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The Supreme Court Is Repealing Democracy |
Current rating: -2 |
by James Leroy Wilson
Email: wilson.james.l (nospam) worldnet.att.net (unverified!) |
02 Jul 2003
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The anti-anti-sodomy decision was just another sanctimonious display of destroying state sovereignty even further under the illusion of advancing individual rights. Nothing good will come of the decision... |
The Supreme Court Repealing Democracy Everywhere
by James Leroy Wilson, LewRockwell.com, July 2, 2003
The Spring of 1999 saw some dark days. There was the Columbine massacre, in which two losers murdered and wounded several defenseless students and teachers at a government school. In Serbia, Slobodon Milosevic was forcibly removing Albanians from their provincial home of Kosovo. With jaw-dropping contempt of the obvious lessons of these events, new gun control legislation was proposed, and the gutless Republican organ called the National Rifle Association was willing to compromise with the Clinton administration.
I wanted to shout out to all friends of gun control, "But what if they come for YOU? Are we to be sitting ducks for the next mass-murderers? Are we to let government troops expel us from our homes, shoot our sons and molest our daughters?"
But if, in fact, these things did happen because of gun control, I could not sit back and say, "Ha, ha, you ignorant twits, I told you so!" Laughing at the suffering of others shows a lack of basic compassion properly understood, and a general lack of respect for human life.
Likewise, I wouldn’t fall off my chair laughing if a decent, conservative, conscientious, Republican-voting youth minister sees his car confiscated in the Drug War. It could happen; it may have already happened several times. The minister is driving a new attendee at youth group home. A marijuana joint slips out of the teen’s loose pants pocket as he is dropped off at his home, rests on the seat unnoticed by the driver, but is plainly seen by a cop during a routine traffic stop. Bye, bye, car. The Fifth Amendment has been repealed as far as the War on Drugs in concerned, and if you want your car back you must prove your innocence.
The libertarian could criticize the minister for being an ignorant supporter of the two-party junta and the massive attack on liberty that is the War on Drugs. But the libertarian can’t laugh at him, because he is still a victim of The State. The government shouldn’t just take our property from us without due process, and there shouldn’t be anything illegal about marijuana possession anyway. It is wrong for anyone to suffer at the hands of The State, and if libertarians celebrate the "poetic justice" of a gun control advocate being ethnically cleansed, or a Drug War supporter seeing his property confiscated, then we are as contemptuous of the individual as Republicans and Democrats are. We must be better than that.
Which leads me to say something I’d never think I’d say: Thank God for the Supreme Court!
Oh, sure, it’s easy to nit-pick about the Supreme Court making a new federal law last week barring the states of The State – excuse me – states of the Union from making and enforcing their own laws against sodomy. The Supreme Court is a judicial, not a legislative branch, and should interpret law under the Constitution, not make up new laws out of thin air. And yes, the Supreme Court violated the Constitution’s own Tenth Amendment by making such a law. Yes, yes, agreed and agreed.
Nevertheless, this could be a victimless usurpation of the Constitution, one in which both liberals and conservatives, the Politically Correct and the Fundamentalists, the do-gooders and the nationalists, the liberty-haters everywhere, all get their come-uppance. One which may get them all to scream and protest in outrage, yet allows me to just laugh and laugh and laugh.
Laws against prostitution? Unconstitutional. Hey, it’s about sex, and like the right to privacy in abortion, it’s also a business transaction. Regulation of any form of gambling between mutually consenting adults? Unconstitutional. To prohibit it is to impose one religious and moral viewpoint upon others, violating equal protection of the laws.
Drug Prohibition? Out. As with abortion, a person has the right to his or her own body. Drugs may also be used in religious activities, so we have equal protection and First Amendment issues there as well.
When you think about it, any transaction involving consenting adults must be legal, and any obstructive legislation unconstitutional. Libertarians used to say that something was unconstitutional if the Constitution didn’t authorize it, or specifically prohibited it. Now, we can say, hey, go with the flow. Let’s extend the logic of the (mythical) "privacy" right in the Constitution to render just about every law banning peaceful activity, that is, most laws on the books, unconstitutional.
