Please Santa, Give Me My Rights

I have a simple Christmas wish this year. All I want is the freedom that I was guaranteed in the United States Constitution. During my short lifetime, I have watched rights that I once took for granted gradually eroded for what our betters tell us are in the interests of the greater good. In just a few, short decades, the greater good has deprived me of my right to own property, my right to bear arms and even my right to speak my mind.
In a way, the Bill of Rights itself represented a white flag. What we now call rights were in fact limitations upon the power that government may exercise. Contemporaneous thinkers believed that specifically outlining the rights described in the Bill of Rights was superfluous, as the powers permitted to the government were clearly delineated and nowhere was the government empowered to restrict speech or seize private property. Additionally, it was feared that specific enumeration of rights would permit the interpretation that these rights were the only rights allowed to the American people. For that reason, it was considered necessary to include the Ninth Amendment which clearly stated that the rights detailed in the first eight amendments should not be considered a comprehensive list of the rights retained by the people.
The Ninth Amendment has to be the most forgotten and most thoroughly ignored of all amendments.
Those who feared that the Bill of Rights would someday be interpreted as the comprehensive list of all the rights that Americans would be allowed were vindicated. What no one could have imagined was that even those rights specifically set in stone by the Bill of Rights would melt away.
The authors and those who ratified the Fifth Amendment believed that they had protected for all time the right of man to keep his property from a pernicious government. But my right to own private property is no longer secure. For years now, environmental laws have superceded my right to my own property. If somebody discovers a giant Palouse earthworm in my backyard, I would for all intents and purposes lose my land as the requirements of the worm are considered more valuable to the greater good than my right to own my property.
People have lost their land, their livelihood and even their liberty when endangered species were discovered on their property.
That’s bad enough. But now my property may be taken by government if the city fathers decide that somebody with more money than me will enrich them for it. Here and there, state and local governments have added property protections to their codes, but a right is supposedly inviolable. If my right to own property is dependent upon the permission of a legislature, then it is not a right, but a privilege that can be taken away should that same legislature have a change of heart or simply a change in the majority party.
Liberals have even taken property to advance political agendas. Hercules, California decided that it did not want a Wal-Mart within it city limits and so it seized 17 acres belonging to Wal-Mart to obstruct the store’s construction.
My right to own a firearm is no longer assured. The Second Amendment seems to be the most definitive of all the amendments, stating that the right to bear arms could not be “infringed.” But, from the day that somebody decided that this right could be regulated we were on a slippery slope that threatened not just our right to bear arms, but any right.
I used to think that if liberals interpreted the Second Amendment as extravagantly as they did the First Amendment, then private ownership of nuclear weapons would be permissible, if not required. Unfortunately, the slippery slope faced the other direction. Not even my right to free speech is certain. Federal campaign finance reform limits how I may advocate for or against a political party. The Federal Election Commission has fined independent advocacy groups for speaking their mind. This is most shocking in that the media, which are entirely dependent upon the right of free speech for their own functions, have actually participated in the dismantling of this right. Perhaps they believe that denying the right to others makes their own freedom more precious.
And so, I fear that Santa Claus is my last chance to regain my rights.