It’s Eleven O’Clock - - Do You Know Where Your Rights Are?

  Every year as the July Fourth Independence Day celebration approaches, there are articles and editorials in the local paper about the purchase of illegal fireworks in Indiana. You know, the type of fireworks that are fun, things that explode and shoot into the air and produce huge showers of flaming sparks. The editorials frequently have to do with the transparent ways dealers in these fireworks – which are legal to sell in the state but not to use – have of dealing with local customers. There have been cards to sign making the purchaser a member of nonexistent organizations, pledges not to use the fireworks in this state, and other similar dodges in the past.

  However much the editorials inveigh against this obvious circumvention of the laws of Indiana and the lack of enforcement, I am completely in favor of the situation as it stands. Nothing could be a more fitting continuing ritual for the celebration of USA independence than the creation of a law for people to openly flout. I would hate to see these fireworks legalized, as it would take both the fun and the symbolic value out of setting them off and thumbing one’s nose at the authorities. It’s also a good civics lesson, showing the interplay between political expedience and practical law enforcement.

  In this particular case, then, police are reluctant to invade the private lives of citizens. Currently, that’s an almost unique position, part of the reason I find it so interesting and significant. The Supreme Court just recently defined another area – an erogenous zone, so to speak – where privacy trumps police power. However, there are still many areas where the Bill of Rights seems to be vanishing bit by bit. The drug war has provided some of the impetus for this, as the courts allow the police more and more latitude in searches, the impoundment of property – before trial – and even have granted such invasive powers to schools and businesses, most of which now feel free to force you to urinate into a cup to prove your innocence of something that you may not even have been accused of. Who among the founding fathers would have put up with this?

  When I was asked to do this service as a kind of pinch hitter, and presented with a topic generally having to do with the state of our rights and the current philosophy of national independence, I sat down immediately and came up with the first two paragraphs of the top of my head. Then I tried to go further and got false start after false start; there are too many different words tangled up together in the US concept of rights; liberty, capitalism, freedom, civil rights, free markets, independence, unilateralism. I couldn’t start writing about one without others creeping in and leading me off into one rant or another.
In this type of situation, the Unitarian Universalist invariably turns to the dictionary; Webster’s for those from the Universalist part of the spectrum, and of course the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language for those of a more Unitarian heritage. But I was a skeptic before I was a UU, and I’m damned if I’m going to let someone else define my words for me. I mean, who are these guys? Look at what the right wing has been doing to everyday words for the last few decades; “law and order”, “family values”, “Liberal”, “tax fairness”, “activist court”, “Christian”. But I’ll do you one better over the right-wingers, because I’m going to tell you exactly what I mean when I use the words that form the outline of this talk.

  Let’s look first at the word that I used in the title, back when I thought I knew what I was going to talk about. Rights, for me, are personal or group actions or activities properly the province of individual decision. It’s what we should be able to do without the interference of the government or anyone else. In the USA the rights of citizens are presented in the Bill of Rights and certain additional amendments to the constitution. The Bill of Rights even goes so far as to say, in Article 9, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” That’s pretty broad, and takes precedence over Article 10, which tries to cut the states into the action.

  Let’s do a quick review: Amendment I - 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. This would come as news to those corporations that have successfully sued investigative reporters for printing the truth; or to the members of the current administration who insist that in time of war the people must support the president. It certainly shocks the various judges and legislators who waste the people’s time and money installing copies of the ten commandments on public property, because it’s one of the amendments that is occasionally upheld by the Rehnquist court.

  Amendment II - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. This is one that may come as a shock to many UU’s. Yep, it’s a right; the NRA is not mistaken on this point. It doesn’t exclude automatic weapons. The people who put it in the Bill of Rights had just fought a bloody war against their government, and were determined not to let any government so dominate their lives as to prevent the means of its own overthrow. They had not yet heard of incumbency. If we want to preserve the rights we feel are important, we are going to have to join forces with the 2nd amendment activists – and of course insist that they reciprocate.

  Amendment III - No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. What do you know – an amendment the government hasn’t found time to violate yet!

  Amendment IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Notice that it does not exclude alleged drug dealers from this; yet the property of alleged drug dealers is routinely seized before trial. High school students and employees are denied this right when forced to take random drug tests, which are given with no warrant.

  Amendment V - No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Until recently, this and other rights were assumed to belong to anyone in residence in the United States, but in the midst of our terrorist panic, which threatens to become as threatening to our rights as the drug war, this principal was dropped. It is still available to citizen terrorists with wealthy parents, but not to suspects from the barrios or those with Arabic heritage.

  Amendment VI - In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Again, notice that suspected terrorists are not excluded from this article, and compare the text with the government’s prosecution of Zacarias Moussaui. For that matter, does any citizen expect a speedy trial anymore? The proliferation of laws, many of which violate the rights here enumerated, has made a joke of this section.

  Amendment VII - In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Here again, we have something that seems to have snuck by the scrutiny of the government; nobody has tried to repeal this one through the legislative process recently.

  Amendment VIII - Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This is routinely violated in drug cases, and in others. See what comes of letting other people define your words for you? Like excessive?

  Amendment IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. That’s pretty interesting, especially when you recall that the right has been accusing the Supreme Court of “inventing” rights, like the right to privacy. That’s not an invented right – it falls under this article. It is a commonly recognized right, and was long before the Court used it to justify Roe vs. Wade. It’s certainly one of the most radical parts of a radical document. Of course, the history of legislation in the US has pretty much been a process of restricting the scope of this amendment, but it’s still there – we’ll give it a little break.

  Amendment X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Pretty much the same story as with 9.

  Every year or so, some news organization or advocacy group carries around a copy of the Bill of Rights and ask people in the street what they think of those ideas, without identifying the document, and then gleefully report that some large percentage of the respondents don’t agree with the rights therein protected. As the stories are normally written, it seems to reflect on the stupidity of the populace, but one could as easily make a case that this shows the Bill of Rights is truly a radical document – one of the most radical in the history of government – and that people can hardly be aware of rights that have been gradually stripped away from them.

  There – that was easier than I thought. That shows that it’s always best to keep control over the definitions of your own words.
My definition of freedom is the ability to act without constraints – kind of a negative definition, and pretty similar to rights, I guess. I apply it only to people, in order to avoid confusion with free trade and free markets, which are the kinds of freedoms this administration is referring to when it says it wants to give freedom to the Iraqis. It’s important to make this point because US people are always mixing their freedoms up. Freedom doesn’t have anything to do with 50 kinds of breakfast cereal or the price of oil or driving an SUV. As a matter of fact, that kind of freedom, which involves the exploitation by our country of the poorer nations of the world, is the antithesis of the kind of freedom Eugene Debs was referring to when he spoke the words featured on our order of service (“While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is one person in prison, I am not free”). Common wisdom has it that your freedom to swing your fist ends where another person’s face begins, and we’ve been bloodying the noses and blackening the eyes of the third world for more than a century. I included the quote from Debs to balance the statement by Goldwater (“Let me remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; and let me also remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”) and to bracket the concept of USA freedom. I think both statements are important – Goldwater’s for its uncompromising stance on both liberty and justice, and Debs’ for its inclusiveness. If we are going to maintain our rights, we must both be prepared to fight, alone if necessary, and in spite of accusations of extremism (or even liberalism!) and to assist in the spread of real freedom to all.