Opinion

Anti-Constitutional Law

Gavel (Credit: Shutterstock)

Font Size:

Are our constitutional rights being denied in favor of politically created privileges?

For more than two centuries, the U.S. Constitution has served as the contract between the governed, and the government. It grants certain governing powers to the latter, but also expressly limits the power of government by granting certain civil rights to the governed. These civil rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and subsequent amendments. The Constitution is described as the supreme law of the land, and any law or judicial decision in contravention of the constitution is invalid.

But the actual text of the Constitution is now frequently disregarded. Words with clear meaning are often given a very different meaning by the courts, by the president, or by politicians in Congress. Powers never granted to the federal government and rights never granted by the Constitution are now periodically “discovered”, as if some long lost treasure.

The result: a chaotic state of affairs making it increasingly difficult to determine what rights we possess under the Constitution. Judicial and governmental edicts that have brought us to this point are anti-constitutional in nature, defeating the whole purpose of a written constitution.

As a result, civil rights granted to us all by the actual Constitution have been systematically weakened. Less well understood is that the weakening of our constitutionally enumerated rights is often due to governmentally created extra-constitutional privileges (misnamed “rights”) without any basis in the actual constitution. These “rights” are simply designed to benefit politically favored constituencies.

How, you might ask, can the creation of “rights” weaken our constitutionally enumerated rights? Consider just three examples: affirmative action, gay marriage, and transgender “rights”.

Affirmative action programs require that certain individuals be given preferential treatment based upon their race, while discriminating against the disfavored race. You will search the Constitution in vain for any provision that grants government this power. At a huge cost in lives and treasure, our country fought a civil war over the issue of slavery – the ultimate in discrimination. Amendments passed in the aftermath of the civil war very clearly were designed to prohibit such racial discrimination.

These amendments were designed to protect all Americans from racial discrimination. However, those rights have repeatedly been weakened by the Courts through its granting of extra-constitutional privileges to certain groups of individuals because of their race, privileges not accorded to those not members of the favored race. Such privileges have then been used to nullify the constitutional right we all have to be free from racial discrimination.

With gay marriage, you will again search the Constitution in vain for any provision that grants one the right to marry a member of the same sex. And yet, not only has the Supreme Court created a new extra constitutional privilege for individuals to marry members of the same sex, but certain States have now made it illegal for you to refuse to associate, on religious grounds, with individuals who engage in conduct to which you object.

The First and Fourteenth Amendments deny the federal and state governments the power of “prohibiting the free exercise” of your religion. Nevertheless, the extra constitutional gay marriage privilege created by the Supreme Court is now being used to violate rights granted to you by the First Amendment — your right to refuse to associate, on religious grounds, with individuals who engage in conduct to which you object.

Even more recently, a heretofore unknown right, the “right” to enter the public bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex, has been discovered by the Obama Administration. Again, you will search the Constitution in vain for such a right. Again, there is a right grounded in the Constitution and long recognized – the right of privacy. The government has decided your right to privacy must be sacrificed, so that it can grant to a favored political constituency the extra-constitutional privilege to enter the public bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex.

Moreover, opposition to such extra-constitutional privileges is increasingly under attack. Such opposition clearly constitutes “political speech”, a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Opposition to state sponsored discrimination (aka affirmative action) is already attacked as racial discrimination. This has created a truly Orwellian state of affairs where racism is treated as not racism and opposition to actual racism is treated as racial discrimination.

Unless halted and reversed, the likely next step in this process will be that opposition to all extra-constitutional privileges created in favor of special interest groups will be prohibited as unlawful discrimination. That will be the tipping point, and the Left knows it. The silencing of dissent is one of its cherished goals. Once dissent can be silenced, there will be no turning back.

Soon, we will once again head to the polls to elect a President. The next President is likely to appoint at least two, and perhaps as many as five justices to the Supreme Court. Of the two principal nominees only one has promised to appoint justices that will follow the Constitution. In November, he will have my vote.

Jeffrey D. Salzer, Esq, is an attorney who is one of the founding members of Kelliher & Salzer, LLC, a law firm with offices in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Columbia, Maryland. He specializes in commercial real estate transactions, corporate law, and tax law. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Business and Law at the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel