The United States of America, as a political construct, was sold to the early population of Americans as a panacea to right the wrongs done to them by the British crown. Whether the Constitution actually sought to establish those rights for the people or was a ruse in itself to retain control of the population by a powerful elite has been thoroughly debated elsewhere. What was established, regardless of intent or purpose, was that in order to be free, one must not only possess, but be protected in exerting certain individual rights. The right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to defend oneself with firearms from others and a tyrannical government (in this case a hostile competing ideology), freedom from government forces in our homes, freedom to have papers, effects and the sanctity of the home free from unwarranted searches and seizures, freedom from being forced to testify against oneself and to enjoy life, liberty and property unless forfeited through due process of law, freedom from being imprisoned without cause or accused by some anonymous person, freedom to a jury trial of peers, freedom from excessive bail and other cruel and unusual punishments, freedom to enjoy other rights not otherwise listed, freedom of states to exercise rights not otherwise prohibited to them. The harm done to any of these rights anywhere on the continent harms them all and for anyone who seeks to exert those rights in the future. The rights, once harmed, disappear.
So, it is obvious that none of the rights in the Bill of Rights have proven to be rights at all, or they could not be infringed, which they have. In this one truth lies many truths, one of which is that the individual has been captured by the system and held hostage to the whims of tyrants at all levels. This is true where taxes and fees can be levied without the support of the people. It is true where stipulations have been made against the free exercise of commerce. It is true in the violation and confiscation of private property. It is true where any government official can ban church services. The fact that there are innumerable instances of one form of government or another imposing sanctions against the exertions of these rights proves that they do not exist.
A nation founded on the sanctity of these rights cannot exist beyond the invalidation of them, they are one and the same. A politician might seek a way around the right to bear arms and in so doing has undone his own authority. We are witnessing in Seattle and Portland the abdication of power by mayors and governors in those cities and states to the competing governmental entity: communism. While the official functions of the government might continue, they are without authority. We have seen this time and time again in the past generation. The passage of the Patriot Act was, in effect, the dissolution of the union in that it sought a wholesale violation of rights. a huge step toward accommodating the revolution we now see being prosecuted. While that union might continue under the new rules, they were not presented to the people for acceptance, they were simply voted on by representatives, who, in not seeking agreement by an overwhelming majority of the stakeholders (citizens) violated their oaths and invalidated not the citizen’s rights, but their own authority. Since then, and because this is true, the principle was seized upon by sanctuary cities as an example of individual political units acting outside the interests of the union and the citizens within.