Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we’re dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.
If politicians can take or distribute them, then they’re not “inalienable” and they’re not “rights.”
We don’t have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.
And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.
Oh my god that’s what the constitution IS!!! It’s a framework to take that power out of the hands of individuals and enshrine it for good!
Unfortunately that system and ANY system requires maintenance, engagement, and civic duty and we have failed to keep at it, ceding the power of all three branches of government to people who want to trash the constitution and take our rights away. THAT’s why things are coming apart at the seams.
We can’t just handwave a new system into being that will be immune to these threats — we’ll always have to do the real, constant work it takes to make & keep a free & fair society. So we might as well work on the one we have in front of us!
amhrancas 