What Is an Individual Right, and Who Determines What It Is?

Allen West

by Allen West: Last week’s tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School hit close to home for the West Family. The school is in the congressional district that I was honored to represent. I even addressed the Army JROTC Cadets at the school. Parkland is a model community, and no one would have ever believed such evil could strike there at Stoneman Douglas High School, yet it did. Through this week, there will be the funeral services laying to rest those seventeen who horrifically had their lives taken away. There are many questions that must be answered, especially how there could have been so many indicators and warnings, yet nothing was heeded?

As for me, as I was doing a five-mile run this past Saturday, there was a question that came to my mind. Yes, the obvious questions are about mental health issues and the lack of law enforcement follow-up to the tips and reports. But my question centers on something more fundamental. Each time we have one of these tragedies, the immediate response from the progressive socialist left, and their complicit liberal progressive media allies goes to gun control. And in each instance, there is the collective demonization of a certain demographic as “Second Amendment extremists.”
In full disclosure, I do own two AR-15 semi-automatic rifles and an AR-15 semi-automatic carbine. As well, I sit on the board of the National Rifle Association (NRA). I do believe that we have a constitutional Second Amendment individual right. So why is there this constant debate that it does not exist, or even in some states and cities, it is denied, infringed? And what is very interesting is that many of these pro-gun control areas are also sanctuary states and cities.

But the question that I pondered on my run was this: What is an individual right in America, and who gets to determine what is? It is self-evident that the progressive socialist left in America does not believe that the Second Amendment is an individual right, albeit that it is in our Constitution, our Bill of Rights.

We also are coming to realize that the liberal progressive left does not embrace our Fourth Amendment right. All it takes is to see how there exists a secret court in America with secret Judges who are granting warrants against Americans with a threshold of evidence lower than our Constitution, rule of law, demands. However, it appears that is just fine with some in America, namely the left, and the abuse of power that proceeds from such.

If you are on just about any college or university campus, you face the rejection of your First Amendment rights. This is pervasive throughout our culture, our society, now. Freedom of speech has become freedom of accepted speech, just as freedom of expression is regarded as the left’s definition of what is expression aligned with their ideological agenda. How odd it is that we have Christians going before courts in America to defend their freedom of religion, their beliefs, against the state. Freedom of religion is being reduced to being freedom of worship, and it can only exist in the space that the state and leftists define as acceptable worship spaces … not your place of business.

In contrast, the progressive socialist left tells us what our rights are, and demand they institute the policies supporting such. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a woman had the right to choose. This sounds very innocuous, but in essence, the left was deciding life and when it begins. It is not the first unalienable right endowed to us by our Creator. It is a decision granted, bestowed by government, resulting in millions of unborn children being brutally murdered in the womb.

In the late ’70s, it was Jimmy Carter who said Americans had a right to own a home and his Community Reinvestment Act codified that belief. It was thirty years later when that government granted right resulted in a massive financial meltdown which emanated from our mortgage industry. We now hear folks like Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and other avowed socialists claim that we have a right to healthcare and free college. They are stating that we cannot pursue our happiness, but rather must await them, the statists, to guarantee our happiness.

The underlying danger is that our individual drive, determination, and will is eroded as we await the largesse from government, instead of being the embodiment of that which has made America great. It is our indomitable individual spirit of liberty and the policies providing us an equality of opportunity that has made America unlike any other nation. When we have the liberal progressive leftists, as history has shown, dictating rights based upon their ideology, it leads to equality of outcomes.

And never forget, a free people are not equal, and an equal people are not free.

Lastly, how interesting that our Supreme Court would rule that we all have a right to be married, and therefore make same-sex marriage the law of the land. Then why isn’t the Second Amendment the law of the land? After all, it is part of our original Bill of Rights.

There is a very deep discussion we need to have in America, and it centers on whether the Bill of Rights are still rights. Or have we entered a new era where a certain political ideology determines what is a right based upon their agenda? If it is the latter, we have a far greater issue in our Constitutional Republic, which may not survive such a challenge … unless we are willing to again believe that our Creator, not man, endows us with our unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Allen West is a retired U.S Army Lt. Colonel and former U.S Representative. He is a a Senior Fellow at the Media Research Center. To hear more from Col. West, visit Allenbwest.com.

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