Natural, inherent, inalienable rights versus privileges granted by Government

jody

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Sat Mar-08-08 12:51 PM
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Natural, inherent, inalienable rights versus privileges granted by Government

Those of us who support the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense, that SCOTUS will hear this month in D.C. v. Heller, argue that RKBA is a natural, inherent, inalienable right of each law-abiding citizen (see PA, 1776 and VT 1777 constitutions) and that right existed before the people collectively entered into a social-contract and formed a government of We the People (Constitution 1788 and BOR 1791).

The pro-RKBA group point to the BOR which enumerated some of those rights and to the Ninth Amendment that required government to protect un-enumerated rights.

In opposition, the ban-RKBA group who would ban the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense argue that RKBA is not a natural, inherent, inalienable right but a privilege granted by government and can therefore be taken away by government.

The right to peacefully assemble is another enumerated natural, inherent, inalienable right and the First Amendment requires government to protect that right for each citizen.

The UK does not recognize natural, inherent, inalienable rights like the U.S. and UK governments are free to allow or grant a privilege like keeping handguns for self-defense or to peaceful assembly.

As so many pro-RKBA supporters have posted on DU�s Guns Forum; all the natural, inherent, inalienable rights covered by the Constitution either survive together as one �united set of rights� or fall separately one right at a time.

The contrast is very simple either (a) an individual has natural, inherent, inalienable rights, e.g. peaceful assembly, and U.S. governments must protect those rights for a single individual or (b) such rights do not exist but are privileges, e.g. peacefully assembly, granted by government and exist only as long as UK government decrees.

The choice is tyranny of the simple majority as in the UK, i.e. 50% of the vote plus 1, versus supremacy of each individual with her/his natural, inherent, inalienable rights protected by government as in the U.S.

The article below demonstrates how law-abiding citizens in the UK can lose the privilege to peacefully assembly.

We shall (not) overcome... Nuclear protest survived six Tory governments. But not New Labour

It survived six Tory governments, the end of the Cold War and the rise and fall of mass marches against the British nuclear deterrent. But after 50 years in which the tradition of peaceful demonstration has been maintained outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the New Labour era has finally done for one of the most famous symbols of protest in British political history.

Today would have seen the latest gathering of the band of women who have assembled on the second Saturday of each month since the 1980s to object to the continuing development of the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent. Instead, following a High Court ruling this week, the protest tents are being removed, demonstrators are being threatened with arrest and "no camping" signs are being erected.

From being a symbol of the right to protest, Aldermaston has become the latest testament to the desire of successive New Labour governments to curtail the right to assemble, demonstrate and object to government policy.

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"The governments at the time sometimes behaved very badly towards these protesters who were simply exercising their rights in a peaceful way. But these were Tory governments, the Labour Party supported them as I recall, I was the leader at the time. But times seem to have changed."