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Comment by apalmer | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much ^^^

I think this is an interesting but (apparently) subtle argument, so lets take it a step further for illustration purposes.

The US could repeal the first amendment, and explicitly make being a buddhist illegal, if enough congressmen got on board. There is a clear well known process for this, and in fact even precedent as previous amendments have been repealed. This does not make it incorrect to say 'freedom of religion is a inalienable right in the USA', because it is such today, as the law stands, the fact that congress has the power to change this doesn't make it a false statement...

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> The US could repeal the first amendment, and explicitly make being a buddhist illegal, if enough congressmen got on board.

This actually ties into the anti-federalist argument against the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to make laws regarding the practice of religion?

> Where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to make laws regarding the practice of religion?

The Commerce Clause, of course! I imagine they would argue that money donated to churches would otherwise be used to purchase goods and services. Or that time spent worshipping would otherwise be used in production.

I'm only half joking.

If you think the parent is incorrect, I invite everyone to look up Gonzales v. Raich, and Wickard v. Filburn. Everything is commerce, and therefore regulated under Congress via the commerce clause.

I don't think it's incorrect, which is why I brought up the commerce clause in the first place (with Filburn in mind). I agree, to congress everything is commerce. It's just such a farce that it would strain credulity if it wasn't so clearly evidenced. We truly live in a mockery of a rational world.

forgive me. I was breaking down the fourth wall, and talking to the reader of the thread themselves. I was trying to support your argument. :)

Pedantic and tangential, but in your example, the statement would still be incorrect, as a revocable right is, by definition...well, alienable.

That's kind of the point. You can't argue that a specific right is not inalienable just because a process exists by which it could be denied, unless your point is to argue that no rights can ever be inalienable, or that no power can ever be unaccountable, etc.

We say that someone is unaccountable when the process required to lead to their accountability subsequent to misbehavior is in practice not likely to occur, not when the absolute lack of accountability can be proven with mathematical rigor.

This is the same pedantry that leads engineers to come up with crazy legal arguments. The fact that velocity is relativistic and relative to an external observer not subject to the rotation of the Earth your vehicle was not exceeding the speed limit is not going to get you out of a speeding ticket, no matter how many times you argue that it's technically correct. Because when people say things they do so within an accepted context that doesn't include the sort of pedantic absolutism that would cause arbitrary good faith statements made in the course of normal conversation to become technically inaccurate when weighed against impossible standards.

Any "right" can be revoked by someone with a bigger gun.

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