Just as when Democrats screamed and howled when the Supreme Court voted for Bush in 2000, let all the leftists expose their hypocrisy when they protest against the Supreme Court advancing privacy and liberty by striking down federal gun laws and free trade. Let the right-wingers of every stripe scream and howl in favor of state’s rights, as they did in this sodomy case, but then also hear them when the Court repeals the Patriot Act, the War on Drugs, and other conservative attacks on state’s rights.
When all else fails on every other front, all the Statists resort to the federal courts and the Supreme Court to get their way. When politics fails them, they make the federal courts and the Supreme Court political. Perhaps Libertarians could do the same, since we’ve always failed in politics anyway, and maybe through the court we can expose these tyrannical, self-righteous dolts for their inconsistencies.
Do I really think the libertarian agenda can be advanced by the Supreme Court? Of course not. The anti-anti-sodomy decision was just another sanctimonious display of destroying state sovereignty even further under the illusion of advancing individual rights. Nothing good will come of the decision, only the further duping of Americans, providing them further "evidence" that this is the "land of the free" even while they are pummeled with Homeland Security, business regulations, an expensive military even though our neighbors can’t and won’t threaten us, the Income Tax, the costs of unconstitutional and undeclared wars, trade barriers, corporate welfare, agricultural subsidies, impoverishing deficits, all of the economic burdens of government spending, and the concentration of power in Washington, D.C.
But still, it is an amusing thought. To see the Supreme Court apply the very logic of the liberals to destroy the liberal agenda, and to apply the very logic of the conservatives to destroy the conservative agenda. I’m not saying this is the best way to advance libertarianism, but if it does happen this way, I will be quite amused to say the least
James Leroy Wilson [send him mail] writes the weekly "Notes From the Swamp" column appearing every Thursday at the Partial Observer (http://www.partialobserver.com/). |
See also:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/wilson-james3.html
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Comments
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State Sovereignty Is BS |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jul 2003
Modified: 08:11:35 AM |
State sovereignty?
Isn't that the same excuse used to defend Jim Crow laws?
And how can exercising hate be a libertarian value? The state should not be called upon to legally defend hate if you are a real libertarian.
Sorry, but state sovereignty does not give states the right to pick and choose which of us the Constitution applies to. It does not grant a right to enshrine hate into the legal system. People do not grant their consent to be hated, so there is no way the state should be prohibited from protecting the rights of minorities, whether of color, gender, or sexual preference. Your tortured logic is yet one more example of why the Supreme Court acted to enforce the Constitution for all citizens in this case. |
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Grand Old Gay Bashers |
by Harold Meyerson
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jul 2003
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Scalia's dissent from last week's epochal Supreme Court decision striking down Texas's anti-sodomy statute confirms Ayatollah Antonin's standing as the intellectual leader of the forces arrayed against equality and modernity in the United States. In establishing the deep historical roots of anti-gay sentiment in America, for instance, Scalia took pains to note the 20 prosecutions and four executions for consensual gay sex conducted in colonial times. He noted, approvingly, that even today, "many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools or as boarders in their home."
Actually, back in 1978, a California electorate far more conservative than today's massively repudiated an initiative seeking to ban gays from teaching school, but this inconvenient fact -- and other evidence of a massive shift in public sentiment on gay rights -- doesn't have quite the legal majesty of those four colonial executions. (Scalia is uncharacteristically short on detail here. Were they hangings or burnings?) Scalia's justifications for discriminatory conduct sound terribly familiar. Change "homosexual" to "Negro" and Scalia is at one with the authors of Plessy v. Ferguson's mandate for "separate but equal" schools, and the judges who upheld anti-miscegenation statutes. Indeed, of the 13 states whose anti-sodomy statutes were struck down last Thursday, 10 were once slave states of the South. In what has always been the main event in American history -- the battle to expand the definition of "men" in Jefferson's mighty line on who's created equal -- these are the states that have had to be dragged along kicking and screaming.
More immediately, 12 of the 13 states with sodomy laws on the books were states that George W. Bush carried in the 2000 election, and the 13th -- Florida -- was the one that Scalia and company handed to him. The culture wars over legal equality for gays -- save on the question of gay marriage -- are pretty much settled within the Democratic Party. It's the Republicans who are split on the question of equal rights for gays.
