Do We View the Constitution and Bill of Rights Correctly?
The problem with viewing the Constitution and Bill of Rights as prohibitions on government activities is that those rights and freedoms not specifically articulated are then interpreted as perfectly allowable intrusions by government, and its agents, on the anomaly of individual freedom.
What if, instead, we recognize individual freedom as the default and government intrusion as the anomaly? This is, I believe, the stance the Founding Fathers took when they drafted both documents, knowing full well (again, I believe) that it would eventually be perverted by government.
Privacy, for example, is never explicitly mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights; and yet, it's at the core of every enumerated right, such a basic freedom that it went unspoken. Without the privacy to conduct one's life as one wishes, so long as it does not interfere with the same right of others, how can we possibly attain the liberty or pursuit of happiness so revered by the men and women who unwillingly broke from Mother England two and a half centuries ago?
In the past two years especially, we've seen how government intrusion into private lives has limited the power and authority of individuals to provide for themselves, their families, and their communities; to worship freely; to move freely; to hold the job of one's choice; to seek out and receive needed medical services; and to retain the bodily autonomy (i.e. the fundamental right and obligation to protect the most basic property, that of one's own body) that is so fundamental to any other right or freedom, enumerated or not.
Worse, we've witnessed an acceleration of various forces weaponizing goverment to target their political enemies; enforcing radical social experimentation on the youngest and most vulnerable members of our communities; committing mass murder of the elderly; controlling public fora, thus trampling the ability to freely disseminate information (much of it quite correct, and the rest still protected speech); strangling our economy to the point of impoverishing broad swaths of already struggling families; and threatening our food and fuel supplies.
As Heinlein said in Starship Troopers, "To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster."
Which brings me to a central question I've wrestled with for the past fifteen or twenty years: What right or authority does any government have to tell me or you how to live our lives, so long as we "don't hurt people [and] don't take people's stuff"?
The answer is quite simple: None.
Government has proven, from the beginning, that it is an irresponsible actor, unworthy of the trust given unto it, and dismissive of the obligations, duties, and responsibilities that go hand in hand with the rights and authority the people have ceded to it.
I'm not going anywhere with this. It's just a random thought that was keeping me awake.