The American legal system and individual rights
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How can the American legal system, which is so devoted to protecting individual rights, justify itself morally if it jeopardizes, through its own rules, the right of law-abiding citizens to personal peace and security?
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Solution Summary
It is important to understand the difference between the original intent of the founding fathers and the current American experiment. They are two completely separate ideas. When we can clearly see this distinction, we can resolve this rather "sticky" question. I provide a rather lengthy essay explaining these issues.
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This is a very interesting proposition, and even more, a bit leading.
Let us begin with some foundational facts. The founding fathers of the American constitutional republic knew that their rights were unalienable. Do you know what that means? It doesn't mean "un-alienable" but rather, "un-a-lienable." Got that? Something is un-a-lienable because no one else can put a lien onto it. In other words, "rights" are gifts from the Creator. He bestows them onto his creation and no one -- and no government -- has the "right" to remove them or apply liens to them.
Now, if we consider what the founding fathers knew were three fundamental rights, we can learn a lot. They wished to protect the rights to life, liberty, and property (often called "pursuit of happiness"). This is what the original American constitutional republic stood for. It stood for people, who considered themselves sovereign with respect to a civil government. It stood for acknowledging a Creator. It stood for acknowledging a Creator who gave His creation certain blessings. And it ...
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