Inherent and Inalienable

 I have read a few court transcripts and even watched a few live arguments on TV. The most infamous being of course, The O.J. Trial, but coming in at a close second, was the oral arguments of the Supreme Court of California concerning Proposition 8.

 The O.J. Trial was, at best, boring and terribly mundane, but the Prop 8 case, that was interesting. Not because I voted for the measure, but because for the first time I started hearing "big words" that I had only heard of in reference to the Constitution and its amendments. Words like "inherent" and "inalienable" were two mentioned most frequently. The argument I understand, was if the right to alter the states constitution through  a vote of the people by ballot measure was something that could be barred, and allowed only through the legislature or if, in fact, it was something that could not be taken away. See, I told you, interesting.

 It should be noted at this point, that I had just entered the realm of politics after being led there by my brother Jon. I had just barely begun to understand the importance of a single vote, ballot measures, taxes, budget cuts and talks as well as the political office candidates themselves. Prior to this I had not voted with any regularity that I can remember.

 I was leaning towards a vote for Obama, because like some I am sure, I liked his message of  "Hope and Change", his pledge for transparency and his stance on GITMO and the war. By that I mean he pledged to end both. I admit, rather embarrassingly now, that I had only watched a few broadcasts and listened to a few speeches of his, thus failing completely to do any digging. I had even changed my party from Republican to  Democrat so I could vote for him.

 My views were to about to drastically change on the political front, but I will cover that in another segment.

 Right around the time I had discovered Ron Paul, I started digging into things a bit more deeply, with more of a tendency towards, what-is-the-role-of-the-people/government, and less so with a sense of the typical conspiracy theory outlook.

 I have always felt that something was "off" in terms of our laws and society, but I could never put my finger on it. I could never stomach the thought of unquestionably submitting to authority, accepting the fact that I had to obey all laws, ordinances, regulations, codes and such or that this was just the way life is supposed to be.

 So naturally, as with most humans, when something didn't sound right, I went searching for the answers...or at least more information. What I have learned over these last three or so years has been-mind blowing-at times. I was finally starting to realize that yes, there was more to it than I have been led to believe and no, this was not the way life was supposed to be.

 I am a layman, with no formal education higher than 12th grade. I have never taken any college courses for journalism, writing, research, law or even English, and I am sure that it will show through. I drive a forklift, manage inventory and people in a bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing environment, so it really doesn't bother me. I just want you to know, that I completely okay if my readability score is an 8, or lower, on the Fleischer-Kincaid scale.  Let's get on with it.

 Your religious beliefs matter not in the context of the Constitutions protection of individual liberties. For the sake of writing ease in this OP we will use the mainstream ideology of Intelligent Design.

 When God created you, me and everyone else, he granted us the most precious gift-Life. In that, there are certain responsibilities and certain privileges that cannot be taken away by any government body, or any person representing a government body. While the reality is in fact true, it is in no way a justification or moral exemption to do so. Thieves, murderers, rapists and tyrants will seek to deprive you of these rights, however, the Founders, having experienced these atrocities first hand had identified these rights and saw fit to see them protected in our country's supreme law-The Constitution.

 The argument over what exactly the framers meant by this phrase or that phrase is completely irrelevant. The continual living interpretation of the law is a fallacy and should be regarded as such. The framers knew exactly what they meant, and they said it, in no plainer language that they knew. They saw fit to minimize the wording whenever possible so as to leave the slightest possible room for contortion and re-interpretation by men. Hence the statements, "We are a nation of laws, not of men" and "It is the letter of the law, not the spirit in which it was intended".

 "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,..."

 Never a more powerful statement was made.

 These were all men of great and unquestionable moral character that knew, not only in their hearts, but also in their minds that men are not created to be ruled, but to be the ruler of their own character and that they alone should decide what direction they would seek to align their moral compass. They understood that it was not the place of governments or of other men to prescribe the manner in which lives should be directed or what freedoms men and women are entitled to.

 Providence, The Supreme Architect, was their guide and their light and they needed no man, king, nor any government body to assert that to them. Having all justification come through each breath and with every thought, they knew what the right to life truly was. They were staunch in their affirmation of these "certain inalienable rights" and they sought fit to preserve them for the sake of the experiment.

 Before I list them I want to go over the definitions of the two most important words concerning these rights. Inalienable and Inherent. These words, and their meanings are not synonymous, yet they are far from mutually exclusive. An understanding of these words is exceptionally important and crucial if, you are ever going to learn what your rights truly are. The meaning of these words will, I hope, help you to contemplate and understand the stark difference between a "right" and a "privilege".

