Rights vs. Power -- How did we get this far?

One of the good things that comes out of a Presidential election season and the interminable debates, speeches, spin-doctors, and overactive pundits and columnists is this sort of national time of introspection. We sort of graze the surface of a question I wish everyone would take a little more seriously: What is the proper role of government in our society?

America is not actually a true democracy (and it's a pet peeve of mine when so many in power refer to it as such); we are a constitutional republic in which we elect representatives to govern rather than directly governing ourselves (which would be democracy). The importance of this fact here is that this means the United States Constitution is the source for answering the question I've posed.

The founders deliberately chose the words of our Constitution to set forth limits on government power--the document is not one setting forth the rights the government deigns to provide us with, in fact quite the opposite. We don't look to the Constitution to find out what our rights our, we look to it to learn the limitations on government power.

This question of power vs. rights is so incredibly important, and yet utterly misunderstood today. How many times, when talking about the "right" to do X or Y, have you heard someone say, "but where do the words of the Constitution give you that right? I don't see it in the Constitution!" (this last part spoken triumphantly usually).

What hogwash! I don't need a document to give me my rights, they are mine already, endowed by my Creator.

People today seem so ... suspicious and skeptical of this concept of natural rights. As though it's somehow arrogant to proclaim that I have these rights regardless whether some government bureaucrat has given them to me.

On the flip side, however, it seems no one ever asks the opposing question about government power--where in the Constitution does the government find the authority to exercise that power to that extent or in that manner? It's as though, as a nation, we have wholly bought into the notion that the government knows best and if a group of lawmakers proclaim some new limitation on our rights, we just go along as though the mere fact that lawmakers passed the legislation validates their actions.

My great hope is that one day we'll see two things: first a revival of citizen participation so that the public actually pays attention to what legislators do--and punishes those lawmakers who take action contrary to the Constitution's limits on their power. Second, that we'd have some Judges who are more interested in actually upholding the limits found in the Constitution (you know, the thing that is their sworn duty) instead of always so pathetically looking for every possible way to avoid having to make a real decision.