re: #14 The Curmudgeon

I don’t understand the hostility to the idea of natural rights. The Founders believed that they existed. The Ninth Amendment says:

What’s that all about if there aren’t any rights except those specified in the Constitution?

The driving principle for justifying the lawfulness of our Revolution was the idea that rights are derived from Nature or Divine Providence and not the King. If our rights come from the King or the Crown, then the Crown may also take them away. Rights bestowed by nature or Providence may not be taken away by the Crown, and therefore the Crown broke the contract binding the subjects to him (King George) when those rights were abrogated. This is amply justified in Hobbes’ Leviathan as well as the writings of Locke.

I am a firm believer in the notion of Natural Rights.

That being said, I don’t think Grassly was getting at this at all.