Friday, January 10, 2014

Constitutional Rights for the Individuals of the World (Intro 1.0)

Do U.S. Constitutional rights extend to individuals who are NOT citizens of the United States, who live outside the United States?

I feel that those rights are everyone's, regardless of nationality, regardless of locale. Why? Because - based on my accepted definition of rights - rights are inherent to the individual, not privileges granted by a group or government.

That's my opinion - or interpretation. But what does the U.S. Constitution say? ...

Well, after a cursory review of the original articles of the Constitution, I have found no mention of rights. So what about the Bill of Rights?

Well, the Bill of Rights does not say how far the rights extend, but it does mention rights for the "people," which was explained contemporaneously to mean "individuals." And it was also assumed contemporaneously that the rights in the Bill of Rights were "enumerated," meaning that they were being "counted," therefore already inherent to individuals. Therefore, if the rights are inherent to individuals, being naturally owned by individuals, then it is logical to conclude that those rights are Constitutional rights that were simply enumerated by amendments to the Constitution, and therefore they are violated by our government, when our government does to foreigners in foreign lands what it says it can't legally do to U.S. citizens on the partial(more on this later)-sovereign soil of the United States of America.

(Note: I know that this is not an exhaustive argument for U.S. Constitutional rights protection for those traditionally not afforded protecting from rights violations outside USA borders, so comments are definitely welcome, and I will be revising this post.)





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