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Comment by CalChris | Hacker News Reader

If you're saying that freedom of speech implicitly and only implicitly existed as a Right of Man before the First Amendment was ratified, that would be mistaken. There was a Bill of Rights passed in the English Parliament after the overthrow of James II. Our Bill of Rights was a descendent of their Bill of Rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

As for unalienable, we 'aliened' those rights by limiting who they applied to. Whenever you hear States' Rights, that's just a dog whistle translation of aliening some people's rights.

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> As for unalienable, we 'aliened' those rights by limiting who they applied to.

Not quite. The "who" was always citizens. The catch, rather, was limiting whom the restrictions on limiting applied to. Under the original, pre-14th Amendment interepretation of the Bill of Rights, it only placed restrictions on the federal government (indeed, the First makes it explicit, with its "Congress shall make no law").

States could still do whatever they wanted - the check there was supposed to be the corresponding state constitution, and, indeed, most of them had some checks, in many cases with verbiage directly derived from BoR.

As for "states rights", while it is more often a dog whistle for allowing states to infringe on someone's right, this is not necessarily always the case. It can also be about allowing states to protect someone's right against an encroachment by the federal government. "Sanctuary cities" are a canonical example of how some states exercise their states' rights (in this case, the right to not cooperate with the federal government) to protect someone.

Thanks. I'd add that Sanctuary Cities are expressly disobedient. They're saying we won't enforce these Federal laws here and they're not relying on a mis-reading of the 10th to do that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city

States Rights and, worse, Sovereign Sheriffs are wrapping their malarkey in constitutional nonsense.

My opinion on the 10th is that, while "sovereign citizens" and other similar movements distort it to the point of meaninglessness, the standing mainstream judicial interpretation (that it basically means nothing at all) is also a heavy distortion of the original intent, and is harmful to the stability of our federal system of government.

But then, I am a states' rights liberal - a species so rare as to be considered mythical by many.

While they certainly enjoyed the conventions English law afforded them, it was always understood that these rights are natural rights born with their humanity. To lead a revolution and form a new government, they understood that this could not be justified if they had to appeal to the King's law. Instead they argued based on the natural rights of man and drew upon bodies of political philosophy and thinking such as John Locke which gave the legal basis.

These ideas are all over the Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth,"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"

The bottom 2/3's of the Declaration of Independence are a list of specific grievances against the King and how "He" violated their rights. While most school children are only introduced the preamble to the Declaration, the drafters felt that the actual important part was the list at the bottom because this was considered both a moral and legal document, justifying revolution. Trying to argue in only technical legal terms within the King's law would give them neither which is why the political philosophy of natural rights is embraced.

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