Rights vs being Right

We have an excellent Constitution and Bill of Rights here in the United States, and we owe much of that to our venerable founding fathers.

My favorite is the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


Freedom of speech, in particular, is what sets us apart from many other nations today (and during our founding years, truly distinguished our democracy from the ascendant monarchies and tyrannies that reigned the world over.)

In addition to such freedoms, we also have the seperation of powers - the system of checks and balances that works when one branch of the government becomes overzealous in removing or taking issue with certain freedoms.

We, as humans, are deeply fallible. Freedom of speech is a deep recognition of that falliblity, because it limits the power of the government to determine what is 'right'. The government can say whatever it wants - but it is not allowed to censor the things you want to say. Hate speech must be protected, religious fundamentalism must be protected, because while we might wish to simply do away with those things, the moment we attempt to censor them we allow in the potential to one day ourselves be censored when we speak up with an unpopular view that is, nevertheless, a moral call for change in the society or the government.

The importance of rights and the ability to say what you like are an acknowledgement that we are incredibly bad at actually determining what is 'right'. Only in a pluralistic pantheon of ideas and views will we be likely to find the set that is actually correct - and in many cases, even if we think we have found the 'right' views, we will be wrong in many respects. That's why governments should never be in a position to dictate what is 'right', because they will almost inevitably be wrong - and if they are wrong, who will stop them?

Even today, with the invented rights-less status of 'Enemy Combatants' housed in Guantanamo, we can see the system of checks and balances at work. The executive branch has tried to imprison human beings without charge by claiming that they are not protected by any rights (That is, inventing the category of 'Enemy Combatants' rather than treat the captives housed therein as either international criminals, soldiers, or at worst, spies). The Judicial branch has, if slowly, moved in to put a stop to it, and ruled that holding people of any status without charge or trial is unconstitutional.

All too often I have heard supporting cases for Guantanamo or for torture of 'Enemy Combatants'. Naturally I do not want to censor these views, but merely argue against them - and hopefully provide a better argument than those who support such actions by the government (Which I will do in future posts). At the rist of oversimplifying, often the argument comes down to trading liberty for safety, and given that choice, I advocate that we should nearly always choose liberty.