Should The Government Have The Ability To Regulate Your Rights?

[ThomWV]

How about our right to free speech? Should the Government be able to regulate it, to limit it to some people or some times or some places or some particular subjects?

How about our right to practice the religion of our choice or none at all? Should the Government be able to regulate who, what, how, or when we worship, or that we worship at all?

How about our right to be free free from Religion? Should the Government be able to regulate the acceptance of any particular religion and should Government be able to join in legion with any particular religion?

How about our right to bear arms? Should the Government be able to regulate which ones of us may and which may not possess arms? Should the Government be able to restrict which arms we may and may not bear?

How about our right to the use of our own property? Should the Government be able to use your or my home for its own purpose? Should the Government be able, for instance, to house troops in our spare rooms or to simply toss us out entirely?

What about our right to unlawful search and seizure? Should the Government be able to march into our homes and search at will with no reason given? Is that all right?

What about our right not to be locked up without charges or the ability to challenge any charges brought against us? Should the Government be allowed to regulate that? Would it be OK if sometimes we had to be charged but maybe some other times no charges are necessary to lock you or me up, that some times a law had to be broken but other times we could be locked up just because we were outside of regulations- how would that be?

These are our rights - which one of them do you not hold dear?

[H2O Man]

1. Well, the government does.

"Rights" does not equal "license." There are numerous laws that regulate people's rights. I hope that rational people can recognize that the Bill of Rights does not imply no regulation whatsoever.

[ThomWV]

5. OK - Then What About At The Extreme?

If rights can be regulated can they be regulated out of existance? Can a "Right" be taken away from you or is a "Right" enduring by definition?

[H2O Man]

7. Two things:

First, that Bill of Rights is extreme. Thank goodness for the democratic influence of extremists.

Second, in the words of John Lennon in his song Revolution: "You say you'll change the Constitution, well you know, we all want to change your head."

[zanne]

8. You can't yell "Fire" in a public building.

To gun fanatics, requiring a lock on a gun caused an uproar about their "civil rights". Let's face it--they don't want ANY regulation.

[Man_in_the_Moon]

12. Yes you can

If there is a fire.

Or

If you are willing to deal with the responsibility of injuries caused by an erroneous outburst.

[annabanana]

2. We give Government the job of maintaining the Public Good.

It is their job to protect what we hold in common, to safe-keep it for our posterity. We hold our Rights in common. Protecting those rights is the job they swear to when they take the job.

Many of our "public servants" are in Breach of Contract.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Of course it should - we only have rights because of the government.

There is no such thing as an inherent right; a right is something that the members of a society choose to grant to one another, through the medium of government. If the government *doesn't* regulate rights, nobody has any rights.

[fasttense]

10. That doesn't sound like unalienable Rights rights to me.

According to the declaration of Independence,

"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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The government is here to secure, give us, our rights not to restrict them. But as often happens, governments lose sight of their original obligations.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. The declaration of independence is inspirational but silly.

A right has to have a source.

If you believe in a Creator, you can believe in rights endowed by him, and if you think you know about him, you may be able to decide what rights he has and hasn't endowed you with.

If you don't, however - and I don't - then the only possible source of a right is society, and the only medium it can grant such a right through is government, and therefore there is no such thing as an unalienable right.

[theboss]

11. That's pretty much the exact opposite idea of what the country was founded upon

I'm pretty sure there was a line about inalienable rights in one of those documents.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Yes, it is, very much so.

See my post 13.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

14. Dupe, delete.

[WinkyDink]

4. Okay, this is the Purloined Letter, right? The topic really is GUNS, right?

The Second Amendment already INCLUDES the term "well-regulated", does it not?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

[ThomWV]

6. When I was in the Militia It Was Well Regulated

and in my private life my gun ownership was not. What's your point?

[Jim__]

9. The government has to balance my rights against your rights.

For instance, it has to balance your right to free speech against my right to peaceful assembly - if I am sitting in a crowded movie theater, does your right to free speech allow you to yell "Fire"?

[crispini]

15. The government ALREADY regulates your rights.

I really hate it when people go off on this faux-Libertarian deal. The entire POINT of HAVING a government is to, you know, GOVERN. That involves a continually flowing dance of regulating how my rights begin where your rights end.

The other half of RIGHTS are RESPONSIBILITIES. I find it incredibly annoying when people forget that.

[unpossibles]

16. there are already many stipulations on other Constitutional rights

libel and advocating violence are not protected by free speech. Habeas Corpus can be suspended in times of emergency.

Look, honestly I consider myself a firm Constitutionalist in many ways, and will fight to protect the rights of even those I disagree with (the point of it really), and am a gun owner, but I just don't see the 2nd amendment as being the most important or sacred. I am not for a ban at all, but I don't think it unreasonable to have to be able to show competency own a gun.

Honestly, the way I look at it is this: in the possible need to protect ourselves against tyranny, I won't care if my gun is legal or not. I consider the right to assemble and speak and worship or not and a fair trial to be far more important to daily life. yes, guns prevent a lot of problems, but they also create a lot of problems.

I don't have a problem with guns, I do have a problem with idiots who have guns. Sorry. I realize that I am stretching the definition of the 2nd perhaps, but perhaps not - a well-regulated militia may hint that not only have times changed, but that people with guns should be well-regulated. "Well regulated"

[mmonk]

17. Rights are always determined by government.