I don’t recall where I saw this last, but I’m always grimly amused when I see someone state baldly that because the right to “X” isn’t guaranteed in the Constitution that it doesn’t exist.  This tells me that this person might have read the Constitution but that he didn’t understand it. 

If we were limited to the rights enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights we’d be pretty well screwed.  The Founders understood this and even argued about it during the debates over the Bill of Rights.  It was the fear of some that enumerating a set of rights would send the incorrect message that only those rights existed.

But you don’t have to believe me.  Just read Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 84:

It has been several times truly remarked, that bills of rights are in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was Magna Carta, obtained by the Barons, sword in hand, from king John….It is evident, therefore, that according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations. “We the people of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.” Here is a better recognition of popular rights than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our state bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government….

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.