[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The concept of the Framers was that government has no rights at all. They were used to (and tired of) the background they came from, which said that the Government has all the rights, the Government owns you, you are a subject. They created the National Government because they had to, not because they wanted one. And they created that government to accomplish two things - arbitrate disputes between the States and deal with foreign policy. The first was because the States couldn't always agree on everything, and they needed some way to keep each other in line. The second was because foreign governments refused to deal with thirteen separate little nations severally and insisted that they would deal only with The United States, since that was what we had chosen to call ourselves.

Everything beyond that is outside the pervue of the Constitution, which specifies how the Government is to be run and then lists certain things that it is not allowed to touch. To hedge his bets, author James Madison made sure the Ninth and Tenth amendments were in there. The People have ALL the rights, the Government has none.

You said it far better than I did Steve.