Natural Law and the Ninth Amendment

[Crafty_Dog]

Though there is the Substantive Due Process Doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment, (opposed by Justice Thomas) I've been thinking about "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" (Dec. of Ind.) and our Ninth Amendment.

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The first Natural Law is "Eat, Survive, and Reproduce".

Our children are our reproduction.
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Are they your kids, or are they the state’s?

Your children are ‘owned’ by Big Brother and his reeducation camps

By Everett Piper

The news this week coming out of Maryland is that the state owns your children; you don’t. Your sons and daughters are Uncle Sam’s, not yours. Or perhaps more accurately, your children belong to Father Mao and Brother Stalin.

They don’t belong to you.

Writing for The Washington Post, Jasmine Hilton reports the following: “A judge on Thursday dismissed a complaint against the Montgomery County school board by parents who alleged that the system’s student gender-identity guidelines violated their state and constitutional rights.”

“Three parents, who filed anonymously in 2020 against the Montgomery County Board of Education, argued that the guidelines curtailed their ability ‘to direct the care, custody, education, and control of their minor children,’ under the Fourteenth Amendment, according to a memorandum opinion.”

“The parents said that the Montgomery County Public School ‘2020-2021 Guidelines for Student Gender Identity’ were designed to work

around parental involvement ‘in a pivotal decision’ in their children’s lives and that the guidelines ‘enable school personnel to allow children to transition socially to a different gender identity at school’ without parents’ notice or consent.”

“In the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Judge Paul W. Grimm sided with the MCBE’s argument that the guidelines advance the state’s goal of protecting students’ safety and privacy. According to [his] memo, the ‘MCBE certainly has a legitimate interest in providing a safe and supportive environment for all MCPS students, including those who are transgender and gender nonconforming,’ Grimm then [concluded], ’And the Guidelines are certainly rationally related to achieving that result.’” So, there you have it. Today’s schools are teaching your sons and daughters that a female isn’t a biological fact and that it’s perfectly healthy for a boy to pretend to be a girl, and when you object, you’re told to stand down because, after all, your children belong to the government, not you. Your children are literally “owned” by Big Brother and his reeducation camps, otherwise known as your local public schools. The message you’re hearing is loud and clear: “These children are ours, not yours.”

And lest you think this is just about the left’s strange fixation on sex; it’s not.

These are the same schools that are teaching your kids to judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. These are the same teachers who claim that 2+2=4 is the product of white privilege and that the use of Socratic logic is racist. These are the smart folks who are telling your sons and daughters that our Constitution is xenophobic, America is systemically evil, and that capitalism is bad while communism is good.

And while all this is going on, your local school board is telling you that you have no right to know about or object to anything they are teaching your progeny. These people think that their moral authority supersedes yours if they truck your 12-year-old daughter off to some crackpot gender transition clinic to get puberty blockers injected into her body. These ideologues think it’s none of your business if your son who is too young to get a driver’s license wants to surgically remove a fully functional organ from his body. They are delusional demagogues who are aiding and abetting minors to live a lie rather than pursue the truth. While they’re brainwashing your children into parroting the nonsense about America being exceptionally bad rather than exceptionally good, they are literally butchering them in their grisly game of social engineering and sexual nihilism. And when you object, they tell you to butt out and be quiet and stop acting like you have any say in the matter in the first place.

Rod Dreher summarizes this grand deception well in his book, “Live Not by Lies”: “We have been ’harmonized,’ which is China’s term for neutralizing citizens as a threat to the social and political order. People born in the 1980s and afterward are hopelessly lost. The brainwashing starts in nursery school. The state’s information-control apparatus has demolished the ability of the young to learn facts that contradict the narrative. They live in a completely different world. They’ve been perfectly manipulated by their education and the Party’s propaganda. They ignore reality. It’s been made easy for them.”

If you listen carefully, you can almost hear John Dewey chuckling in the background: “You can’t make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.”

We are at a tipping point. Are your children yours, or do they belong to the state? Are you responsible for “training them up in the way they should go,” or will you simply cede this obligation over to your local government schools?

