“It is harder to preserve than obtain liberty.”
Voltaire
The past decade has witnessed an alarming trend emerging on the American political landscape. Activist forces on both the left and the right have become increasingly outspoken in their efforts to justify the limitation or surrender of fundamental rights in the name of solving what they perceive to be the crisis of the moment.
On one occasion after another, the liberals have been all too willing to restrict the right free speech, the right of freedom to publish and the right to peaceable assembly simply because the causes espoused by those wishing to speak, write or assemble were deemed racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, or otherwise repugnant to the sensibilities of their detractors.
On the right, there has been an equally activist group which has felt it their obligation to protect the public from what they consider to be unpatriotic, vulgar, sexually explicit and blasphemous material. Efforts to ensure censorship of the offending material has become the tool of choice for these crusaders.
With the onset of the AIDS and drug crisis, alarmists on both sides have often found themselves allied, vehemently arguing that in the interests eliminating these scourges and saving society, everyone must be willing abrogate just a few liberties . . . after all, such limited restrictions on fourth amendment rights (in the form of random drug and/or blood testing . . . without probably cause) represent to them a small price to pay to rid society of the “dangers” posed by drug users and AIDS carriers.
Recently, the President and the Congress, sensing political fodder, reacted to the Supreme Court’s flag burning decision and in so doing unleashed yet another assault on the Bill of Rights. Suddenly patriots from all political persuasions found a common battle cry as they became overnight defenders of the American flag . . . protecting it from desecration or burning by a few disaffected malcontents. They seem to have lost sight that in their emotional attempts to protect their symbol, they may loose the essence of what that symbol represents, specifically, the Constitution.
In each instance, those social and political do-gooders seem to have forgotten two unique and important aspects of our fragile American system.
First, democracy and liberty are not same. While the former permits the will of the majority to set the general course for society . . . the latter ensures that individual citizens are not disenfranchised from any of their basic rights by a tyranny of that majority.
Secondly, the rights of free speech, a free press and the freedom of peaceful assembly not only affords each and every citizen the opportunity to have his/her opinions aired publicly without fear of reprisal . . . but it concurrently obligates them to listen to and respect those same rights when exercised by others, no matter how offensive, how hostile or how repugnant their ideas may be to them and/or to the mainstream of American society.
Historians tell us that most totalitarian states are not built overnight, but over a sequence of years as rights are gradually ceded. We would do well to heed the observation of Ben Franklin, “Those who give a little liberty to gain a little freedom, deserve neither!”
