinct.” I say whatever it is, it is identical to what humans do. You can't possibly prove it otherwise, since neither you nor I are a species other than human, but by observation, and indeed, by the measurement of brain activity, which are the pieces of evidence we have, there is zero difference between how higher mammals act and how humans act, whether it be conscious choice, or instinct, or whatever you want to call it.
Please discard this topic as part of your argument unless you can provide something besides supposition. It has no basis in fact which makes it detract from your argument. If you would like for me to provide supporting documentation I can do so. I also have degrees in biology, so I've spent a lot of time looking into this shit and can provide very detailed arguments if you wish.
Lets look at the “Law of the Jungle” for a second. Do animals enslave each other? Do they have chaotic societies without laws or punishments? No. In fact they have organized societies, they have laws and punishments, and they do not enslave each other. So the Law of the Jungle when you go into the actual jungle is not what you are suggesting it is, yet this is the basis of your argument. Why?
We automatically live by the law of the jungle. We can’t live any other way. It is impossible. We can however, just like how other animal groups do it, create rules of cooperation, what we call Civil Laws.
Your argument is akin to the Natural Laws are "more moral" for humans, because humans (and only humans) have intelligence. But your argument does not account for the fact that animals have Civil Laws, and codes of ethics (morals) that guide their society. Your argument does not account for the fact that humans can and do do whatever they fuck they want, when they want to, which means that Natural Law does not restrict their aberrant actions, but Civil Law may change them, if they choose to adhere to Civil Law, or simply choose to live cooperatively and respectfully (something animal societies do very well in the actual jungle).
No it does not. Natural law defines how the world works. We describe how the world works, and we describe it all wrong in our models, just by varying degrees.
It proves that we think, it proves nothing more than that. Animals also debate. If you think otherwise, you have never had a pet. Granted their vocabulary is limited and the debates are rather shallow, but the intent, and the logical process are still a part of the conversation.
I didn’t say that. I said that God IS Natural Law. God IS the Universe. The separation of God from That Which Is is intentional fraud. As I said, that’s a very long discussion. I am only asking that you try to appreciate what I am saying (and allow me to say it). I am not asking you to agree.
My argument is that EVERYTHING is a Part of Nature and that NOTHING is excluded. I have excluded NOTHING, because NOTHING CAN BE EXCLUDED.
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It is the only way it can be described, because it is EVERYTHING. We cannot comprehend everything, nor describe it, except to state that it is everything. That is not a logical fallacy because it is not using the language of logic. It is instead as complete a description as can be stated using our limited language.
Logic can’t accurately describe That Which Is, because the language of logic is itself incomplete and axiomatic. I have an entire section of my book dedicated to this topic. I am happy to provide a very detailed argument to support this if you wish. It gets into math a little bit, but it is completely supported by all research on the topic. Here is a place to start.
The bottom line is, Logic, like all of the other things we use to describe That Which Is (physics, science in general, math, etc.) are useful tools, they are not Truth.
I don’t agree. Please look up “act of war” and see if you can find a single instance where my statement doesn’t fit. Then attempt to contrive an instance of a Sovereign infringing a God Given Right of another Sovereign that is not an act of war. Only if you can find an instance that falls outside of my definition (on either side) will I agree that my definition is wrong. I only ask for one instance.
Your argument about the apple makes me feel like you haven’t heard a lot of what I’ve said, so I won’t address it except one thing:
I didn’t ignore it, I just didn’t respond to it directly. Implicit in other explanations was that Natural Law says if I have it, it’s mine. You disagree with that, but I assert that’s because you do not understand Natural Law and instead ascribe to Natural Law a social morality and individual responsibility. Your disagreement of what Natural Law is (The Laws that can’t be broken and nothing more) is not my fault. I can’t make all of my statements fit with your definitions because I believe you are incorrect.
There I will stop. If you really want to (not that I expect it) you can go back and reread my objections to your “It’s not necessarily your apple” argument in other posts. I’ve already addressed it implicitly in what Natural Law and Civil Law are, and what Natural Law and Civil Law have to say about it. I really feel you are conflating the two, and justifying it through your perception of what it means to be “intelligent” and “moral.”
I think that if you can agree that Natural Law has nothing to do with thought and morality (other than that they are a Part of That Which Is), because Thought and Morality do not limit action in an absolute sense like Natural Law does, and respect that all Natural Law REALLY has to say is what is allowed behavior, any conversation would go a lot smoother.