So my brilliant friend Becki got me thinking that maybe denying somebody due process by revoking their 2nd Amendment rights and prohibiting them from buying guns due to terror concerns might not be a bad thing. But if we’re going to revoke our civil rights for something as arbitrary as a secret, poorly-regulated and problem-riddled “No Fly” list, we would be morally compelled to come up with other measurements for properly revoking the rest of our rights. For example:
A Stupid Scale for revoking 1st Amendment rights. If you prove to be too stupid on a test, you can’t post on Facebook and Twitter, appear on television, radio, or YouTube shows, or work as a journalist or newspaper editor until you learn 7th grade spelling and grammar, and 9th grade US history. Maybe a little science, too. For example, if you advocate limiting the civil rights of others, this would apply to you.
A Zealot Scale (also for 1st Amendment rights) where if you believe Jesus rode on a dinosaur, or you don’t know the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, or that you can’t respect someone’s decision to not believe what you believe, you’ll be prohibited from practicing any religion until you get your head out of your ass.
The Torture Scale would limit your 5th Amendment and 8th Amendment rights – where if you believe the US should use torture during interrogation, you lose your 5th & 8th Amendment rights. We could then torture you to get you to admit to enough so we could revoke the rest of your rights. And since there’s no due process, we wouldn’t need to break any laws.
We could also then put into effect other tests, such as if you dodge the draft as a young person you lose rights if you then become an elected official who votes to send people to war.
Also, we should probably throw out the 4th Amendment, too – at least if you’re on the No Fly list, or the Terror Watch list, or some other arbitrary list that skips over your right to due process. There’s no sense having protections from illegal searches and seizures if the government suspects you of being a criminal. We should actually limit your 3rd Amendment rights too, and have soldiers or FBI agents live at your house so they can better watch you. It would help save the government money by not having to obtain wiretaps or, you know, evidence.
I don’t know what test we’d use for the 6th Amendment – you should just lose your rights to a lawyer or a proper trial if you’re on the Terror Watch list, seeing as how we’re skipping over due process. It would be hypocritical of us to start using the courts at that point.
I guess we really do have a bunch of new legislation we should be working on. If we’re going to be reactionary and throw out the things that make our country great every time something horrible scares us, maybe we should just take it all the way.
And we could probably strike the writings of Thomas Jefferson from our government halls and books, because he’d have hated *all* of the ideas above.
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” – Thomas Jefferson.
We’d also have to strike that other line of his – the one that says, “All men are created equal.”
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