Guest Contributor, Jim Greaves writes

I will be the first to "indict" me regarding the fact that I have not read a lot about what the Founders intended (The Federalist, for example; Thomas Paine; etc). I do have a mind, however, and though obtaining a "C+" in my major of philosophy-religion in college in 1971, and learned through trial and error what is or is not Aristotelian logic, I think some things do not even require a high school education to be understandable as nonsense.

Thus, one thing I think is accurate, is that the Founders did NOT use phrases like "civil liberties" in their writings, nor in the Declaration of Independence,  nor the US Constitution.

"Civil" implies "given by civil government" - us, through our representatives... Mere mortals, be it by a small town or Congress. It has - often - little to do with "pre-existing" rights "given by nature's god" or whatever was believed by the disparate band of rebels at the time of the two above works. Civil rights are used to justify the "equality" that has been "given" to blacks and others. This is NOT what the Founders meant by "inalienable", which they meant to include ALL up-right, walking humans!

In fact, both those works are based on a long history, dating back to (if not before) Magna Carta. "Civil liberties" is not a phrase therein either, and is a construct of "modernism". Moses come to mind?

SO, when someone proposes or posits a bill to promote or create "civil liberties", they are NOT speaking to "precedent", but, IMHO, merely to the recent "histrionics" of politicians from the 1920's onward [the growth of socialist fascism], who, seeking to ensure their own positions in government (including aggrandizements of power and wealth) would have - and still would - do ANYTHING, say ANYTHING, and promote ANYTHING (bill etc) to make their wishes for power into reality. As well as to ensure their grandiose "life styles" in retirement. No need to name names on that!

Beware Greeks bearing gifts. Promises of protection by "law" from invasions of privacy do NOT work to protect the innocent from false arrest and the paparazzi in the press who will do ANYTHING - just like the power-mongers they emulate and revere in politics - to gain notoreity and - they each hope - a Pulitzer Prize for skewering some poor soul on their own pillar of guiled "journalism".

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
But, recall the words of one of our UN-popular presidents, who promulgated, promoted, and signed into law "civil rights" legislation, that has proven neither "civil" nor equal of rights:


“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
­ President Lyndon B. Johnson