• Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    23 hours ago

    There’s a dialectic law with constitutional rights - if they are not on paper, then someone might say they don’t exist. If they are on paper, then someone might say they are given by that paper and exactly as much as written and intended.

    Rights just exist, they are a transcendent object that can’t be defined or limited by laws.

    This is why the ninth amendment is my favorite, and far too many people know of it. If the people have held certain rights, then they have them whether it’s written down or not, and they cannot be taken away without a good reason.

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

    This is how the abortion defence should have been argued in my opinion, but they went the route of defending it through weird implications of other amendments that you have to reach to get. The right to choose to have an abortion is a right that has long been held by the people. It only became an issue with obstetrics, to try to take jobs from midwives.

    The same goes for guns and everything else. If we’ve held the rights to something, then it’s protected by the constitution whether it’s explicitly listed or not.

    Also you are notoriously wrong about “not standing armies”, people were recruited and served for many years. Of course militaries were scaled up and down depending if it was wartime. Mandatory conscription and mobilization were a new tendency that, in some sense, led to WWI.

    I some large nations, like France and England. The US was a tiny and poor nation. It would not have a standing professional military, and they wouldn’t expect it to.