Posted on 04/09/2003 10:19:45 PM PDT by sourcery
Speaking to an audience at Cleveland University, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently said that individual rights can and will likely be curtailed in wartime. In explaining his position, he said that "the Constitution just sets minimums" and that "most of the rights that [Americans] enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." The Iraq war will probably mean that "[rights] protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum."
It is true that the Constitution sets minimums, but Scalia’s unspecified view of where those minimums reside is unsettling.
The Constitution’s prescribed minimums of personal freedom emerge from its enumerated maximums of government power. If Scalia were to read the Bill of Rights properly, he would understand that the freedoms Americans currently enjoy do not "go way beyond what the Constitution requires." In the absence of any specific constitutionally authorized government powers that can legally interfere with these freedoms, everyday American liberties are guaranteed under the umbrella of the ninth and tenth amendments, which protect rights not specifically guaranteed in the Constitution and reserve to the states and people all powers not granted to the federal government.
Indeed, there are a number of rights mentioned in the Constitution currently not respected in full because the government has acted "beyond what the Constitution requires." Freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and the right to a jury trial have each suffered fundamental and severe erosion over the years, and to this day.
That Scalia thinks the freedom we currently have is above and beyond the Constitutional mandate is disturbing enough. His prediction that those freedoms will decline in wartime to that mandate – wherever he imagines it to be – is downright terrifying.
History shows us what happens when politicians "ratchet" American freedoms "down to the [perceived] constitutional minimum."
During the War Between the States, Abraham Lincoln suppressed and closed down over a hundred Union newspapers, implemented conscription, deported political enemies, and suspended habeas corpus, jailing thousands of dissenters without trial. The Supreme Court objected, but Lincoln simply ignored them.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson drafted 2.8 million Americans, the German language was barred from public schools, and Congress passed a number of nasty laws including the Sedition Act, which made simple criticism of the U.S. government, its flag, its military uniforms, or its allies a highly punishable offense.
The law was brutally enforced: socialist activist Eugene V. Debs went to prison for ten years for an antiwar speech he made, and movie producer Robert Goldstein was sentenced to ten years in prison for his patriotic movie, Spirit of ‘76, about the American Revolution, in which he characterized Britain – U.S. ally in World War I, American enemy in the Revolution – in a bad light. The Supreme Court upheld these absurd violations of free speech, explaining that war made such extreme measures necessary.
During World War II, the draft returned to take hold of ten million young men. This time, the Supreme Court not only upheld the draft but argued that pretty much anything else the government wanted to do must also be constitutional – because such exercises of power were clearly more benign than the authority to force Americans into combat. American civil liberties hit an absolute low point in World War II when Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps – an order the court also went along with.
Incidentally, conservatives who consider such encroachments on civil liberties to be justified in times of war should look at where their pet nuisances – high taxes and big government – originated. The War Between the States saw the beginning of fiat money and the income tax. World War I brought massive nationalization of industries and maximum income tax rates of 77 percent. World War II meant even more central planning, maximum income tax rates of 94 percent and the birth of Income Tax withholding.
The Constitution was established for the exact purpose of restricting the government from interfering with absolute rights, especially in the most precarious of times for liberty, such as wartime.
One must wonder whether Scalia could justify all the above mentioned historical examples of erosions of liberty as fitting within the minimums of freedom set in the Constitution, as he reads it. If so, and if any of the new and increasingly freedom-threatening War on Terrorism measures goes to the Supreme Court, hopefully Scalia’s eight robed colleagues will have more of a strict constructionist interpretation and understanding of the Constitution.
Yes, exactly so. But the only responsibility (duty, obligation) that comes with a right is to avoid violating the rights of others. To attempt to exercise your right to self defense by violating the rights of others fails this test. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Preliminary planning of the US highway system began in 1924. The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Public Roads, laid out the US highway system along primary intercity roads of the day. The final list of US highways was agreed upon on November 11, 1926. The US highway system carried the bulk of intercity vehicular traffic and people migrating west to California. These highways helped the US win the Second World War, allowing great flexibility in ferrying men and materials across the nation, supplementing the nation's fixed rail system. Roads built in the 1930's were inadequate for the faster and wider cars of the 1950's. President Eisenhower signed a bill creating the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways on June 29, 1956.Slightly adapted based on US-Highways.com
1792 Postal ActWaterways were declared postal routes in 1834.The Postal Act of February 20, 1792 defined the character of the young Post Office Department. Spirited Congressional debate sought to separate old postal practices from the future purpose and direction of the postal service. Discussions examined issues of a free press, personal privacy and national growth.
Under the act, newspapers would be allowed in the mails at low rates to promote the spread of information across the states. To ensure the sanctity and privacy of the mails, postal officials were forbidden to open any letters in their charge unless they were undeliverable. Finally, Congress assumed responsibility for the creation of postal routes, ensuring that mail routes would help lead expansion and development instead of only serve existing communities. Source: National Postal Museum
You think the current fad emphasis on "Diversity" comes out of academe, or the liberal media, or some such well-known place -- unh-uh. There in Ag's Graduate School is the greatest and strongest foundation laid. The trained Federalistas impose their mindset on Academe by all the cross-contracts and federal money inflows. Those are also a product of the same Federal growth grafts as highways -- first via Ag in the 1920's thru the Land Grant schools, and later once Ag's Bureaucrat College had established enough of base -- through all the Federal Edifice, big Ike influence once again -- the GI Bill and National Student Loan Program.
It is the overwhleming mundanity, plainess and bureaucrat's fish-handshaking milk-toastian attack that make this program so potent -- that wisdom "the meek shall inherit" is a deep one. Almost unbeatable! You've heard all about Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Gramiscan, Alsinsky, Mao, Castro approaches to imposing socialism, eh? All those were ineffective pikers compared to Dewey, Bellamy and the other elite utopian socialists of the turn of century in US and Britan -- who set this machinery in motion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.