And in this battle, Scalia has no shortage of allies -- the recent and current Republican congressional leadership first and foremost. From Dick Armey, who referred to gay Democratic Rep. Barney Frank as "Barney Fag," to Rick Santorum, who equated consensual gay sex to "man-on-dog" fornication, to Tom DeLay, who's declared that the United States is and ought to remain a "Christian nation," to Trent Lott, who pined for segregation, the recent and current leaders of the Republican Party in Congress have compiled an impressive record of industrial-strength prejudice.
So where's the outrage? Lott, to be sure, had to step down, but for the rest, it looks as if gay-bashing is not only accepted in the highest Republican circles but actually a prerequisite for leadership. Just this Sunday, Bill Frist took to the airwaves to tout a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Frist looked mighty uncomfortable in the part; his statements were almost incoherent, and he conveyed the sense that he was speaking less from personal passion than from partisan duty.
Of course, plenty of Republicans welcomed last week's decision (beginning, I suspect, with Vice President Cheney). Plenty of Republicans are appalled when the United States votes in international bodies with Saudi Arabia and a handful of fundamentalist states against women's rights, reproductive freedoms and contraception distribution programs. Plenty of Republicans sicken at the hatreds expressed by their legislative leaders. But plenty or not, try to find a national Republican who speaks out for equality of sexual orientation or condemns the expressions of bias.
It's way past time for a prominent Republican to give a Sister Souljah speech. In a period when the United States finds itself threatened by an international network of religious intolerants fuming at modernity and equality, you'd think some GOP notables might step up to condemn the like-minded intolerants in their own ranks -- indeed, atop them. Is there no decent Republican with the guts to note that his party could do better than be led by a rats' nest of bigots?
The writer is editor at large of the American Prospect.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com |
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Now Far Right-wingers Are Calling For Impeachment Of U.S. Supreme Court Justices |
by Jackson Thoreau
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jul 2003
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Now, right-wingers are calling the U.S. Supreme Court “out of control” and “renegade” and a “ruling elite.” Of course, they didn’t make such comments when the same court made its most anti-democratic decision in history in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case.
After the moderates on the U.S. Supreme Court prevailed in upholding some affirmative action laws and invalidating anti-sodomy laws, many far-right wingers have predictably gone ballistic.
For example, in a recent column calling for the impeachment of any justice who doesn’t hold narrow, far-right views, Joseph Farar, editor of World Nut Daily, one of numerous conservative ezines polluting cyberspace, labeled the U.S. Supreme Court “out of control” and “renegade” and a “ruling elite.” Of course, he didn’t make such comments when the same court made its most anti-democratic decision in history in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case.
To Farar, the court is only “exceeding its constitutional authority” when even several Republicans on that court recognize that anti-sodomy laws are an unjust invasion of privacy, not to mention ludicrous to enforce. I know Farar and others would love to see a special police force out there whose only duty is to enter Americans’ bedrooms and arrest anyone who is engaging in male-to-male, female-to-female, oral, anal or any other form of sex not covered by the traditional male-to-female position. As a longtime Texas resident, I proudly admit I have violated our stupid anti-sodomy law too many times to count - I’ve engaged in adult, heterosexual oral sex in private - and I don’t give a damn who knows about it and what the hell anyone thinks about it.
Farar and Co. would love to see a law that only married Americans can perform sex only for the purpose of trying to procreate, and it must be done in the missionary position at all times. In short, they�d love other Americans to have as boring sex lives as they probably have. Perhaps that�s why they are so concerned about other Americans� sex lives and they want to be legal voyeurs � because their sex lives are so boring.
To Farar, the nation’s highest court is only “sticking its thumb in the eye of the people” when its decisions don’t benefit super-wealthy, white, apparently heterosexual Americans [except for those like dress-wearing J. Edgar Hoover and some other closet gay conservatives]. Farar and Co. see no problem with far-right fascists Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia, of course. It’s the other more moderate members they seek to oust.
