A serious, possibly fatal to our Republic, ignorance shared by most citizens: The concept of inherent rights.

Most Americans not only “misunderstand” American jurisprudence and philosophy; they have it exactly backwards.

Let me illustrate.

Can you imagine yourself asking this question:

"Where in the law does it say I have the right to do X?"

If you answered yes, that you could see yourself asking that question, you are profoundly uninformed. (No snark intended, I promise. But you are badly wrong).

In the American philosophy, as laid out in the Declaration and in the underpinnings of the Constitution, humans have inherent freedom.

We have it by virtue of being born. From our creator. Or from the fact of our existence.

That means that we have rights to do things whether or not any state body ever wrote them down in a law.

People believe that, to hold a right, that that right needs to be "enumerated" in the law. That means "it has to give me specific permission to do it, or I can't."

That is shockingly wrong.

You, a human, and an American citizen, have fundamental rights already. Even though they don't appear in the law specifically.

Here's a simple example:

There is no statute on the books in the state of Vermont that says, "Vermont residents may change the oil of their car without paying a licensed mechanic shop."

The lack of this law does not mean, "therefore Josh is not legally allowed to change the oil in his Toyota."

Wrong. You could use any example and the results are the same.

This is why the framers fought each other over whether to include the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights at all. They addressed this problem in the ninth amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Why? Because they feared this would lead people to believe that if a specific right was not laid out in detail in the Constitution, then Americans would believe they were legally barred from taking that action.

This is where we have ended up. This is why we cannot defend the Constitution.

This is why we allow patently illegal, un-Constitutional "governance" practices such as "executive orders" that give you a curfew, or require you to wear a mask, or attempt to legally compel you to take a vaccine.

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Do you even Constitution?