The Constitution has no extraneous protections.
I wouldn’t want to live in a nation or world without freedom of speech, freedom of the press, protection of being tried twice for a crime, or any of the protections in the Constitution. I don’t know anyone who would.
All must enjoy the protections you do for it to work, even if you really want to deprive others of them
It might be tempting to think it would be nice to enjoy freedom of speech or of the press for yourself but to be able to limit the speech or press of others, like your political enemies, but if you think about it enough, you conclude that you’re better off with everyone enjoying all those freedoms. That is, you might be tempted to be a tyrant if you could, but you’ll realize that even if you think you’d do everything right, at some point you’d end up invading Poland or some equivalent.
How about protecting life, liberty, and property?
How about the protection that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law?
Everyone wants that protection for themselves. Nobody wants their life, liberty, or property taken from them.
What about the other direction? Pollution and depleting deprive people of life, liberty, and property. We don’t want others to be able to pollute or deplete to shorten our lives, undermine our liberty, or destroy our property.
But what about when we pollute and deplete? We don’t do those things just for the sake of doing those things. We fly to visit loved ones, to earn money, and to experience other cultures. Aren’t those activities worth it?
To claim that activities that pollute and deplete are worth it is tyrannical. Those activities deprive others of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, which the Constitution says shouldn’t happen. Why not? Because without all the protections of the Constitution, we will fall into tyranny, national insecurity, civil war, or combinations of these outcomes. Legally, slavery deprives others of life, liberty, and property without due process of law and making it legal led to civil war.
It’s tempting to say you’d want your life, liberty, and property protected, but that when you want to fly or drive, you should be able to deprive others of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. When you think about it enough, you realize that all have to enjoy all the protections of the Constitution.
The founders didn’t write “Not many people” or “No rich people” shall be deprived of those things. It says “No persons,” which includes the people you would deprive of them when you fund activities that pollute and deplete.
If you want liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security, everyone must enjoy all the protections of the Constitution, even the people affected by your pollution and depletion, no matter how much you want what you get from polluting and depleting.
The role of government under the US Constitution is clear: to enforce its protections, which prevent you from depriving others of them.
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