They want justices who hate homosexuals [except for certain conservative ones], minorities [especially Arabs], civil liberties, the ACLU, anyone who smokes a joint in private, and anyone who questions why the Bush administration has the divine right to bully and dominate the world.
These are people who are not satisfied with controlling Congress, the White House, most state legislatures, and most of the media and the courts. They want to stamp out any sign of hope for true progress. They call themselves patriots, but they are anything but.
The true patriots are those who strive for a liberty and justice for all that goes beyond selfish, narrow boundaries. As the celebrated American patriot Tom Paine said, “My country is the world.”
As the esteemed writer, professor and people’s historian Howard Zinn wrote in a recent column on TomPaine.com, “I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for his country might act on behalf of a different vision. Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights. Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade - we call it globalization - should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity? Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own? In that case, war, which in our time is always an assault on children, would be unacceptable as a solution to the problems of the world. Human ingenuity would have to search for other ways.”
Like Zinn, I am not in a mood to celebrate much this July 4th, when so many Americans are blind to the pain and suffering we are causing in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places, when so many Americans just want to continue the selfish, unilateral, “America First” approach to foreign policy and most everything else. But I will keep hoping, keep working, keep fighting for a better America and a better world.
Here’s hoping that the broader patriotism of people like Paine and Zinn will eventually win out and not the narrow patriotism of those like Farar.
Jackson Thoreau is an American writer and co-author of “We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House.” The updated, 120,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html. Citizens for Legitimate Government has the earlier version at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html. Thoreau can be emailed at jacksonthor (at) justice.com or jacksonthor (at) yahoo.com.
Zinn’s column is at http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7726. Farar’s column is at http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33380
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The Historians' Case Against Gay Discrimination |
by via ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Jul 2003
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http://hnn.us/articles/1539.html |
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Dear Clarence Thomas [and JLW]: It Happened On July 4, 1776 |
by Thom Hartmann
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Jul 2003
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In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote a note to James Madison about the future possibility of a president who didn't understand the principles on which America was founded. "The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present," he wrote, "and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period."
The new so-called conservatives claim the power to violate citizens' private lives because, they say, there is no "right to privacy" in the United States. In that, they overlook the history of America and the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776. And they miss a basic understanding of the evolution of language in the United States.
Of course, they're not the first to have made these mistakes.
When I was a teenager, it was a felony in parts of the United States to advise a married couple about how to practice birth control. This ended in 1965, in the Griswold v. Connecticut case before the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Court reversed the criminal conviction of a Planned Parenthood program director who had discussed contraception with a married couple, and of a doctor who had prescribed a birth-control device to them.
The majority of the Court summarized their ruling by saying, "Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy...."
However, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart disagreed back in 1965, saying that he could find no "right of privacy" in the Constitution of the United States. Using his logic, under the laws of the day, the couple in question could themselves have been sent to prison for using birth control in their own bedroom.
As Justice Stewart wrote in his dissent in the case, "Since 1879 Connecticut has had on its books a law which forbids the use of contraceptives by anyone.... What provision of the Constitution, then, makes this state law invalid? The Court says it is the right of privacy 'created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees.' With all deference, I can find no such general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution, or in any case ever before decided by this Court."
In that view of American law, Justice Clarence Thomas - George W. Bush's "role model" for future Supreme Court nominees - agrees.
In his dissent in the Texas sodomy case, Thomas wrote, "just like Justice Stewart, I 'can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,' or as the Court terms it today, the 'liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.'"
Echoing Thomas' so-called conservative perspective, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program on June 27, 2003, "There is no right to privacy specifically enumerated in the Constitution." Jerry Falwell similarly agreed on Fox News.
Limbaugh and Thomas may soon also point out to us that the Constitution doesn't specifically grant a right to marry, and thus license that function exclusively to, say, Falwell. The Constitution doesn't grant a right to eat, or to read, or to have children. Yet do we doubt these are rights we hold?
The simple reality is that there are many "rights" that are not specified in the Constitution, but which we daily enjoy and cannot be taken away from us by the government. But if that's the case, Bush and Thomas would say, why doesn't the Constitution list those rights in the Bill of Rights?
