I went to a dinner party last night. Afterwards, we were having coffee, and one of the mugs the host brought out was the “disappearing Bill of Rights” mug. It has the Bill of Rights written on the side, and when you pour hot liquid in it, the text of the amendments disappear. I thought it was very clever.

Well, I thought it was very clever until I looked at it more closely. Then I was annoyed. Because, you see, not all of the Bill of Rights is disappearing. The Third Amendment (quartering troops) and portions of the Seventh Amendment (juries in civil trials) appear to be alive and kicking, as those do not disappear with the rest of the text. That’s fair enough–I don’t think our government forces us to play host to troops very often.

But also on the “not disappearing” list were the Second Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Because, apparently, there have been no infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, property rights, or federalism in recent years.

I didn’t know the other people at the dinner party very well, so I thought it would be rude to start a political argument. But I really wonder what lefties think about that. Do they honestly believe that these provisions are being observed to the letter? Or if not, do they believe they’re being ignored and simply don’t care, because they think courts should only enforce the parts of the Bill of Rights they agree with? And if so, do they feel that conservatives are entitled to take the same attitude toward the Constitution, ignoring the amendments they don’t agree with?

Well, actually, I do know what the answers are likely to be. On the Second Amendment, a lot of people on the left believes it protects the rights of states to have organized militias. This, it seems to me, is a tortured and implausible reading of the amendment, and it would make it the only amendment that doesn’t protect individual rights.

On the Fifth Amendment, “public use” has been mutated to “public purpose” and then to “public benefit,” which at this point means “whatever the city council says it is.” Likewise, on the Tenth Amendment, the legalistic answer is that the commerce clause of Article 1, Section 8, has been defined to encompass virtually every subject under the sun. The only exceptions are violence against women and guns in schools–those aren’t interstate commerce. But every other subject, including growing marijuana in your backyard for personal consumption, is interstate commerce, and therefore under Congress’s authority.

I find it kind of amazing that this doesn’t bother more people on the left. I mean, it would obviously undermine the intent of the Fourth Amendment if we allowed police officers to define “unreasonable.” And the Eighth Amendment would be a dead letter if we let legislators define “cruel and unusual.” So why is it OK to let legislators define “public use” and “interstate commerce” in such a way that those provisions of the Bill of Rights are effectively meaningless?

I don’t understand how liberals (or conservatives, for that matter) can get on a high horse about these issues when they only support 7 or 8 out of the 10 amendments. If liberal judges are allowed to ignore the provisions they don’t approve of, why aren’t conservative judges allowed to do the same? And if that’s how we’re going to go about interpreting the law, what’s the point of having a written constitution at all?

The nice thing about being a libertarian is that because it was written by libertarians, every amendment in the Bill of Rights is one I support. So we don’t face these kinds of dilemmas.