The Power of the Ninth Amendment
The government has been telling you they have a legal right to impose orders and mandates, simply by decree. The administration currently occupying the White House is passing down edicts that penalize disobedience. In doing so, they betray their gross ignorance of the roots of your rights—namely the Natural (or Fundamental) Rights that are the ground of all our nation’s laws.
The Framers meant the Bill of Rights to be illustrative, not complete.
The Ninth Amendment identifies a protected “realm of personal liberty which the government cannot enter” that accommodates much more than just the “enumerated” (listed by number) rights set down in the Bill of Rights.
As Daniel A. Farber writes in Retained by the People, “The Framers meant the Bill of Rights to be illustrative, not complete.” Both those listed, and many not, “were part of their political and ethical vision, what they had fought a revolution to honor. For them, as men of their time, these rights were based in ‘natural law’ and the ‘law of nations,’” and to them, “natural law was not a dead letter; it was hard, enforceable law.”
James Madison was instrumental in creating the Ninth Amendment to ensure that those rights included in the Bill of Rights would not be used to devalue others not specifically mentioned. Madison proposed that, as Farber has it, “Both enumerated and unenumerated rights are similar in their origins; neither kind is ‘created’ by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights…Instead, these rights existed before the Constitution was even adopted.”
“Without a Ninth Amendment, the federal power might be able to invade every right that was not explicitly listed, and yet a complete list would be impossible. Thus, the Ninth Amendment addresses governmental invasions of privacy or human dignity that are not listed in the earlier amendments.”
It’s about time we revive the Ninth Amendment and begin enforcing it.
Among those Natural Rights protected by the Ninth Amendment is the right to decide for yourself which medical treatments or therapies you will accept into your body. Your body is manifestly a “realm of personal liberty which the government cannot enter.”
The present administration may believe it is limited only by the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments (and even those don’t seem to slow them down very much), but in fact they are limited to a very narrow range of authority, outside of which you have no obligation to obey.
The Second Amendment recognizes your Natural Right to defend your liberties—including those not enumerated—when your government fails to.
It’s about time we revive the Ninth Amendment and begin enforcing it. “We should treat unenumerated fundamental rights as being on a par with the enumerated rights that courts enforce, rather than ‘disparaging’ them by treating them as second-class rights. In short, Ninth Amendment rights deserve not only indirect protection by the courts, but direct application…To treat them as less ‘legal’ than rights such as free speech would disparage them in just the way the Ninth Amendment forbids.”
Whether or not lawyers and courts today understand this, the Framers certainly did, and the Second Amendment recognizes your Natural Right to defend your liberties—including those not enumerated—when your government fails to.
Kelly John Walker is an American statesman, senior writer, and entrepreneur. He is Founder of FreedomTalk, Host of FreedomTalkTV, and a freelance writer published in The Washington Times, Gateway Pundit, The Epoch Times, Townhall, and more. Kelly holds a BA in English & Theology, and a Master of Science degree on a graduate fellowship with the US Department of Defense. He had a distinguished career as a conservation professional before founding two award-winning advertising agencies.
His newest project is the “Fathering in a World Gone Mad” series featuring Eric Metaxas, Victor Marx, Sheriff Mark Lamb, Clay Clark, and more.
