What we really need to do, and I admit I know not how, is to make sure that no child graduates from high school without understanding the entire premise behind the Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence:

We The People already possess all of the rights that could ever exist. Our founding charters are a delineation of the strictly limited power We The People have granted to the Federal and State governments to abrograte those rights in narrowly defined circumstances.

Those idiots who believe that government grants us our rights deserve what they get.

If you really want the children to grasp "the entire premise" behind the constitution, then you're going to have to instruct them that it is morally righteous to claim and bind other peoples' lives centuries in advance of their births.

Do you understand the implications?

I don't believe that you want to go anywhere near something like that. That's probably somewhere in the ballpark with the very last thing you want.

Rights, in our Constitutional concept, are what the government cannot do to you (e.g., tske away your home) -- not what government should do for you (e.g., provide you with a home).

In other words, the sole legitimate function of government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of the individual, and, by extension, the military security of the nation, and then to leave us the Hell alone.

Steven, you're right about the original idea of rights. The idea that someone has a right to your money is a perversion of the idea of rights.

That's also a good point about binding future generations -- something Jefferson worried about ("life belongs in usufruct to the living" etc.)

But the upside is that the Constitution is also supposed to limit the power to take away freedom (even by majority rule).

Dear Eric:

Thank you! (again....)

As to the older generation binding another, I'm inclind to agree with Edmund Burke when he spoke of a compact between the dead, the living, and those yet unborn. That's what we write wills for, to bind those living after we ourselves are long dead, have long passed into the other world.

By the way, speaking of wills, Ayn Rand explicitly left her Estate to, and designated Leonard Peikoff as, her heir. I can't wait till I get my hands on that book. I'm getting more conservative every day. We need another General Horemheb.