The reason is simple: the Constitution wasn't written as a vehicle to grant us rights. We don't derive our rights from the constitution.
Rather, in the minds of the Founders, human rights are inalienable - inseparable - from humans themselves. We are born with rights by simple fact of existence, as defined by John Locke and written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," the Founders wrote. Humans are "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...." These rights are clear and obvious, the Founders repeatedly said. They belong to us from birth, as opposed to something the Constitution must hand to us, and are more ancient than any government.
The job of the Constitution was to define a legal framework within which government and business could operate in a manner least intrusive to "We, The People," who are the holders of the rights. In its first draft it didn't even have a Bill of Rights, because the Framers felt it wasn't necessary to state out loud that human rights came from something greater, larger, and older than government. They all knew this; it was simply obvious.
Thomas Jefferson, however, foreseeing a time when the concepts fundamental to the founding of America were forgotten, strongly argued that the Constitution must contain at least a rudimentary statement of rights, laying out those main areas where government could, at the minimum, never intrude into our lives.
Jefferson was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, "I will now tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land..."
There had already been discussion among the delegates to the constitutional convention about whether they should go to the trouble of enumerating the human rights they had held up to the world with the Declaration of Independence, but the consensus had been that it was unnecessary.
The Declaration, the writings of many of the Founders and Framers, and no shortage of other documents made amply clear the Founders' and the Framers' sentiments that human rights were solely the province of humans, and that governments don't grant rights but, rather, that in a constitutionally limited democratic republic We, The People - the holders of the rights - grant to our governments whatever privileges our government may need to function (while keeping the rights for ourselves).
This is the fundamental difference between kingdoms, theocracies, feudal states, and a democratic republic. In the former three, people must beg for their rights at the pleasure of the rulers. In the latter, the republic derives its legitimacy from the people, the sole holders of rights.
Although the purpose of the Constitution wasn't to grant rights to people, as kings and popes and feudal lords had done in the past, Jefferson felt it was necessary to be absolutely unambiguous about the solid reality that humans are holders of rights, and that in no way was the Constitution or the new government of the United States to ever be allowed to infringe on those rights. The Constitution's authors well understood this, Jefferson noted, having just fought a revolutionary war to gain their "self-evident" and "inalienable" rights from King George, but he also felt strongly that both the common person of the day and future generations must be reminded of this reality.
"To say, as Mr. Wilson does, that a bill of rights was not necessary," Jefferson wrote in his December 1787 letter to Madison, "...might do for the audience to which it was addressed..." But it wasn't enough. Human rights may be well known to those writing the constitution, they may all agree that governments may not infringe on human rights, but, nonetheless, we must not trust that simply inferring this truth is enough for future generations who have not so carefully read history or who may foolishly elect leaders inclined toward tyranny. "Let me add," Jefferson wrote, "that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."
Madison took Jefferson's notes and shared them with Hamilton, Adams, Mason, and others, and then sent a letter to Jefferson outlining the objections to a Bill of Rights that had been raised by the members of the constitutional convention.
On March 15, 1789, Jefferson replied to Madison: "I am happy to find that, on the whole, you are a friend to this amendment. The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences, and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly overweighs the evil.
"I cannot refrain from making short answers to the objections which your letter states to have been raised [by others]:
"1. 'That the rights in question are reserved, by the manner in which the federal powers are granted.' Answer. A constitutive act [the Constitution] may, certainly, be so formed, as to need no declaration of rights. ... In the draught of a constitution which I had once a thought of proposing in Virginia, and I printed afterwards, I endeavored to reach all the great objects of public liberty, and did not mean to add a declaration of rights. ... But...this instrument [the U.S. Constitution] forms us into one State, as to certain objects, and gives us a legislative and executive body for these objects. It should, therefore, guard us against their abuses of power, within the field submitted to them."
In this, Jefferson is stating openly that the purpose of the Constitution - and even the Bill of Rights - is not to grant rights to the people, but to restrain government. It doesn't grant, it limits.
