In yesterday’s Constitution Day proclamation (here), Pres. Obama showed either his complete ignorance, or utter disdain for the Constitution. Or both. Here’s the key section:

Our Constitution reflects the values we cherish as a people and the ideals we strive for as a society. It secures the privileges we enjoy as citizens, but also demands participation, responsibility, and service to our country and to one another.

Regular readers of this site will quickly be able to see the wildly inaccurate points made there. While I expect little adherence to the Founders’ Constitution, I’m still taken aback by how much anti-constitution rhetoric was crammed into just two short sentences.

  1. The Constitution does not demand participation, responsibility and service. It is almost entirely a set of limitations on federal power. It’s a rulebook for government and not a set of demands on human action.
  2. Obama clearly doesn’t believe that people have rights, just privileges. By definition, those can be taken away, whereas rights cannot.*
  3. What is probably not too surprising, Obama is an elitist, of the most extreme kind. Rights are natural. They are ours by our birth, our very nature as human.  Some call them inalienable, or unalienable, or God-given. That means, those rights are not tied to being a citizen, as Obama noted. All human beings have the same natural rights.

*Rights can be interfered with or infringed – in practice – when people allow government to do so. But even in this situation, the rights still exist, should people exercise them in defiance of such government acts.

Michael Boldin

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