🚀 go-pugleaf

donb@netcom.com (Don Baldwin) writes:
>I wasn't contesting your assertion that the Constitution can be changed.
>There is obviously provision in it for change.  What I was disagreeing
>with was your claim that gun ownership is not a right.  It is a right,
>one which the Constitution RECOGNIZES, not grants.

	I think this is one of the basic problems with the idea of
democracy. ;)

	There is a difference between "legal rights" and "rights"
in the moral sense. I think it's somewhat analogous to the difference
between "legal system" and "justice." One is the ideal, and the other
is an attempt to implement it in reality.

	No matter how you want to cut it, The Constitution is a legal
document, not a moral one. This is demonstrable by the facts that:
a) it was written with provisions in it for changing it
b) it has been changed
Absolute moral systems don't incorporate those provisions. In fact,
some of the changes that were made to The Constitution are fairly
obviously as a *result* of "moral flaws" in the document - making
slavery illegal and giving women the "right" to vote.

	Now, the "right" to vote is an example of a right under the
law. After all, if voting were an absolute god-given moral right,
it would have been more obvious to the wise authors of the document,
or it would have been written in some stone tablet someplace, or
similar hokum. When you bring god-given moral rights into the
discussion, we're no longer talking rationally, we're arguing
metaphysics and religion, and the discussion must perforce end.

	I agree that messing with the underpinnings of our society
(for that is in a sense what The Constitution is) is dangerous, but
societies must do that to survive. Whether you like it or not,
democracy is the tyranny of the mediocre. That means that if a
majority of Americans want to vote a law against wearing underwear,
then only outlaws will wear underwear. The other route is to argue
that The Constitution is a moral document, inspired by divinity.
Considering its manifest mistakes, that's a dangerous tack to
try to argue.

mjr.