Does Biden Have Positive Approval Rating Anywhere?

[CJD]

(07-23-2022, 11:56 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: Are you seriously that clueless?

I know what the 9th amendment says and that's what I addressed in my post.

Did you even read my post or did you assume that I didn't quote it directly that I don't know what the amendment says?

Hint: when you do the "haha" thing with no substance and just post the same thing as your previous post, it makes your argument look incredibly weak.

I don't know if you know what the amendment says, but I know that you don't know what it means.

So. the 9th amendment reads: 

Quote:The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

"enumeration" just means "list of things." So the 9th amendment, in laymen's terms, means "Just because a right isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution does not mean that it is not protected by the constitution."

This amendment is a direct response to your belief that if the Constitution doesn't specifically mention a right that it should be left to the states. Several founding fathers actually opposed writing the Bill of Rights because they feared that "Enumerating any rights, Wilson argued, might imply that all those not listed were surrendered. And, because it was impossible to enumerate all the rights of the people, a bill of rights might actually be construed to justify the government’s power to limit any liberties of the people that were not enumerated." You said:

Quote:That's why it came back to the states, because the constitution doesn't say anything about the right to murder babies.

and

Quote:How could you possibly counter that the constitution says nothing about abortion and has no right to make any ruling on it?

and

Quote:Anyways, if you had the slightest idea of what you were talking about, you'd know that the judges did their jobs and followed the constitution, which is their job to do, and found that the constitution doesn't have the power to rule on abortion and made it a state matter. So the judges he appointed are following the law of the land, and you have a problem with that and that's Trump's fault?

See, the problem is constitutional fundamentalists, or "originalists" as they sometimes call themselves, have this belief that the Constitution is an all encompassing text that explicitly describes every right that is protected under it to such a degree that you can objectively interpret the Constitution so that there's only one answer to any given question on what rights are protected within it.

In reality, the Constitution is written extraordinarily vaguely with several gaps in its explicit text such as the 9th and 14th amendments. This allows people to interpret the Constitution as subjectively as they wish to protect, or refuse to protect, whichever rights they want based on their ideology or biases. And, in my biased opinion, that is what makes the Supreme Court and the Constitution very flawed, as you can interpret it however you want based on what your beliefs are.

You claimed that the conservative justices of the Supreme Court did their jobs by interpreting the Constitution in such a way that defies 50 years of precedent and ignores the vagueness within the 9th and 14th amendments that are meant to allow for additional rights and protections for the people (often times, rights to privacy and bodily autonomy) that just so happen to perfectly fall in line with their personal political beliefs. That's fine if that's your belief but you seem to not understand that that is a subjective reading of the constitution done in service of their political beliefs. The idea that the Supreme Court is an apolitical branch of government has always been a fantasy but these justices have laid bare the truth for all to see and yet, somehow, people like you still refuse to see that.

With all that said, this wasn't even the original point of the discussion. My original response in this thread were a list of things that I and people like me did not like about Donald Trump that had nothing to do with him "hurting our feelings" as you claimed in your original post. You either accidentally or willfully misinterpreted my post and took it off on a tangent from the very beginning and now we're talking about something completely unrelated that you also happen to not understand.

My "haha" was just laughing at the absurdity of the direction of this conversation because you seem so sure that you know everything about everything and anyone who disagrees with you is "failing." Politics does not seem to be about helping people or maximizing the utility of society to you. It seems like you talk politics because you want to "own" people and point out their "failures" and how little they understand (relative to you, who understands everything). So I'm sorry if I take a little satisfaction in knocking you down a peg or two like in this scenario where you didn't even bother looking up (or, perhaps, understanding) the 9th amendment, let alone how it may be applicable to the conversation that we were having. When someone centers their entire world view around "owning the libs" it's hard not to revel in "owning" them right back. Of course, you'll never agree that I "owned" you, which is half the fun!