A more perfect union.

Living in America: a Guide for the Perplexed Chapter 1

If you're going to live here it helps to have a passing aquaintence with what are luaghably referred to as your "rights." History buffs take note: It must mean something that the first thing we had to do with our Constitution was prop it up with a double handful of amendments mostly stolen from the Magna Carta.

Amendment 1: You can practice what religeon you will as you will... provided it doesn't involve consuming proscribed plants or molecules, or declaring yourself to be the Messiah and holing up in Waco, in which case the FBI reserves the right to roll incendiary devices into your home. Free speech is also guaranteed, particularly to major corporations who control virtually all mass communication. The right to free assembly is guaranteed as long as you don't get in the way of any commerce.
Amendment 2: An American favorite. The right to bear arms (that's, uh, firearms). People in Canada think we all carry guns. Note the Waco exception, above.
Amendment 3: The government can't keep soldiers in your home, thank goodness. They can, however, force you to pay to keep them in a barracks for which they can legally steal your home for the land to build on.
Amendment 4: Cops can't just come in to your house and search without warrant or cause, unless of course drugs are involved in which case they can pretty much do what they damn well please, including flying helicopters up to your window just like in 1984. On a related note, schools and employers can seize your urine and search for drug residues in it with no justification at all.
Amendment 5: The basic rights of criminals (and suspected criminals). Well, you'd never do anything like that, so why don't we just toss this one out the window. Congress has.
Amendment 6: Ditto
Amendment 7: You can always demand a jury if you get sued. Sometimes I think the founding fathers were truly prescient.
Amendment 8: Considering the condition of the U.S. prison system, the concept of cruel and unusual punishment has by necessity been modified. I believe at this point you still have the right not to have a live snake shoved up your ass. Oops, yet another assertion of this 5-6 year old essay series is no longer valid. Sometimes I truly believe I'm prescient and it pisses me off. I want to forsee the damn lotto for once. In any event, it is only fair to note the terrorism exemption to the right to a snake free ass.
Amendment 9: The assertion of one right does not imply the suppression of another. The most abused amendment of the constitution, now that the right of the wealthy to stay wealthy has been firmly ensconced in the Constitution at the expense of pretty much everything else.
Amendment 10: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

A nicely turned phrase, that. Back from the days when the power of the state meant something. Isn't it nice to know that even in 1791, "the people" came in dead last in the hierarchy of the control of rights. People ask me why I'm an anarchist.

klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.