Think carefully about these questions before you answer. Your response may well determine if your daughter grows up in the land of the free and whether or not your son grows up thinking he has the freedom to steal every ontological right that belongs to your daughter

[Crafty_Dog]

The right to be left alone

Bill of Rights doesn’t create rights; it limits government interference with it

By Andrew P. Napolitano

Every move you make, and every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I’ll be watch-ing you.

— “Every Breath You Take,” The Police

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to privacy. Like other amendments in the Bill of Rights, it doesn’t create the right; it limits government interference with it. Last week, President Biden misquoted the late Justice Antonin Scalia suggesting that Scalia believed that the Bill of Rights creates rights. As Scalia wrote, referring to the right to keep and bear arms but reflecting his view on the origins of all personal liberty, the Bill of Rights secures rights, it doesn’t create them; it secures them from the government. ThosewhodraftedtheBillofRights recognized that human rights are pre-political. They precede the existence of the government. They come from our humanity, and, in the case of privacy, they are reinforced by our ownership or legal occupancy of property.

The idea that rights come from our humanity is called Natural Law theory, which was first articulated by Aristotle in 360 B.C. The natural law teaches that there are aspects of human existence and thus areas of human behavior that are not subject to the government. Aristotle’s views would later be refined by Cicero, codified by Aquinas, explained by John Locke, and woven into Anglo-American jurisprudence by British jurists and American revolutionaries and constitutional framers.

Thus, our rights to think as we wish, to say what we think, to publish what we say, to worship or not, to associate or not, to defend ourselves from crazies and tyrants, to own property, and to be left alone are all hard-wired into our human natures by God, the uncaused cause. Nature is the means through which God passes along His gifts to us. We come about by a biological act of nature, every step of which was ordained by God. His greatest gift to us is life, and He tied that gift to free will. Just as He is perfectly free, so are we.

In exercising our free wills, we employ rights. Rights are claims against the whole world. They don’t require approval of a government or neighbors or colleagues. The same rights exist in everyone no matter their place of birth, and each person exercises them as she or he sees fit. The government should only come into the picture when someone violates another’s natural rights. So, if someone builds a house in your backyard, you can knock it down and expel the builders or you can ask the government to do so.

Suppose the builders haven’t consented to the existence of the government? That does not absolve them. Though government is only moral and legal in a society in which all persons have consented to it — this is Thomas Jefferson’s “consent of the governed” argument in the Declaration of Independence — the only exception to actual consent is the use of government to remedy a violation of natural rights.

Murray Rothbard examined all this under his nonaggression principle: Initiating or threatening force or deception against a person or his rights is always morally illicit. This applies to all aggression, even — and especially — from the government. The folks building a house in your backyard have either used force or deception to get there. Both violate your natural rights and the NAP.

Now, back to the Fourth Amendment and privacy. In a famous dissent in 1928, which two generations later became the law of the land, the late Justice Louis Brandeis argued that government surveillance constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus, per the express language of the amendment, cannot be conducted by the government without a warrant issued by a judge. He famously called privacy the right most valued by civilized persons and described it as “the right to be let alone.”

Today, this is the most violated of personal rights; not by judges signing search warrants for surveillance, but by government officials — local, state and federal — ignoring and evading the natural right to privacy and pretending that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to them. The linchpin of the amendment is the judicial determination of the existence of probable cause — meaning that it is more likely than not that a crime has been committed, and that there is evidence of that crime in the place to be searched and in the things to be seized.

Today, the feds, and this has been picked up and mimicked by local and state police, have told themselves that so long as they are not looking for evidence of crimes, they needn’t follow the Fourth Amendment.

Today, the government rarely bothers to obtain a search warrant for surveillance because it is cumbersome to do so and because it is so easy to surveil folks on a massive scale without one.

Today, the National Security Administration — America’s 60,000-person strong domestic spying apparatus — captures every keystroke on every desktop and mobile device, and every conversation on every landline and mobile device, and all data transmitted into, out of or within the United States.

Moreover, you’d be hard-pressed to find a geographic area that is not covered by police using hardware that tracks the movement and use of mobile phones. When Edward Snowden passed on to journalists the facts of massive warrantless spying in the Bush and Obama administrations, he had the journalists put their mobile devices where his was — in his refrigerator, as anywhere else would have alerted his former colleagues of their collective whereabouts.

