Wednesday, July 13, 2005
PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY! SCROG Fundamental Rights Petition for South Carolina
The following Petition is posted on the SCROG website:
We the people of South Carolina petition the South Carolina legislature to approve and declare the following proposed amendment to the South Carolina constitution, whereby the inalienable nature of our rights will be plainly decreed as unalterable irreversible.
Be it resolved that we the people of South Carolina hereby declare and affirm that the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property (or the pursuit of happiness) set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Fifth Amendment (Bill of Rights) to the Constitution are fundamental rights which were derived antecedent to the existence of the state (as manifest in both the United States federal government and the State of South Carolina). As such, the state does not grant rights to life, liberty, or property. On the contrary, the primary reason that government is formed is to protect rights to life, liberty, and property, and no South Carolinian or American holds his fundamental rights at the pleasure of the state.
Furthermore, we the people of South Carolina declare and affirm in particular that:
- All human beings are equal sharers in the right to life, and that the state may not abridge the right to life of any particular human being (or class of human beings) “without due process of law” and subsequent conviction of a capital offense;
- All human beings are equal sharers in the right to liberty, and that the state may not forcibly enslave, conscript, or incarcerate a human being “without due process of law” and subsequent conviction of a crime;
- All human beings are equal sharers in the right to hold and enjoy property, so long as their pursuit of happiness does not infringe upon the rights of other human beings, and the state may not take private property “without due process of law” or take it “for public use, without just compensation”. Such public uses include highways, dams, bridges, government office buildings, military installations, and similar public projects. Other uses such as increasing local tax revenues, clearing urban blight, removing church buildings, promoting urban development, and similar proactive “public interest” or “public welfare” schemes are not contemplated in the phrase “for public use”. The phrase “just compensation” refers to market value based on comparable properties, and would not preclude the government from paying relocation expenses.
Note the bolded and italicized portion. This interests us because we too recognize that South Carolinians are still being incarcerated without either having been convicted of a crime or having received due process of law. Additionally, Sheriff Ray Nash who utilizes the labor of uncompensated and unconvicted prisoners, apparently signed the Petition.
