There is a destructive, delusional meme spreading like a virus among many misguided Americans. It pushes the idea that government can pick and choose which rights codified in the Bill of Rights it wishes to recognize or discard on any given day. This delusion is predicated on the concept that if a popular majority can be emotionally whipped into a frenzy over one particular right, then that right can simply be discarded and stricken from the Bill of Rights. But no such power exists to discard any portion of the Bill of Rights, at least not without proper ratification by three-fourths of the fifty states.
There is no such power found solely in the federal government. There is no such power placed solely in the executive branch, nor in Congress, nor in the White House. The Bill of Rights describes a set of individual rights and liberties that are not granted by government, but recognized as DIVINE rights given to use by our Creator. Because government never granted the rights in the first place, it has no authority to take them away. "The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting." - William J Brennan Jr.
The individual liberties described in the Bill of Rights cannot be infringed, nor deleted, nor overridden by popular opinion... not even loudly screamed opinion. America is not a nation ruled by the tyranny of the mob. It isn't even a democracy -- it's a republic, where certain inalienable rights describe the protection of each individual, even if that individual is the lone voice of sanity in a majority gone mad.
