A Third Bill of Rights

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
-- Thomas Jefferson

The American Founding Fathers added the Bill of Rights as an afterthought to the Constitution. Barak Obama wanted to add a second bill of "negative rights", constitutional scholar that he is. After observing our unelected deep state government for some time now, I think it's about time to get a few more rights cast into constitutional jello. They are nothing that is not already guaranteed there, but some authorities seem to need to have things spelled out for them. Here's the next batch I'd like to see considered...

We hold these additional truths to be self-evident. That all people are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with the certain inalienable rights... To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever a government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

1. All people have the right to be left alone by their government if they aren’t violating someone else’s rights. This is the only reason governments are instituted among men in the first place – to secure these rights.

2. All people are equal under the law and if an activity is legal for some people it must be held legal for all people. It cannot be right that Paris Hilton can buy securities but patent examiner Albert Einstein could not.

3. A person has the right to decide for themselves which risks they are willing to accept without government interference. If I can sky dive, rock climb and engage in unsafe sex, why can’t I gamble and buy unregistered securities?

4. If people have the right to take personal risks in one activity, they have the right to take lesser risks in other activities. Which is riskier, a state-run lottery (99.9999% probability of loss) or purchasing a token for a stake in someone else’s open source code? Governments have the free speech right to warn us of risks, not prevent us from taking them.

5. People have the right to make innocent mistakes until they have been properly warned of their error and to appeal the government’s interpretation of all applicable laws without being preemptively deprived of their lives, their fortunes or their sacred honor.

6. People have the right to the benefit of the doubt in areas where the law may be undefined or unclear. In the current maze of unclear and undefined regulations in which multiple agencies have themselves not agreed on how to treat a particular issue, ignorance of the law is absolutely a valid excuse.

7. No citizen shall be deprived of their chosen legal counsel by preemptive seizure of their assets. People who cannot afford competent legal representation shall not have their assets seized by the government without fair and competent instruction by the government on where and why they are not in compliance with a transient or evolving government interpretation of applicable law and the opportunity to appeal that interpretation.

8. The government shall not take action against a citizen based on unsubstantiated rumors or the mere possibility that a law is being violated.

9. The right to a fair trial includes a level playing field wherein neither side has access to unlimited resources. To ensure this, the government must provide an accused with defense resources equal to what it is spending to prosecute them.

10. The use of deadly force in surprise raids shall only be applied when all other alternatives have been exhausted.

11. While endeavoring to protect one group of people the government shall not inflict harm upon another group of people. Seizing investor assets and holding them for years of litigation wherein they cannot properly protect their investments by quickly redeploying them, inflicts guaranteed damage under the guise of preventing the mere unproven possibility of damage.

12. A government does not own its citizens. It has the rights granted to them by the people who formed it to enforce its laws on people living within its jurisdiction and no right to enforce its laws on people outside its jurisdiction regardless of whether they are citizens or not.

13. All people have the right to choose the jurisdictions under which they will live without regard to their place of birth. Voting with your feet is a fundamental right.

14. Virtual reality and cyberspace, like international waters, airspace and outer space, is a domain free from the control of any individual government.

15. The government shall not preemptively destroy a company, harm its supporters, or defame its reputation without due process.

16. The probability of being harmed by the government shall not be allowed to exceed the probability of being harmed by criminals and terrorists.

I'm sure there are a thousand other things that the governments of the world are doing that they have no granted authority to do.

Let me know what you think.