The government spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually just to watch and follow us. Who authorized this? Why do we tolerate a society where we have hired a government to secure our rights and instead it engages in aggression against them? Andrew P. Napolitano is a former professor of law and judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey who has published nine books on the U.S. Constitution

[Crafty_Dog]

"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." —Thomas Jefferson (1791)

[Crafty_Dog]

Breaking Down the Declaration

Before studying an important document like the Declaration of Independence, it’s critical to
know the historical context while such a document was being drafted.

The Declaration of Independence was mostly set in motion by the Boston Tea Party. At that
time, the Intolerable Acts kicked off the First and Second Continental Congresses, which were
passed in response to the Boston Tea Party.

The four Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 that:
▪ Shut the Port of Boston (Boston Port Act)

▪ Revoked the charter of the colony of Massachusetts and put it under direct royal control
(Massachusetts Government Act)

▪ Required trial of British officers to be conducted in Britain rather than in the colonies
(Administration of Justice Act)

▪ Put British troops in the homes of many colonists (Quartering Act)

Despite these Intolerable Acts, the colonists did not jump straight to declaring independence.

They first made several attempts at peace with the king. In one instance, they made a petition
to the king for peace from the First Continental Congress that was rebuffed. In another
instance, they issued the Olive Branch Petition that was offered months before the Declaration.
It was also rebuffed.

With a firmer understanding of this historical context, it’s important to note that the
Declaration of Independence does three things:

1. It announces a general theory of government

2. It lists the reasons why the king has failed to live up to that standard of government

3. It declares independence

In the following pages, we will break down the sections of this founding document to give you a
greater understanding of the significance of the Declaration of Independence—and why it’s still
relevant today.

BREAKING DOWN THE DECLARATION

Dr. Ben Carson page 4

Section 1: The Introduction

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, When in the
Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of
the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Written in one long sentence, the first section simply establishes that the 13 colonies are
looking to put an end to their political connection with Britain. And they believe that this is a
freedom given to them by both nature and God.

Finally, they understand that they should reference their reasons for ending this political
relationship. And that is something they will do in the remainder of the document.
Section 2: The Preamble

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, --
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.

Beginning with one of the most famous lines in American history, The Preamble gives a general
overview of what government should look like. And it explains that the people have a right to
overthrow a government that is not living up to these ideals.

At the time, King George III in Britain felt that the rights of kings obliterated the rights of
individuals. He was very intolerant of the colonists and their desire to be independent. So, he
enacted the Intolerable Acts mentioned above, which made it virtually impossible for the
colonists to enjoy freedom.

But the Founders saw the concept of government differently. And here in this section, they put
forth the ideals of what the identity of this new nation would be—a nation that valued life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

They believed that these principles are specifically given to the people by our Creator and not
by the government. That’s one of the things that distinguishes America, even today, from
most other nations around the world that tend to believe that government is the beginning
and the end.

Here, the Founders make it clear that the government’s role is simply to facilitate the rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its people. And that the people should be the
central focus of a nation, rather than a government or a king.

Because Britain fails to live up to these ideals, the Founders state that they have a right and a
duty to rid themselves of such a government.

Section 3: The Indictment

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity
which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the
present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having
in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove
this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public
good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance,
unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so
suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people,
unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a
right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant
from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into
compliance with his measures.

BREAKING DOWN THE DECLARATION
Dr. Ben Carson page 6

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his
invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected;

whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People
at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the
dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose
obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to
encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of
Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for
establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the
amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass
our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our
legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution,
and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended
Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they
should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing
therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once
an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering
fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

BREAKING DOWN THE DECLARATION
Dr. Ben Carson page 7

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to
legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging
War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives
of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the
works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty &
perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of
a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms
against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall
themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the
inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare,
is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble
terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince
whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the
ruler of a free people.

Having established the ideals for government—and their desire to adopt this new system—the
Founders provide a list of all their grievances with King George III, demonstrating the various
ways he has stolen the rights of the people.

In this section, each of the Intolerable Acts is listed, but the Founders don’t stop there. They get
into legislative issues they have with the king, who wouldn’t allow them to have representation
in government—or even have their own meetings.

