This awful year has made it painfully clear that the Democrat agenda is completely and *comprehensively* incompatible with the American principle of inalienable rights. NOTHING they want to do is feasible unless "rights" become political constructs granted by our rulers.

The first response of every left-winger to any question involving "rights" is to ask about the identity and politics of the people involved, so they can decide which party's rights should trump the other's. It's always subjective with them, all the way down to speech rights.

Try asking a Dem what the "rights" of every citizen should be. They'll probably rattle off a list of coercive political programs - the "right" to health care, a few years ago they'd have put the "right" to free contraceptives first - and then insist non-citizens have them too.

The rights envisioned the Constitution would confuse most Democrats, and they would strenuously disagree that any of them are inalienable, or that any of them flow from an authority higher than the State. They think all "rights" have asterisks and exceptions.

Notice how, in the current street chaos, you can't get any Democrat to agree that people have absolute rights to their own safety or property. It all depends on who you are, and whether the person trying to harm, rob, or vandalize you is a member of an approved grievance group.

Do you have a right to defend your home against people who force their way in? Well, that depends. What color is your skin, and what color was theirs? How much money do you have in the bank? Have you ever taken unpopular political positions or said anything deemed controversial?

To the Left, the really unacceptable thing about inalienable rights is that they imply duty and responsibility - from the State to its citizens, and from citizens to each other. This is anathema to elite social engineers who want to impose their vision of "justice" on us.

Inalienable rights describe duties the State has to ALL citizens, no matter their racial background, voting habits, net worth, what they said on social media yesterday, or what their ancestors did 200 years ago. And we are all obliged to respect each other's rights as well.

This is completely incompatible with the notions of collective guilt that animate every single agenda item of the Left. They can't take the first step toward anything they want to do if they accept the powerful American ideal of INDIVIDUAL rights and responsibilities.

And we're going to keep getting stuck with hideous leftist government - the kind that leaves Democrat cities in flames - unless all of us embrace that ideal of inalienable rights and profound personal responsibility. Let this terrible year be our childhood's end. /end