By Michael S. Klein Los Angeles
It was fascinating to read Neal Macaulay’s well-written letter to the editor of Oct. 15, criticizing Miriam Jaffe for her concerns about traffic monitoring cameras on civil liberties grounds.
Mr. Macaulay’s last sentence is particularly revealing, as it contains his underlying logic. He says, “I think there is something strange about people, in an English speaking democracy, fearing their own democratically elected government.”
It is a great line, but I have a suspicion that Mr. Macaulay is originally from Great Britain or one of the Commonwealth Countries and was not educated here because his rationale, and indeed his entire letter, shows a complete lack of understanding of the foundation of American democracy.
The founders of this country were indisputably greatly concerned with and did fear precisely that, Mr. Macaulay. They feared their own democratically elected government. Therefore, in criticizing Ms. Jaffe, Mr. Macaulay also has a bone to pick with George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the Founders. Ms. Jaffe, you’re in very good company!
Those American founders had come through a period of repression by their own government and they insisted on adding to the Constitution the Bill of Rights.
If Mr. Macaulay will take the time to read it, he will see that the Bill of Rights consists of an enumeration of powers which the government may not take and which are reserved to the people.
From its very first words, “Congress shall make no law …” the Bill of Rights makes it crystal clear that the Founders proposed a limited government and that they were very concerned with protecting citizens from their own government. They precluded even a democratic majority from doing some things.
After all, is it a foreign government or your own government which controls everything from where you can live, where you can go, if you can get married and to whom, where you can be buried, what you can eat, what medical services you can receive, your right to speak freely, your right to assemble, your obligation to fight in the military, whether you can marry people of a different race, whether people of a different ethnic group can vote, etc.? These are not idle rights. This stuff is real, Mr. Macaulay.
Furthermore, even our wonderful government, over time, has shown that it can misuse its powers by such things as spying on its citizens, holding people without trial, engaging in unreasonable searches and seizures, miscegenation laws, discrimination against people based on their race or ethnic origin, etc.
Within recent memory, President Nixon was impeached in large part because of violation by his administration of some of those laws and his personal acts in covering up the violations.
Some reasonable voices even suggest that the current administration has engaged in similar violations of the Bill of Rights and our Constitution.
So, Mr. Macaulay, it can happen — and it has happened and it may be happening again now.
Indeed, given the role of precedent in our legal system, many thoughtful Americans are concerned that each incremental reduction of our privacy or other civil liberties creates the antecedent conditions for repressive government actions.
Mr. Macaulay, your concerns with fighting people who would like to kill Americans are real and need to be addressed. But they do not justify destroying the basic principles upon which our country was founded and for which it still stands.
Mr. Macaulay, my suggestion is that you read the Bill of Rights and study on it. After that, you may want to rethink your comments.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 22, 2007. Read the original PDF.