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It appears to me that on this matter some approach it as merely a legal question, while others see it as a fundamental question regarding the status of our rights as human beings. The two are not compatible debates.
Laws are written and enforced by the government. Government violations and infringements on rights are almost always legal, in that it is the government that can write, change, and interpret the law to fit its behaviour. Germany's concentration camps and many of Saddam's behaviours were legal by their respective nations' codes, but obiously egregious violations of the rights of their citizens.
Thus, I look at the question from a more fundamental view of liberty. If laws are unnecessarily opposed to liberty, then they should be re-written.
I do not support allowing the government to not recognize our rights on the basis of government-contrived categories for people. Simply creating a category and then claiming that it does not have to recognize the rights of the people placed there on the mere basis that they are within that category is a fundamental violation of the sanctity of the rights of all people whether in that category or not. Allowing the government to do so undermines our own safety, in that it tears down the very protections for our rights that 200+ years of Americans have worked to build and maintain.
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"Don't tell me we're so blind we cannot see that this is my land! I can't pretend that it's nothing to do with me.
And this is your land, you can't close your eyes to this hypocracy.
Yes this is my land, I won't pretend that it's nothing to do with me.
'Cause this is our land, we can't close our eyes to the things we don't wanna see."
- DTH
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