Inalienable;
Impossible to take away:
"not able to be transferred or taken away, e.g. because of being protected by law"

Synonyms:

Unchallengeable

Absolute

Immutable

Not able to be forfeited

Unassailable

Incontrovertible

Indisputable

Undeniable

Inherent;
 Basic:
 "part of the very nature of something, and therefore permanently characteristic of it or necessarily involved in it"

Synonyms:

Intrinsic

Innate

Inbuilt

Natural

Inborn

 To say some thing is "inalienable" means that there can be no question to it or of it.
The color red is integral in the color purple, therefore it is an inalienable fact that you cannot make purple without red.

 To say some thing is "inherent" means that it is a part of something larger or more complex and cannot be separated without changing the larger or more complex thing.
The color red is inherent to the color purple, therefore it is an indisputable fact that you cannot make purple without red.

 I would say something that is inherent is, in fact, inalienable.

"...among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 Life:
 Meaning, you have the right to your life. You have the right to do as you please with it, as long as you cause no harm to anothers life or property. Let's just take a minute to think about what that really means. This is truly the most precious and powerful right.

 ...................................................................................................................................................................

 Does it mean that you have the right to sit on the couch and watch TV 27/7/365 from the day your are born til the day you die? Yes, yes it does, but I would strongly advise against that. It means that you have a definitive and indisputable right to your life; Including, but not limited to, any and all decisions, obligations, moral dilemma's actions, consequences, fruits, directions, destruction, repair, thoughts and protections necessary to effect such a lifestyle as you may see fit so long as you, in the course of your actions, do not whether overt or covertly, deprive another of their basic rights. This right is also inclusive of any persons you may be either morally or legally bound to care for.

1.  You have the right to speak you mind and express yourself through speech, art, craft, music, letter, or recreation. The very First Amendment.
2.  You have the right to protect that life, at all costs, if necessary, up to and including the use of deadly force. The Second Amendment.
3.  You have the right to be secure in your person against unreasonable searches, seizures, arrests or detainment. The Fourth Amendment.
4.  You have the right to not have your own words used against you in a court of law. The Fifth Amendment.
5.  You have the right to a fair and speedy trial and to confront those that would accuse or otherwise seek to tarnish your good name and moral character. The Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
6.  You have the right to be tried in a familiar place, being judged by those people who would presumably have encountered certain equivalent life experiences, without fear of excessive bail so as to effect the otherwise unattainable release, nor to fear of, or suffer any punishment considered cruel and unusual. The Seventh and Eighth Amendments.

 Liberty:
Freedom.
Pure.
Unabridged.
Freedom.

 The right to truly be free to do as you would choose and please so long as you do not deprive another of their rights. The right to make any and all decisions that you may see fit, at anytime and any place in the course of your life so long as you do not deprive another or their rights. The freedom to live your life and exercise your rights without fear of persecution or repercussion from any person or form of government so long as you do not deprive another of their rights. I think not only as Americans, but as humans, this is the most under stated, forgotten and abused right of them all. I can, and probably will write a whole other OP on this. Simply because it both saddens and sickens me to know that people think and/or are conditioned to believe that this is freedom.

 The Pursuit of Happiness:
Set parameters for conscious thought....

1. Do Not Murder.
2. Do Not Deprive Any Person of Their Rights or Property.

What does, can or will make you happy?
 You have been granted the very precious gift of life conjoined with all the freedom you could ever possibly need to attain those things or ideas that would make you happy. You are the master of your domain and you own the ground beneath your feet. Let nothing, save these few, stand before you and succeed in denying you these things or ideas. The dream that calls to you can be both real and yours, you have but only to open your heart, mind and eyes to embrace it.


 I can't think for you and I cannot tell you what every natural, inherent and inalienable right would be, because mine may be different from yours depending on the paths we choose. I can only do for you as Ron Paul has done for me-Plant The Seed of Liberty in Your Mind.


 In Liberty,
 Richard R. Camacho

Speaking of Occupy

 Unless you have been living under a rock or living in the back woods somewhere, you have undoubtedly heard of, and have seen all the news concerning the Occupy Wall Street movements. I can't begin to tell the details of what the Occupiers actually want, and I don't think very many people actually can. They seem to be loosely aligned by, and to, the growing and sometimes extreme disdain that Americans have for certain aspects of the financial industry these days. In some regards, they are fully justified. After all, was not the housing bubble, crash and subsequent economic decline due, in large part, to certain elements of this industry? The federal government included.

