It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [62]
The Government’s Intrusion on This Right: Sexual Freedom
While Americans readily accept the government’s intrusion on the institution of marriage, there is greater push back on private matters concerning our bodies. Take, for example, the contentious issue of contraception. Imagine meeting someone and falling madly in love. You decide to take the big “leap” and invite all of your family and friends to help you celebrate. Inevitably, your mother and father begin to ask when they can expect grandkids, but you refrain from giving a precise date because you and your spouse have decided to pursue your respective careers. While this response sounds practical, it was not always feasible.
95
As recently as 1965, Connecticut law prohibited the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. While the Supreme Court concluded the law was unconstitutional, the reasoning behind this conclusion was far from unanimous. Justice Douglas wrote of the famous “penumbras” and “emanations” of various Bill of Rights guarantees creating a zone of privacy, while Justice Goldberg relied on the Ninth Amendment’s language of “other rights retained by the people,” and Justice Harlan argued the Fourteenth Amendment’s Liberty Clause forbids government conduct which is inconsistent with “the concept of ordered liberty.”28 Despite the convoluted reasoning, the Court correctly decided the case and recognized the Constitution’s protection of a “zone of privacy”—an area of human behavior immune from government intrusion or regulation. The Court illustrated this point when it wrote, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy.”29
What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas?
Las Vegas. Sin City. City of Lights. Entertainment Capital of the World. Whatever you want to call it, Las Vegas is perhaps one of the most liberated cities in the country. In fact, if there ever was a time you and your friends wanted to engage in undocumented activities, it would most likely be while you were in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas you can enjoy alcohol on the streets, gamble all night, frequent gentlemen’s clubs, and even get married in an hour and divorced the next day. Many ordinary folks want to go to Las Vegas just to blow off a little steam. And what better time to go than the Christmas season and New Year’s Eve? Right?
Wrong. If you were one of the millions of individuals traveling to Las Vegas during the Christmas season of 2003, you are most likely in a government database created in an attempt to track terrorists. However, your name is not the only item in the database. Your airline carrier? Check. Hotel where you stayed? Check. Casinos you visited? Check. Rental car company? Check. The locker you rented from a storage company? Check. Yes, government officials legally collected and analyzed data on more than one million people during the 2003 Christmas season. How was this legal?
96
The Most Un-patriotic of Acts
You probably did not realize the government had legal authority to track individuals’ every move. It does; and this legal authority continuously expands in the effort to fight the War on Terror. In response to monumental invasions of privacy, such as the events in Las Vegas, the government claims it is not invading your natural right to privacy, but rather, is attempting to prevent further terrorist attacks. Do you buy this? I don’t. As Benjamin Franklin stated, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
And give up liberty we have. In the months after the attacks of September 11th 2001, our country was frantic. More than three thousand lives were lost, and our nation was blindsided by the murderous attacks. The government felt a need to respond, and on October 26th 2001, President Bush signed into law the Uniting and Strengthening America