Opinion
Fayetteville, AR –-(Ammoland.com)- The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be a justice of the United States Supreme Court is but the latest shot fired in the war over American identity that we’ve been fighting since our inception.
Kavanaugh’s position on gun rights is a cause for hope, given his opinion regarding the D.C. ban on semiautomatic rifles and requirement that firearms be registered, while the future of the rights protected by Roe v. Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges is in doubt.
The subject of rights, as with so much else, is more often treated as banners in the culture war, as identifying badges for team players, rather than as a common possession of all of us. Where a person stands on abortion, gun control, religion, privacy, or speech is treated as signs of political affiliation without any expectation of a consistent guiding philosophy. This lazy thinking even has its own cliché: litmus test.
But let’s try a coherent system of thinking about rights. It’s important not to be confused into believing that there is a single enumeration that covers everything, though this view afflicts both sides in the debates over any right. The Bill of Rights avoids this error, as explained in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. One problem is that these amendments are often seen as either vague or obvious and are therefore passed over in arguments about the constitutionality of laws, but they inform us that the framers knew that while some rights were in danger and needed specific protections, there cannot be a comprehensive list of all rights.
This is because the concept at the heart of rights is personal autonomy, the question of whose authority it is and what another person is doing. If my actions involve you, you get a say in what’s going on. If what I’m doing affects “society,” I’ll ask for details, but that can mean that I am bringing someone into my choices. But if I’m minding my own business, it’s fair for me to suggest that others should do the same.
This does not take us immediately to a conclusion about all questions regarding rights, of course—abortion will come to mind here. But it provides a basis for starting the conversation. Consider privacy as an illustration of this. We can debate the ranking of various rights and the protection that one gives to the others, but the ability to draw a line between ourselves and the world, to close the curtains and lock our papers—or flash drives, since I must acknowledge the advance of technology—in a safe that the general public does not have access to is essential to maintaining a distinct sense of self. And here is an area in which Judge Kavanaugh should trouble all of us across the spectrum, since in his view, the indiscriminate collection of data about the telephone calls of Americans “is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”
To be sure, James Madison never made a phone call, but he also never shot an AR-15, and if we accept that the 1791 text doesn’t really apply in one aspect of modern life, what’s to say that another will not be declared to be beyond the pale tomorrow?
After decades of the culture war, we all should understand that making rights a partisan issue and picking and choosing which we’ll support or oppose on that basis is a bad idea for the whole country. This makes each right dependent on elections, and while power trades back and forth between the parties, once the exercise of a right is lost, getting it back is a hard fight that presents many more chances to fail than to succeed.
About Greg Camp
Greg Camp has taught English composition and literature since 1998 and is the author of six books, including a western, The Willing Spirit, and Each One, Teach One, with Ranjit Singh on gun politics in America. His books can be found on Amazon. He tweets @gregcampnc.