[djcapelis]

Fundamental rights is a legally defined term, you should look it up sometime.

(Also the federalist papers pre-date and argued against the Bill of Rights. Which means they're a strange authority to reference in this context.)

[mpyne]

The Federalist papers argued against the need for things like the Bill of Rights, which were considered redundant and perfectly placeable in the law itself (and possibly counter-productive, if it was ever assumed that the Bill of Rights represented the sum of your rights, which is what the 9th Amendment was passed to try to prevent).

Either way, that doesn't answer the point of whether this argument by Madison is valid or not.