Publius

Good God NO! Doesn't anyone read Locke, Hobbes, Jefferson, Madison, or Hamilton anymore? The soul purpose of government is to protect our rights, period. We agree to live under such government because we wish to leave the state of nature (Hobbes about the state of Nature, "In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".) In so doing, we agree to turn certain rights over to the government for safe keeping so that we can better secure others (we turn over the right of self inflicted retribution for crimes committed against oneself in order to secure ones right to a fair trail and equal treatment under the law.) The purpose of government is not to promote the good life, rather, it is to secure a stable environment such that society can prosper and survive. The difference between these two definitions is that in the later, government in not an active participant in the promotion of the good, merely a guardian thereof. Even a socialist form of government can be justified under this definition because it is simply doing its job in stabilizing society so that it can continue to grow and prosper. Nevertheless, no matter what form of government a society chooses, its primary function must always remain to be the protection of the rights of the individual. What everyone always overlooks when we start talking about constitutional rights is that there are many many rights that we have that are indeed protected by the constitution that are not enumerated therein. Let me refer you to amendment 9, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. As a matter of fact, many of our founders, including Madison, were against the Bill of Rights altogether, not because they didn’t believe that the people had these rights, but because they believed that by listing these rights on paper that over time any right not contained therein would be disregarded and argued not to exist. Returning to the present discussion at hand, one the one side we have a right of gun ownership specifically guarded by the 2nd amendment, while on the other we have the right of gays to marry, which is not enumerated but could be implied by the 9th amendment. The question really should be, which of these rights would the individuals have in the state of nature and did they surrender these rights by joining formal society? The I think that answer is clearly that individuals had the right to both in the state of nature and should surrender neither in agreeing to join formal society. By the way, I am not a libertarian in case you were wondering, but I do seem to agree with them on this particular issue. Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.