Consider a line like, “For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested
with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” That sounds very much like House
Resolution 1, the so-called “For the People Act,” that the government is trying to establish
today.

But this section addresses more than just legislative concerns. It looks at frustrations with the
judicial system and how the king wouldn’t allow the people to have a trial by jury. And it gets
into issues with the military, like the Quartering Act mentioned above.
You may have noticed some lines that sound relevant in present day America like, “He has
erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people,
and eat out their substance.”

BREAKING DOWN THE DECLARATION
Dr. Ben Carson page 8

This very much sounds like the Administrative State today—where the government restricts
your liberty through many “officials” trying to enforce laws.

Ultimately, this section of the Declaration of Independence is about throwing off the shackles
the British government has placed on the colonists. And it explains to the world the many
reasons why King George is unfit to be their ruler.

Section 4: The Denunciation

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them
from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable
jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and
settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we
have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations,
which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have
been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in
the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of
mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

After listing the various grievances with the king, the Founders turn their attention to the
British people. While still referring to them as brethren, they point out that the colonists have
attempted to inform the British people about how they’ve been treated by the king.

But the British people have ignored their warnings and failed to do anything about them. With that
said, the Founders complete their case for independence along with their justification for a revolution.

Section 5: The Conclusion

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress,
Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies,
solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be
Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British
Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is
and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have
full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to
do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,
we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

At last, the document wraps up with a final and definitive “Declaration of Independence.” The
Founders make it clear that they are dissolving their relationship with Britain. And they
conclude by sharing their trust in God and pledging a new unity with their colonists that will be
established in a new form of government.

BREAKING DOWN THE DECLARATION
Dr. Ben Carson page 9

Postface

Just like in the early days of our nation, we are living in challenging times. But it’s always
darkest before dawn, and everything good in life goes through some sort of turmoil.
That’s the nature of being a human being in society.

But we have to know what our principles are. We have to know the foundations that made us
into a great nation. And we have to be willing to advocate and fight for those things.

We cannot sit quietly, because that’s when evil succeeds.

Instead, we must be willing to stand for the principles that are given to us by our JudeoChristian faith to truly love one another. And if we do, not only will America benefit, but so will the whole world.

- Dr. Ben Carso

[Crafty_Dog]

Red states ask cases on parental rights, gender ID to be heard

Group argues dismissal of school interference as injury

BY ALEX SWOYER THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A group of red states is asking the Supreme Court to take up a dispute over a school policy that prevents officials from disclosing to parents their child’s gender preference — including a change of name or pronouns — while at school.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares led a group of 15 other Republican-led states in urging the justices to take up the case of Parents Protecting Our Children v. Eau Claire Area School District in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had dismissed the parents’ lawsuit over the Wisconsin school policy, reasoning none of the parents could show they had been directly injured by it.

The states, though, told the court that the justices should take up the appeal because any school interference with parental rights is an injury.

“Parents have a deep and abiding interest in their right to ‘make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children,’” their brief read. “When school officials interfere with that right, the parents are injured.”

Other states signing on with Virginia are West Virginia, South Dakota, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Carolina, Montana, Nebraska, Louisiana, Missouri, Georgia, Idaho, Alaska and Florida.

“The parent-child relationship is directly harmed when a school district tells minor students that secrets from their parents— including an entire double life at school— are not only acceptable, but will be facilitated by the District,” the states’ brief said. “Parents, not administrators, have the responsibility and right to raise their children.”

The case came to the justices after Eau Claire Area School District implemented a policy in 2021 that allowed students to change their gender identity without parental consent, “meaning that students could change names, pronouns, and which locker room and bathroom they use—all without their parents’ knowledge,” according to court documents.

Mr. Miyares said it is essential for a student’s well-being for schools to work with parents rather than against them.

“Parents have the right to be involved in major decisions affecting their children’s lives. This case presents an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to provide much-needed clarity and reaffirm that government officials cannot override parents’ fundamental rights simply because they believe they know better,” said Mr. Miyares.

It would take four justices to vote in favor of hearing the case for oral arguments to be scheduled during the court’s next term, which begins in October.

A spokesperson from the school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.