Platt,
Does the Constitution Contain a Right to Privacy?by Harry Browne
May 9, 2003
Senator Rick Santorum recently caused a brouhaha when, during an Associated
Press interview, he defended laws against sodomy — saying that permitting
sodomy is as good as saying polygamy, incest, and adultery should be permitted.
This provoked a firestorm — and that caused a far more troubling Santorum
statement to be overlooked. He said:
It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in
my opinion in the United States Constitution . . .
Is there a right to privacy in the Constitution?
Well, I searched my copy of the Constitution of the United States and I
couldn't find the word privacy anywhere in the document. Does this mean the
Senator is right?
I also searched the Constitution and I couldn't find the word marriage either.
Does that mean I don't have a right to be married — that a so-called "right to
marriage" was invented by some bleeding-heart liberal judge somewhere?
The Constitution also doesn't include the right to buy products from
foreigners, or to have children, or to read a book, or even to eat food to
survive.
How could the Constitution have overlooked such basic human rights?
Because the Constitution isn't about what people can do; it's about what
government can do.
The Constitution was created to spell out the limited rights or powers given to
the federal government. And it was clearly understood that the government had
no powers that weren't authorized in the Constitution.The Bill of Rights
The original Constitution contained no Bill of Rights, because the authors
believed it wasn't necessary — since the Constitution clearly enumerated the
few powers the federal government was given.
However, some of the Founding Fathers thought there could be misunderstandings.
So a Bill of Rights was composed — and some states ratified the Constitution
only on condition that those amendments would be added to the Constitution.
Whereas the main part of the Constitution spells out the few things that
government may do or must do, the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights spell
out what government may not do. For example:
* The government can't search or seize your property without due
process of law,
* It can't keep you in jail indefinitely without a trial,
* It can't enact laws abridging the freedom of speech or religion, or
infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.
And various other prohibitions on government activity are spelled out.
The ninth and tenth amendments were included to make absolutely sure there was
no misunderstanding about the limited powers the Constitution grants to the
federal government.
Amendment IX:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed
to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to
the people.
Now, where's the right to privacy?
It is clearly in those two amendments.
The government has no power to tell people what to do except in areas
specifically authorized in the Constitution.
That means it has no right to tell people whether or not they can engage in
homosexual acts; no right to invade our privacy; no right to manage our
health-care system; no right to tell us what a marriage is; no right to run our
lives; no right to do anything that wasn't specifically authorized in the
Constitution.
(Notice also that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that government may
violate the Bill of Rights if the target of its wrath is a non-citizen.
Government isn't authorized to jail non-citizens indefinitely or deny them due
process of law. There's a good reason for that, but that's another
subject.)Constitutional Ignorance
The irony in the Santorum diatribe is that if you were to ask him whether he
believes the Constitution is a literal document — as opposed to one that can be
reinvented by judges and politicians — I'm sure he'd say he's squarely on the
side of the Constitution as a literal document.
And yet he doesn't even know what's in it. And he wants to reinvent it as a
document that gives the government the power to regulate your personal life and
invade your privacy.
This is pitiful. Politicians swear an oath to uphold and defend the
Constitution, and they don't even understand what it is.
But then, most of them were educated in government schools, just like the rest
of us. So why should we expect them to understand the importance of limiting
governmental power?
When the Constitution is discussed in schools, the focus is generally on the
constitutional procedures for appointing judges, electing politicians, terms of
office, and other mundane matters.
There really are only two areas of the Constitution that every American should
understand and understand well:
* Article 1, Section 8 — which enumerates the areas in which Congress
has the power to legislate. You'll notice that no power is given there for
Congress to pass laws regulating health care or education or charities or
agriculture or any of thousands of other areas in which politicians now tell us
how we must act.
* The Bill of Rights — which makes it plain that the government has no
authority to do anything that isn't specified in Article 1, Section 8.
Perhaps the greatest mistake made in American history was in allowing
government to educate our children. We can't expect government employees to
teach our children that the one unique aspect of our heritage — the one element
that set America apart from the rest of the world — was freedom from government.
Once government moved in on education in the 1800s, it was all downhill from
there. In 1913, the income tax amendment was passed — giving the federal
government virtually unlimited resources to trespass in any area of our lives
that politicians took a fancy to.
Our two greatest needs, if we are to regain the liberty the Founding Fathers
bequeathed to us, are to:
* Get government completely out of education.
* Repeal the income tax, which will automatically deny the politicians
the resources with which to violate the Constitution.
Only when those goals are achieved will America once again be the land of
liberty — providing light and hope and inspiration to the entire world.------
Harry Browne was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000,
and is now the Director of Public Policy for the American Liberty Foundation.
You can read more of his articles at HarryBrowne.org.
att,
________________________________
From: Platt Holden <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 7:11:28 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Morality, Abortion and the MoQ
[MP]
> If the people want a right to privacy, we should be amending the
> Constitution to
> get it.
This is off subject but mentioning a right to privacy made me smile as this
week I've been preparing my taxes for examination by some nameless,
faceless bureaucrat. Also read an article in the Wall St. Journal this
morning entitled, "Swiss Banks and the End to Privacy."
Having a right to privacy when it comes to the life of a human fetus but
none at all when it comes to one's livelihood is ironic not to say
hypocritical.
To top it off, there is no specified right to privacy in the U.S.
Constitution. It exists only in the minds of liberal social engineers on
the bench and elsewhere. Unfortunately, when it came time to decide Roe
vs. Wade, the majority of judges saw a nonexistent right to privacy but
didn't see DQ shining through all around.
I wonder why.. :-)
Platt
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