 To put it plainly, people are pissed off...and rightly so.

 Large coporations have folded, banks have become insolvent, banks have been bailed out, working class people have lost their jobs, houses, cars and for some, their sanity may have been lost somewhere along these lines as well. We watched as the crisis unfolded and we also watched as news came out about what the underlying cause had been. Another simple word-greed.

 Then we watched as the federal government, despite an overwhelming outcry of opposition borrowed money against the future of our children, and handed it out like a welfare check to some of these same corporations and banks that created this mess. The premise was, "Yes, even though these banks were greedy and careless. Even though we helped create this moral hazard, we have to bail them out. The future of America depends on it. The future of the world economy depends on it. So, sorry Mr. Taxpayer, you just don't understand what is happening here."

 No wonder people are pissed.

 Personally, I think the TARP was a bad idea and I can find nothing in the Constitution that authorizes it, but that's another Central Bank story.

 So yes, I can see whay people are pissed, I'm pissed too. I have already noticed the inflationary changes that stem from TARP, and not just from TARP. I lost money too, but I didn't get a check from the Fed. In fact, it was just the opposite, I got a bill for $9720.10!

 Part of what the movement is about, I think, is the fact that almost no one in our government seems to listen to their constituency anymore.  Banks were bailed out and the American people were left high and dry. We had Bush, with that smug, shit-eating-grin on his face telling us that we, the people, were not smart enough to understand what was happening and that we should leave the thinking to the smart people.

 Then we had Obama and his irritating Winnie The Pooh Gopher whistle telling us that yes, we just have to do it again. Are you serious? If the first bail-out didn't work, what makes you think the second one will?

 I digress.

 I didn't start this OP to go off on a rant about Bush, Obama or the Fed. I started it because I wanted to talk about the Ocuppy vs. the First Amendment. Including all the police interference, excessive force, brutality and utter trampling of the protected right to speak our minds. I will start with the text of the Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

 Now let's pick apart this amendment and talk about what applies to these protests.
 "...or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

 Abridging the freedom of speech; Encarta's third definition is, "to deprive someone of their rights."
 Abridge the freedom of the press; Again Encartra's definition applies and I will explain this a bit later.
 Abridge the right of the people to peacefully assemble and address their issues to the government; Encartra again applies.

 The freedom of speech is, just that. The freedom to speak your mind, to have an opinion and to share that opinion with anyone and everyone that will listen. Now, I do agree that there are some limitations as to the time and place.

 For example: Let's say you can't stand Barbara Striesand, but you just happen to recieve an invitation to one of her charity fundraisers being held at a fancy hotel or convention center. You can, at any time, start to speak your mind and otherwise disrupt the party, but the hostess and/or her security team, friends, family or Mickey Mouse has the right to remove you from the building and throw you out into the street. I think that is a good example of a situation where removing you from the site or otherwise preventing you from speaking your piece would not be a violation of your protected right. Simply because, it is a private function, paid for with private money and located on private property. This almost applies in New York.

 Now, if you just so happen to be on public property, your right is protected by the first amendment and you can speak freely. Regardless of whether your material is offensive to anyone else. However, if you are on public property and causing damage to that property or otherwise preventing anyone that wants to use the property from using the property, the protection of your right ends there. Public land is, for the public, the people, of not just the city or town, but of every person in America and you do not have the right to destroy or cause harm to any persons property.

 Sadly enough, this reason has been abused as justification for the removal of the occupy camps and the otherwise abridgement of the protesters rights. Mayors and police chiefs decided that some of these camps were posing or creating a nuisance or public saftey hazard and ordered them to be disbanded, often times with the use of, or under the threat of force and/or imprisonment.


Next is the freedom of the press and before you say something like, "there were no reporters in the camps" let me argue this. In the age of the smart phone, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and the Blogosphere; You cannot convince me that there was not at least one person in these crowds that had, or maintains a blog and was, at that time, continuing to update the site as to the situation. Oh, I'm sure there were plenty.

 You might argue that blogging or social networking is not the press. Why is it not? Do we all have to have shiny hair, perfectly white teeth, a college degree in journalism and four pounds of make-up on our faces in order to be recognized as a legitimate news reporter? If you said yes, then you are not only missing the point of journalism, but a few other things as well. A journalist records data and events in a journal, of which he or she will then later report on or about. So a guy that has a blog and reports the news on it is then, for all intents and purposes, a journalist and a news reporter. Broken down even further, every human being is a news reporter...after all, why do you think we like to gossip so much?
People Reporting Everyday Social Situations.

