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Current Events » in reply to The right to privacy is implied in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments.

implied?.
Tom Brosz — (archived)

That sounds good in theory, and someone like Ayn Rand would have agreed that the Constitution is a consequence of a philosophy, not the source of it.

Unfortunately, the ideas on which the Constitution was based, the limitation of government power, and the enshrinement of individual rights, have already been breached in so many areas of our lives, that the "right to privacy," stretched bizarrely into a "right to abortion," can only be seen as yet one more arbitrary pronouncement of a certain set of judges.

The ownership of one's own body against the right of the government to control it should theoretically, as gbailkie points out, flatten the drug laws, never mind countless other laws where the government damn well tells you what you can or can't do with your body.

Back when the Constitution actually meant something, the government had to pass an entire bloody amendment to outlaw alcohol (other drugs weren't much of an issue back then.) Nowadays, they'd just pass the law, and the judges would simply pronounce it "constitutional," based on "general welfare" or some oracular interpretation of another clause.

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