Protecting our Inherent Rights

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Last week I wrote a post about how originalism doesn’t make a lot of sense and is in general a bad idea. So if limiting our interpretation of the Constitution to the meaning and ideas at the time that it was ratified is a mistake, then how should we interpret it? This week I want to discuss what I think makes the most sense for our system of government. 

Let’s start with a look at the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So what does that mean? First it means that it is the people who form the government and give it power, and thus are the ones whom the government is beholden. Next it establishes that any government created should be done with the explicit purpose of protecting the inherent rights that all people possess, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Finally, if the government does not protect these rights, then it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government so that those inherent rights remain protected. (Side note: Yes, the document only mentions men and it was written at a time when slavery was legal and non-white and poor men were discriminated against, but our understanding of equality has matured. We know that all men, all women, and all people should have the same rights. Thus, the automatic reading of “men” should in modern terms include all people and this is how I will interpret it. This is also another great example as to why originalism is a bad idea.) So it is with these lofty ideals our nation was founded and it should be understood that our first sense of purpose as Americans should be to protect our natural rights from any unnecessary governmental intrusion.

Unfortunately, nothing is ever perfect and there will at times be necessary governmental intrusion into our freedom. However, any interest that the government has must be balanced against our own natural rights. This balancing act is a necessity for a fully functioning civilized society. We cannot expect that our freedom to do whatever we please is limitless. It is not. And the reason it is not is because we are not a nation of hundreds of millions of individual countries. We are one country made up of hundreds of millions of individual people. As such my freedom is limited by my neighbor’s freedom, which in turn is limited by his neighbor’s freedom, which is limited by her neighbor’s freedom, and so on and so forth. For example, I cannot decide that while my neighbor is on vacation, I can annex his back yard or use his house as a guest house and vice versa. The government, thus, is put in position to ensure that my rights and my neighbor’s rights are properly assessed, balanced, and fair. In these terms, then it is incredibly important that our government remains neutral, as it is still a government made up of ALL the people, for ALL of the people. Allowing our government to enact discriminatory laws or to enforce laws in a discriminatory manner sets up a direct conflict with the founding ideals of the Declaration of Independence and as such any discriminatory laws should be promptly abolished.

Besides the government acting as a neutral arbitrator and administrator of justice between citizens, the government also has a duty to protect our individual safety. The government is allowed to regulate food and medicine to ensure the health and safety of its citizens. For example, a warehouse storing food may have been infested with rodents, the company owning the warehouse doesn’t want to lose out on its potential profits by destroying the infested food, so instead decides to sell it to unsuspecting or even desperate consumers. The government, however, can step in to force the business to destroy the infested food. The business’s freedom to conduct its business as it wants is balanced against the health and safety of the individual and justifies the governmental intrusion. Our health and safety is part of our natural right to life and as such must be protected by our government: an ideal that is again rooted in the Declaration of Independence.

This may all seem like common sense and it should be, however, there are plenty of examples throughout our history which demonstrate how the government can be used to devalue the life, liberty, or happiness of its citizens. Chief among these examples is the idea that state’s should be free to develop (by those in power within the state) in any way that they so desire including the ability to discriminate or limit the rights of certain people within its borders. The idea that state’s rights should be favoured even at the expense of individual rights is wrong and not what was intended by the founders. And unfortunately this idea is prominently found in the idea of originalism. The Constitution did reserve all rights, not listed or prohibited, to the states or to the people. This is an important idea that ensures a limited federal government that remains beholden to the people. The idea was to protect the rights of the people from an overreaching federal government by retaining power in a more localised and accessible fashion via the state. People would obviously have more influence on their government at the state level, than at the federal level. However, the retention of power to the states was not suppose to allow states the power to dismantle the natural rights of the individual. The inherent rights of the people are always suppose to be protected. And this is where the current understanding of originalism fails. It gives preferential treatment to the states over the individual. The rights that we, as American citizens have, should be highly valued and equal. There is no valid reason to prevent citizens from one state from obtaining the rights they would be granted in another state. As Jefferson said, our unalienable rights have been endowed from our Creator and cannot be diminished by the government; this does and should include state and local governments. 

So how do we govern? We should always remember that our individual rights are paramount, but must also be balanced against the individual rights of our neighbors as they, too, are equal citizens. The government must facilitate this balancing act between citizens in a neutral and fair manner. It must also balance the ideas of freedom and necessary governmental intrusion in order to protect our individual rights. And finally any government, whether local, state, or federal, must adhere to the protection of the rights of all citizens.