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Date:         Sat, 5 Sep 1992 20:18:00 EDT
From:         GRACZ1@ITHACA.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Rights, and other comments ...

>
>G. Racz states that a bill of responsibilities would be in diametric
>opposition to the Bill of Rights.  Not so.
>
>The Bill of Rights was designed to prohibit the *federal* government
>from abusing its power.  However, it was assumed that the citizenry,
>under such a government, would exercise its liberty in the way the
>Founders perceived liberty.  This is part of our discussion problem.
>To the Founders, "liberty" (as in "ordered liberty") meant the
>right to behave *responsibly.*  It did *not* mean the right to do
>anything an individual took it into his or her head to do.  In a
>culture where there are understood and agreed upon *values*, the
>government has no need to regulate the majority of behavior.  In a
>culture in which larger and larger portions of the population lose
>these basic understandings, confusing liberty with *license*, the
>society, in the interest of its own continuing good health, must
>move the focus of regulation further and further toward the behavior
>of the individual.

        So we agree on a couple of points.  First, that liberty does
  not mean the right to "do anything an individual took it into his
  or her head to do.  Second, that  the Bill of Rights was designed
  to prevent the Federal government from abusing its power.  We disagree
  on the need for values.  If your activities are not harming anyone,
  (whether you realize it at the time or not) why should they be
  restricted?  Why should homosexual people not be allowed to be
  married or to adopt children?  Can it be proven that giving those
  rights would cause harm to anyone?  Just because someone thinks it
  will cause harm doesn't mean it will or does -- it must be proven.
  That isn't too difficult.  For example, it can be proven that
  having sex with children causes harm by the documented emotional
  trauma it causes.  Show me documentation of trauma caused to children
  of homosexual people.  Show me who is harmed by a homosexual marriage.


>  In any society, rights are associated with *responsibility*--not
>the responsibility of government *alone* to protect those rights,
>but the responsibility as well of the citizens to refrain from abusing
>the rights they have.  Thus, the right to free speech does not carry
>with it the right to *falsely* yell "fire" in a crowded theater.  While
>it could be argued that such an utterance might well be kind of fun and
>most likely wouldn't cause any more damage than the average Guns N Roses
>concert, it is a violation of common values to deliberately induce such
>fears just to prove you have the right.  By the same token, the Court has
>ruled that the 14th Amendment right to "privacy" does not extend to a
>protection of the act of homosexual sodomy.  The Court said "to claim
>that a right to engage in such conduct is 'deeply rooted in this
>nation's history and tradition' or 'implicit in the concept of
>ordered liberty' is, at best facetious."  (Bowers v. Hardwick
>478 U.S. a86, 106 S. Ct. 2841, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140 [1986]  The internal
>quotes refer to Palko v. Connecticut and Moore v. East Cleveland.
>[sorry, my editor won't underline things.)

       Again, I agree to a large degree.  Except that the reason it is
     illegal to yell "Fire"  in a crowded theater is that the insuing
     panic will cause harm, not that it is a violation of "common values"
     to induce such fears.  I also feal that the Court decisions were
     wrong and are unfortunately a part of law (some other posts on
     the subject of one of those decisions are quite interesting.



>    We can argue all you like about whether the Founders were "Christian"
>or not; that is not the point.  The point is that their understanding
>of ordered liberty was premised on a notion of morality that most people
>on this list do not share, and which some go so far as to ridicule.
>If the Founders had wished to create a society based on unfettered
>personal freedom in all aspects of behavior, they would have created
>Revolutionary France (which Jefferson, by the way, was wildly favorable
>toward, even after the fact).  They did not.  And the Republic has
>been the better for it.
>
>If we wish to create a new society, one that rejects God, rejects
>morality, and defines as right anything anyone wants to do that does
>not directly harm another, then we might just as well call a new
>Constitutional convention and create that society.  We might as well
>admit that we as a people have decided that the government we have lived
>under for 200 years of unbroken advancement, the government that has
>made of this nation the most prosperous--and the country most desired
>to be entered of any nation in the world--is no longer viable.  We should
>dispense with bending the Constitution to suit our new ideas and just
>break it for good and start over.
>
>If the culture of the Republic is dead, then let us bury it and move
>on.
>
>But God help us if we do.


     Now I fear the rhetoric has taken over.  200 years of unbroken
  advancement?  I would hardly call our history that.  Maybe 200 years
  of a lot of luck, but that's not the point here.  The beauty of the
  Constitution of the United States is that it was created as a flexible
  document.  The writers of this document realized that the conditions in
  which they lived would become obsolete.  That is why the 2/3 Compromise
  no longer has any relevence.  On top of that, my ideas and those of others
  who do not share your ideas of morality do not differ as much from the
  ideas of the members of the Constitutional Convention as you may think.
  After all, the Constitution does not legislate morality.  I doubt the
  word even appears within it (it's been a while since I In fact,
  Amendments to the Constitution dealing with morality (i.e. Prohibition)
  have a history of being repealed.  Also, if you heard some of the stories
  about Ben Franklin I've heard, you would seriously doubt that Founding
  Father's adherence to your ideas of morality.

        --G. Racz

   P.S.  Sorry about that one hideous sentence, but I'm just too lazy
    to go back and fix it.
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