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by jandrewrogers
2293 days ago
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This argument has been applied to many rights in the Constitution, and the courts have consistently held that any right that can be cast aside just because the government asserts an "emergency", regardless of type, is effectively a right that does not exist. The job of the courts is not to minimize risk to the population but to preserve their rights, and they mostly do that. As a practical matter, this is on the right side of history. There are myriad examples of governments stripping basic rights from the population in the name of public safety or some other contrived (or real) emergency. It virtually always ends poorly for the population because governments consistently abuse this latitude when expedient for whoever is in power. Would you have the courts remove all rights from anyone the government deems a "terrorist"? Or give Trump the power to suspend elections because pandemic/reasons? It is exactly the same argument. Giving people strong rights carries risks but also powerful benefits. |
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That's not my argument, though. I'm arguing against a kind fundamentalist absolutism that doesn't even allow for narrow, reasonable, and necessary exceptions in any circumstances. Applied to the First Amendment, that logic says you should be able to yell fire in a crowded room or libel someone, yet those things are prohibited and we haven't found ourselves in a dystopia on account of that. The Constitution itself even has such exceptions written into it, and the founders recognized their necessity even when not enumerated.
I get where you're coming from, but I no longer believe that kind of absolutism is a protection from tyranny. Letting an undetected Typhoid Mary freely travel the country in the most convenient ways possible isn't actually going to do anything to prevent Trump from suspending elections or declaring Joe Biden a terrorist, if he likes, it's just going get a lot of people sick.