And, Jefferson said, his proposed Bill of Rights was only a beginning and imperfect; it would be nearly impossible to list in detail all the rights humans have. But a start, a try, is better than nothing - at least it will make clear that the purpose of the constitution is to limit government:
"2. 'A positive declaration of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude.' Answer. Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can."
His third point was that the states may try to limit peoples rights if the explicit nature of government and rights wasn't spelled out in the Constitution through a Bill of Rights, so the constitution protected citizens from tyrannical state governments who may overreach (as the Supreme Court ultimately ruled Connecticut had done in banning birth control).
And, finally, Jefferson noted that if they were to err, it would be better to err on the side of over-defining rights - even if past efforts had proven unnecessary or nonviable - than under-defining them.
"4. 'Experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights.' True. But though it is not absolutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely inefficacious. A brace the more will often keep up the building which would have fallen, with that brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the characters of the inconveniences which attend a declaration of rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconveniences of the declaration are, that it may cramp government in its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, moderate and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a declaration are permanent, afflicting and irreparable."
A Bill of Rights wasn't necessary, but it was important. We all knew the constitution was designed to define and constrain government, but it's still better to say too much about liberty than too little. Even though this thrown-together-at-the-last-minute Bill of Rights doesn't cover all the rights we consider self-evident, and may inconvenience government, it's better to include it than overlook it and risk future generations forgetting our words and deeds.
Beyond that, there's good reason to believe - as the majority of the Supreme Court did in the Griswold case, the Texas sodomy case, and at least a dozen others - that the Founders and Framers did write a right to privacy into the Constitution. However, living in the 18th Century, they never would have actually used the word "privacy" out loud or in writing. A search, for example, of all 16,000 of Thomas Jefferson's letters and writings produces not a single use of the word "privacy." Nor does Adams use the word in his writings, so far as I can find.
The reason is simple: "privacy" in 1776 was a code word for toilet functions. A person would say, "I need a moment of privacy" as a way of excusing themselves to go use the "privy" or outhouse. The chamberpots around the house, into which people relieved themselves during the evening and which were emptied in the morning, were referred to as "the privates," a phrase also used to describe genitals. Privacy, in short, was a word that wasn't generally used in political discourse or polite company during an era when women were expected to cover their arms and legs and discussion of bedroom behavior was unthinkable.
It wasn't until 1898 that Thomas Crapper began marketing the flush toilet and discussion of toilet functions became relatively acceptable. Prior to then, saying somebody had a "right to privacy" would have meant "a right to excrete." This was, of course, a right that was taken for granted and thus the Framers felt no need to specify it in the Constitution.
Instead, the word of the day was "security," and in many ways it meant what we today mean when we say "privacy." Consider, for example, the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...."
Similarly, "liberty" was also understood, in one of its dimensions, to mean something close to what today we'd call "privacy." The Fifth Amendment talks about how "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property..." and the Fourteenth Amendment adds that "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property...." And, of course, the Declaration of Independence itself proclaims that all "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
So now, on the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we have come to that remote period in time Jefferson was concerned about. Our leaders, ignorant of or ignoring the history of this nation's founding, make a parody of liberty and, with their so-called "Patriot Act," flaunt their challenges even to those rights explicitly defined in the Constitution.
Our best defense against today's pervasive ignorance about American history and human rights is education, a task that Jefferson undertook in starting the University of Virginia to provide a comprehensive and free public education to all capable students. A well-informed populace will always preserve liberty better than a powerful government, a philosophy which led the University of California and others to once offer free education to their states' citizens.
As Jefferson noted in that first letter to Madison: "And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
The majority of the Supreme Court wrote in their opinion in the 1965 Griswold case legalizing contraception that, "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights [and] older than our political parties..." saying explicitly that the right of privacy is a fundamental personal right, emanating "from the totality of the constitutional scheme under which we live."
Hopefully Americans - including Clarence Thomas - will realize that the Constitution doesn't grant rights but instead constrains government. Our rights predate any government, a fact recognized when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. We must teach our children and inform the world about the essentials of human rights and how our constitutional republic works - deriving its sole powers from the consent of We, The People who hold the rights - if democracy is to survive.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," and a nationally syndicated daily talk show host. www.thomhartmann.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
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