No, this one is not about who is right or wrong. And, no, I didn't misspell "rights" in the title. I'm wondering about what we've declared to be our "rights" and whether or not they might be wrong. I'm thinking, first and most obvious, about that whole 2nd Amendment thing. Do we really want to keep that in our "Bill of Rights"? I mean, do we really want to keep the right to bear arms as a right in today's society?
Look, the situation is ... not good. How many ... 58 people killed in Las Vegas and a staggering 546 wounded because of a gunman? And there is the worst mass killing in Texas where 26 people, ranging in age from 18 months to 77 years old, were gunned down by an angry son-in-law. The CDC says gun deaths were up by 4,000 in 2016 over 2015. To call it "not good" is an understatement. So maybe ... just maybe ... it's time to delete that amendment and take the guns out of the hands of the people. All of them. They've done it in other countries and gun deaths plummet every time. (Please tell me you're paying attention here. If you take away guns, gun deaths plummet. If you take away automobiles, automobile deaths plummet. None of this means that deaths plummet.) Maybe it's time.
But, since we're considering one right that might be wrong, maybe there are a few more to look at? I mean, we have been on a rampage redefining the language and their resulting concepts over the last few decades -- think "marriage" or "male and female" for instance. Why not the rights? And we've already tinkered with the Amendments to the Constitution; why stop now? Take the obvious one -- the 14th Amendment. It guarantees the "the equal protection of the laws" to all persons. Except when it comes to the unborn, they decided to define them as not persons. By arbitrary standards. I mean, in the womb they are not, but after birth they are, and when exactly that transition occurs from "not" to "person" is not defined. So, look, if we can tinker with that, why not others?
How about that "free speech" nonsense? Everyone knows that free speech is good as long as it's the speech we allow. It's not good when it's not. So we shout for "free speech" and then seek to prosecute those who use certain terms or whatever we deem to be "hate speech" (regardless of whether or not it really is hate speech). Ask around and I think you'll find the younger generation is no longer on board with the whole "free speech" thing. They want to limit it, to protect people from feeling bad, to stop you from using certain speech.
And we're all pretty sure the "free exercise of religion" clause has got to go. No one wants that if you really think about it. We do not want to let the jihadist who believes that murder is the "free exercise of religion" to go ahead and practice it. And most of us are quite sure that religion needs to stay out of the public square -- by force of law if necessary -- even though religion by definition infiltrates the lives of those who hold to it and, therefore, the public part of that life. That is, a religion that can be compartmentalized is not a valid religion. Still, if a religion believes or practices things we don't accept, shouldn't we be free to block that? Sure, we can be generous, but dangerous things like suicide vests and belief in Creation should surely be eliminated for safety sake, shouldn't they?
You know, I bet if we think about it carefully enough, we could probably solve a lot of problems if we could just eliminate a lot of what have been called "rights" but make us ... uncomfortable. Sure, sure, we may not like the results. And it should be obvious that when we start down this road of stripping off rights that we don't accept it will very likely lead to stripping off rights we do, but that hasn't stopped us thus far, has it?
No comments:
Post a Comment