{"id":9699,"date":"2011-06-07T09:36:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T13:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9699"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:50:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:50:32","slug":"qotd-the-bill-of-rights-on-federal-government-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/07\/qotd-the-bill-of-rights-on-federal-government-property\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Bill of Rights on federal government property"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Friends,<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s been a hassle on FaceBook about what civilians and cops can or can&#8217;t do on &#8220;government property&#8221;, with some saying the Bill of Rights doesn&#8217;t apply there. I wrote this in response:<\/p>\n<p>A little civics lesson, gentlemen, if you will allow me. The Bill of Rights is misnamed. It is not a list of things we are &#8220;allowed&#8221; to do, it is a list of things that government is <em>not<\/em> allowed to do, principally to trespass against certain natural liberties that are ours simply by virtue of our having been born.<\/p>\n<p>The Bill of rights, therefore, is actively in force any time, any place that there are human beings. If it were metaphysically possible (it is not) it would apply even <em>more<\/em> on so-called government property than anyplace else, since it is specifically government that is constrained by it.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, since it is not just Americans who are human beings (contrary to what many seem to believe) it puts a whole new face on the legality &mdash; or illegality &mdash; of war, and in particular the treatment being accorded to the political prisoners at Guantanamo and similar places.<\/p>\n<p>L. Neil Smith, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncc-1776.org\/tle2011\/tle622-20110605-01.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Letters to the Editor&#8221;, <em>Libertarian Enterprise<\/em><\/a>, 2011-06-05. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friends, There&#8217;s been a hassle on FaceBook about what civilians and cops can or can&#8217;t do on &#8220;government property&#8221;, with some saying the Bill of Rights doesn&#8217;t apply there. I wrote this in response: A little civics lesson, gentlemen, if you will allow me. The Bill of Rights is misnamed. It is not a list [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,41,13],"tags":[715,391,1382,98,217],"class_list":["post-9699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-constitution","tag-facebook","tag-lneilsmith","tag-police","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2wr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9699"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58500,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699\/revisions\/58500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}