(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Dobbs was not just about abortion and we should be very afraid. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-07-16

This started out as a comment to Dartagnan’s Diary titled

These 5 words from the U.S. Supreme Court will live in infamy. It ran a little long so I thought I would make my first post after being a reader for several years. My post is a commentary on the five words, how absurd the logic behind them is, and how dangerous they truly are for all of us.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs has signaled an intent to eliminate most of the rights we have taken for granted over the last seventy years. By returning power to the states, State Legislatures will run amok protecting special interests and catering to the religious right and eliminate many protections.

From Dobbs, “The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” History and tradition is a bad way to interpret the Constitution. The founding fathers knew what rights they were granting themselves under the new republic, and did not intend to write them out in the form of a list. They also knew that those rights were not intended to apply to everyone. History and tradition is such an amorphous concept, that it could lead to any outcome.

The founders deserve much credit for forming a government with democratic ideals such as freedom and equality. Yet they also deserve much derision for their hypocrisy and blindness to fact that the freedom, equality, and the rights the Government would protect were not intended to apply to the people owned as property, the poor, women, or the Native Americans the founders intended to conquer shortly after creating the new nation.

When Jefferson wrote the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” he wrote them fully aware of the people he owned as property from birth, and contrary to public sentiment never intended to, nor did he, grant them their freedom. It is often pointed out that these words from the Declaration of Independence are not in the Constitution, nor are they codified in American law. However, these words are an often quoted part of America’s deeply rooted history and tradition. The Ninth Amendment also specifically says that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” What rights can those be other than the unlisted “unalienable Rights” of the Declaration of Independence?

What history and tradition teach us is that the “people” identified in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution did not include everyone. Just like the Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin for "Great Charter of Freedoms"), applied only to nobles and not the peasant class, www.britannica.com/… the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were for the benefit of the wealthy white landowner class and not the rest of the population. Sure, history and tradition allowed that the closer one was to the protected class, the more likely one was to get the protections afforded by the new Government, but anyone on the margin could expect little attention paid to their Constitutional protections.

The right to marry, the right to bodily autonomy, and the right to privacy were no doubt thought of by the founders as unalienable rights both in the Declaration of Independence and Ninth Amendment. White wealthy property owners have always enjoy these rights. Nonetheless, history and tradition show a slave, a freed black, www.archives.gov/...other people of colorwww.history.com/..., immigrants, women, LGBQTouthistory.org/..., or the poor could hardly expect the benefit of those unenumerated rights, let alone the ones actually listed in the Constitution until the last 50-70 years. Now they are set to be taken away.

In Dobbs, the majority would have us believe that rights not listed in the Constitution with no history and tradition mean they are not protected by law. In other words, in order to be a Constitutionally protected right, it either has to be enumerated in the Constitution, or have a long history and tradition. Of course privacy and bodily autonomy do have a long history and tradition, but that does not fit the Conservative agenda. What American history and tradition really teach us that if you are rich and white you have these rights, but if you are poor or a person of color, you do not. I expect some form of debt peonage to return. After all, debt peonage has a long history and tradition in the South. www.pbs.org/....

What progressive courts accomplished over the last half of the 20th century was to expand coverage of the rights enjoyed by most of the white population to minorities, the marginal, and disadvantaged, (almost) ALL the people of the country. In other words, Liberty for all, not just some.

The recent decisions of the conservatives on Supreme Court want to take us back to a time when only the privileged classes could expect Constitutional protections. Sure, the Court will use duplicitous arguments to justify their decisions to disassemble the administrative state—after the EPA, expect Medicare and Social Security to be next, and strip civil rights—after abortion expect gay marriage and sodomy to be outlawed again, but it will be clear that none of their decisions are intended to affect the rights and privileges of their class.

Roberts is no less intent on turning the clock backwards than the rest of the conservatives, he just wants to do it slowly in the dark of night where the other radicals want to do it now and quickly while they have the power. The difference is in tactic, not desired outcome. Like dominos falling expect the rights we have taken for granted the past 70 years to gradually disappear. Faster for those on the margins, but they will picked off one at a time and the only protections will be for the rich and white.

In the future, the most important factor in whether or not a right is protected is who is being protected, not what right is being protected.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/16/2110783/-Dobbs-was-not-just-about-abortion-and-we-should-be-very-afraid

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.