What Kind Of Rights Do We Have

We have been blessed with two noteworthy documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In addition to these we have the Bill of Rights and The Federalists Papers. It is from the Declaration of Independence that we get our "inalienable rights". These rights cannot be be stolen, sold, traded or given away. These rights do not come from government rather governments exist because of these rights.

Let it be clear that with these rights come certain obligations some positive and some negative. As citizens we have the right to do certain things that are morally allowable under the law. It is the responsibility of the rest of us to see to it that individuals are not hindered in exercising their legal rights.

While we have the positive obligation to protect our own morally allowable rights and those of our fellow citizens, we are also not obliged to assist them in certain ways. In exercising one's freedom of speech the citizens protect one's right to do so but the citizens do not have to provide the dais, microphone or soapbox.

To add to the complexity of all of this keep in mind that we do not have absolute rights, we have limited rights. The classical example of this is Justice Holmes famous "you may not shout fire in a crowded theater". Put another way "Your right to do something ends at my nose".

The rights we have, particularly those found within the Bill of Rights are referred to as Substantive or very meaningful rights. In order to protect these rights governments are obliged to develop Procedural rights to protect those that are substantive. You are protected from an illegal search. Police or the military cannot simply smash down your door in the middle of the night. If, however, they expect you of committing a crime or engaging in criminal activity they must follow certain procedures, obtaining a search warrant and exercising it properly, before they gain entrance to your home to conduct the search.

Keep in mind that the responsibility of our government is to protect all MORALLY ALLOWABLE rights. That word, morally, would imply that the government should not allow immoral behavior. One might argue, correctly I would think, that all sorts of immoral actions go on regularly in our country. We allow for the massive multi-billion dollar pornography industry to spew its smut via a variety of mediums. We give a wink and a nod to NAMBLA. We have those who would make prostitution legal throughout the nation so state governments could tax them. We already have the governments of the states running gambling for revenue purposes. We have soft porn in our movie theaters and on our television screens. And we do nothing about it. We have not only forgotten our rights and act as though they are no longer important, we have forgotten that ultimately there will be consequences.