If your rights are up for debate, they're not being recognized as inalieneable; the debaters do not think those rights are inherent.
In Tennessee, there's a bill under consideration that would deny children in this country illegally the right to a public education. ICE is conducting operations based on the notion that anyone in the country illegally is not entitled to due process of law -- and that they can"illegalize" anyone in the country on a student visa or "green card" simply by claiming they pose a threat to public safety or national security (or if they are found to have engaged in criminal activity or fraud). Laws and Executive Orders in multiple states have barred adults changing the sex or gender marker on their ID -- and this applies not just to they/them boogeypersons with unusually-colored hair but to people like the late computer scientist Lynn Conway and electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos. Bear in mind that "Real ID" driver's licenses and State ID cards require this information, and you'll soon need one just to board a passenger flight.
All of these are examples of people whose rights are being debated -- not just in public forums but in legislatures and governmental executive offices, and while it is problematic in and of itself, if the rights of some group are questioned, the rights of everyone are under question, too.
Within my lifetime, a single woman had difficulty opening a bank account, getting a credit card or buying a house; a married woman had to have her husband's consent, even to open an account solely in her own name. Within the lifetimes of my grandmothers, women could not vote.
When the rights of one subset of people are up for grabs, everyone's rights can be. Maybe you believe you're safe. Maybe you are -- but you'd be a lot safer if your inalienable rights were genuinely protected from the grubby paws of partisan politicians, stirring up division in search of power, and the only way that works is if those rights apply to everyone -- whitebread types happy near the statistical mean, weirdos, freaks, foreigners and criminals, even people who didn't vote for the same politicians you chose.
Update
3 months ago
3 comments:
And unfortunately, we have a current admin full of people who see Constitutional Limits, Checks & Balances, and Separation of Powers as a bad thing- it's a bad thing, really bad.
It's something that grates on me. Why are the voters who are so openly and unabashedly for things like the US Constitution, American Greatness, the Founding Fathers, and all the principles that make "America" throwing out all of those things? Why are they turning to some old guy that's everything those principles warn against?
I suspect that those voters like the iconography & the 2nd Amendment, but really don't know or understand the rest of it. Not too different from most Christians for that matter.
When my dad died in the 60s, my mother had to close their grocery store down because all the vendors cut off the credit and demanded immediate payment for credit already given.
When my older brother died in 2006, we had to go through all of the records mom saved over the years. His two daughters, born in the early 80s, were shocked when they saw the demand letters from the vendors and the bank. We had found out that she would have lost the school bus as well if Blue Bird and the county school board had not guaranteed the loan.
I recall applying for a credit card in about 1976. It came. With my husband's name on it. I called the company from work. I think I blistered the ears of the co-workers sitting around me during that "conversation" which included my informing that company of the ECOA in 1974. I ended by threatening to sic a lawyer on them. I got the damned card.
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