The rights-obsessed forget three big things. First, that the weight of any particular individual right is constantly shifting to maintain a rough balance with other, often conflicting, rights. For a long time, it was illegal in many states for a speaker to urge a large crowd to take violent action. Thus, the public right to safety trumped the individual’s right to free speech. In a landmark 1969 case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that state laws unduly restricted the rights of union organizers and student demonstrators, and sharply limited the rights of states to prosecute people urging violent action. After all, who should go to jail for a clumsy metaphor or a hot tempered remark? Now that that precedent is being cited in defense of jihadists, the high court might get the chance to redress the balance in light of new circumstances. If the court does, it hardly means that the Bill of Rights has been thrown in the dumpster. It’s simply how the American political process works.
Second, the rights crowd has no sense of proportion. Saving three hundred lives is well worth a few punches thrown in anger or tapping the telephones of those who phone the number three man in al Qaeda.
Third, they forget that any good thing taken too far becomes its opposite, as Polybius teaches us. So, an excessive focus on the process protections afforded in the U.S. constitution can become, not a shield for the innocent, but a weapon for the guilty. And there is an element of moral vanity here, where the more the public is put at risk, the more the rights activist feels justified. He becomes more sure he is the lone voice of reason trapped in the room with 11 angry jurors.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member