 Last and certainly not least, is the right for the people to peacefully assemble and address their government concerning grievances. Broken down or simplified, it means you can, at any time and public place, assemble and discuss your issues.

 The interesting thing about the last part of this sentence is, there is no mention of a permit, acceptable hours, levels of noise, amount of people or any authority for any form of government to interfere as long as your assembly is peaceful. It is pretty cut and dried on this. Say what you want and as long as you are not causing harm to anothers person or property, you must be left alone.

Stage one:

 I have heard many things said about Congressman Paul, most of them are either false or inaccurate. Crazy, kook, devil, anarchist, fool, senile, greedy, stupid, etc etc are some that come to mind. The thing is, in actuality, he is none of those things.

 You would call a man crazy because he believes in the idea of liberty, that he is the only one who can decide what is best for his self and that no one has the right to force him to do something he does not want to do.

 You call the man a kook because he believes the gov't is an institution created by men for the sole purpose of protecting life, liberty and property. That gov't cannot grant rights to anyone or anything, because gov't has no authority to grant those rights-govt did not create those rights. Men and women are born with those rights.

You call the man a fool because he would say things like, "The gov't has no authority to create a public school system. The gov't has no business being involved in the education of Americans."

 You call the man a devil because he would say things like, "Let that uninsured person die." When what he really said was, insurance is a product, just like soda, cigarettes and TV. As such it is the property of the person that created it. You do not have a right to some ones property and the gov't cannot grant you that right. If you cannot afford TV, then you don't watch CSI. If you cannot afford health insurance and you get cancer, you have no right to force some one else to pay for your treatment. If you or the gov't does, it is theft and it is wrong. If you cannot afford the treatment, then unfortunately you may die.

 You call the man an anarchist because he advocates deregulating the economy and business. You say this would create chaos and "look how well deregulation worked for the housing market". In fact, deregulation helped the housing market, at first. Then as with all faith based currency systems there was a bust to the boom. The problem was exacerbated when the fed stepped in and bailed out the banks that were about to fail. In a free market systems with little to no regulation, banks, corps and people fail all the time-that is the way it is supposed to work. One mans loss is another mans gain.

 This is how we learn-through our successes, and our failures. But, we will never learn if mommy and daddy always step in to bail us out. That is called enabling the institution and it doesn't work. Just look at California's correctional system.


  You would call a man senile because he believes that we can live within our means and we do not need three gov't agencies that have overlapping responsibilities. Do we need the Dept of Interior when we have F&W, NOAA, COMMERCE, BLM, COE, BOR and a few more that all oversee the same things?

 You call a man stupid because he believes that our soldiers should be home protecting their lands and families. Protecting Americans on American soil. That we should not occupy foreign nations. That we should not police the world and build nations. That we should not be a part of the UN or ally with any nation. That we should not kill Americans without due process and that every human life is precious and it should not be wasted. That the more enemies we make, the less safe we actually are.

 You call the man greedy because he believes that money made is the property of the person that made it. That the gov't has no right telling us how much of our money we may keep for ourselves...after we have paid them. That if we do decide to give some of our money to the gov't it should be frugal with it. That if we have to balance our budget daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, the gov't should also have to. That just because a person is rich, does not mean they should pay higher taxes. That the gov't cannot tax a nation into prosperity.

 You laugh at him because he believes that a private organization should not create money, thereby inflating the monetary base and deflating our purchasing power. Because he believes the power to coin money was granted to congress alone.

 You mock him because he says the constitution is the supreme law of the land. That we are a nation of laws, not of men. That it is the letter of the law, not the spirit in which it was intended.

 You marginalize him because he says that our founding fathers sacrificed their lives for a chance that we might be a free nation. That Jefferson, Washington and Franklin faced the same challenges we face today and have faced over the years. That the constitution can be applied to all things yesterday, today and tomorrow.

 You call him a radical because he wants limited gov't intrusion, sound money and a peaceful foreign policy. I say, why would you not?

 We have been doing the same thing since 1913 and look where it has taken us. I think it is past the time to restore our constitution of principles and liberty as the supreme law of the land. Let all things be governed and measured by it. Let all men be free in their own minds, bodies and property. The free market does a better job of regulating itself, then any gov't ever could. Life is not supposed to be easy and anyone that tells you it is, is lying to you.

 You are not granted any right except the right to live, love, earn and learn with whatever, whenever, whomever and however you choose so long as you do not cause harm to another's person or property.

Ron Paul 2012