Ninth Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Another blogger, blogging in the local media, asked me in an e-mail what the tag line for this blog was all about. Supporting the Ninth Amendment?
The Bill of Rights was added when it became clear that a number of the original 13 states were not going to approve the Constitution without a clear statement of the limits of the Federal Government. As you read those first ten amendments, note how often they restrict the government. The restrictions are valid for our time, but they spell out the concerns that the writers had at that time. They has just fought a terrible war to obtain their independence from a national government that did many things that our founders found unjust and a violation of the rights of the people. In limiting their new national government, they called special attention to those areas where the English had been oppressive.
The entire premise of the Bill of Rights is spelled out in the Ninth Amendment. You have rights which exist independent of government. The government does not give you rights. You do not earn them. You do not inherit them. They are yours by reason of your existence.
The rights that the Bill of Rights address are not all the rights which you have. You have rights that are not spelled out in the Constitution. The notion exists that if it is not pronounced a right in the Constitution, it does not exist. That is not what the document says.
In a perfect world, most of the laws that the Congress passes would be tossed out as violating one or more of these existing but unwritten rights. The Constitution was intended to limit the national government.
I want to limit the national government. I support the Ninth Amendment.
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