4 ms·

As others have pointed out - that's not the constitution. From a philosophical perspective, though, I agree that Jefferson and others saw those rights as funda

As others have pointed out - that's not the constitution. From a philosophical perspective, though, I agree that Jefferson and others saw those rights as fundamental human truths. They were saying "people already have these rights, we promise the government won't infringe on them", not "the government grants people these privileges". (Of course, who qualified as "people" continued to be a matter of debate. And some of the "fundamental" rights later enumerated in the bill of rights, specifically the third, seem like pretty localized of-their-place-and-time concerns in retrospect.) I think what prompted my comment and some of the other replies to pc86 was that the beginning of this comment thread was discussing some fairly specific applied legal concepts (e.g. "parallel construction") from a practical perspective of applied law. So replying to that thread with a point about political philosophy from an entirely different country is a bit of an odd tangent. Re-reading the comment, I do think that's how it was intended, but I think the context made it easy to misinterpret it as suggesting that Americans believe everyone in the world should abide by our political philosophy. Which is certainly regrettably true of some Americans, but I hope it doesn't describe anywhere close to most of us.

ghaff 5y ago
>From a philosophical perspective, though, I agree that Jefferson and others saw those rights as fundamental human truths. They were saying "people already have these rights, we promise the government won't infringe on them" In general, that's almost certainly true. But there was also genuine disagreement between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the power of the central government and the Bill of Rights was essentially an effort to craft a compromise that could be ratified. Madison whittled down a long list of suggested rights and liberties to 12 amendments. Some of which (as in the first amendment, right to a trial, etc.) are fairly fundamental. Others of which, perhaps most of all the third as you say, fairly clearly grew out of Revolutionary War concerns.

ghaff 5y ago

>From a philosophical perspective, though, I agree that Jefferson and others saw those rights as fundamental human truths. They were saying "people already have these rights, we promise the government won't infringe on them" In general, that's almost certainly true. But there was also genuine disagreement between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the power of the central government and the Bill of Rights was essentially an effort to craft a compromise that could be ratified. Madison whittled down a long list of suggested rights and liberties to 12 amendments. Some of which (as in the first amendment, right to a trial, etc.) are fairly fundamental. Others of which, perhaps most of all the third as you say, fairly clearly grew out of Revolutionary War concerns.