A short time ago I wrote a newsletter column in which I asserted that without the protection of liberties, and therefore minority opinion and even behavior in our Bill of Rights, our democracy could not have survived. I have a young friend who is in law school with whom I was discussing that opinion, and I was shocked that she seemed unconvinced of its obvious truth. She is admittedly the kind of person who, when presented with an idea, has an immediate response of skepticism, looking for holes in the argument, and suspending being convinced as long as possible. Nevertheless, she admitted that she had never considered it, and her appreciation of the Bill of Rights seemed to me at best tepid.
Our Constitution was ratified in 1787. It was, I believe, an almost incredible work of genius, and has stood for two hundred nineteen years with few substantive changes. One of the things that few people are aware of is that ratification depended in several states on the inclusion of the first ten amendments - what is called the Bill of Rights. The first eight enumerate the constitutional rights of the people, and the ninth and tenth preserve other rights not mentioned to the people and to the states. This was necessary because in a democratic form of government (and a republic is a particular form of democracy) there is no tyranny but that of the majority, but that is a tyranny against which there can be no appeal. A tyrannous ruler, even a tyrannous bureaucracy can be toppled, but a tyrannous majority is secure. The Bill of Rights is the only bulwark of our liberty.
And it is always under attack. Its unpopularity is amazing. That my young friend is merely tepid is actually a hopeful sign. About thirty years ago the ACLU rewrote them in more modern English and surveyed people on the street as to their level of agreement with them. Few recognized them, and only a few more approved of them. Some thought they were a Communist plot. I suspect that the result of their survey would not be much different today. The first amendment with its prohibition of an establishment of religion is usually the one that concerns us as a religious institution, and we see it being eroded all the time with more and more tax money being allowed to go to religious schools, and now, of course, federal money for these new faith initiatives. It has occasionally been suggested to me that I find ways to take advantage of that, but I think it is a serious breach of the Constitution. The money given to religious schools is not, of course, for religious instruction, they assure us, but money not spent on secular textbooks and school buses can then be spent on religious instruction. And the Supreme Court has even given permission for local government vouchers to be used at religious schools - and they, of course, can't even pretend to separate the secular from the religious.
Ironically, that decision was given the day after the 9th Circuit Court said that requiring people to recite "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. What a farce it was to watch the United States senate defiantly reciting the prohibited words, currying favor with the tyrannous majority. Interestingly, most of the non-church people I talked to about it at the time thought that the Circuit Court was probably right, but they were annoyed with the whole issue. They assumed, correctly, that the Supreme Court would reverse the Circuit Court, and felt that the issue is so trivial that it doesn't matter that the Supremes are less concerned about the Constitution than they are about their own prejudices. I'll have to admit that although I don't consider it trivial, I could wish that such a suit had not been brought at a time when the American people are so eagerly consenting to the shredding of their Constitution in matters both religious and secular. Though I won't take advantage of faith-based initiatives on principle, I do believe in concentrating your efforts on the possible. Purity is only to be practiced if you are willing to give up any hope of making a difference.
The religious right, of course, has long said that the Constitution is wrong and should be changed, and if they can't get it changed they do what they can to have it disobeyed. One of the things that never cease to amaze me is that 80% of the American people would like to see school prayer mandated. Some of them are our fellow Unitarian Universalists, by the way, which is something a bit scary to me. They think that as long as it's inclusive, not tied to one faith, it's sweet to see the little heads all bowed together. Why is it so hard for people, even the best intentioned, to see the tyranny in such an imposition?
The teaching of creationism is another area in which the religious right is still doing its best to make an end run around the first amendment, even after their resounding defeat in Dover, PA, with well-intentioned support from people who don't understand the difference between a scientific theory and ideas, however buttressed with scientific language, based on an unquestioned and unquestionable authority. If it is more than a theory, after all, it isn't science. However, people talk, I think usually honestly, about being open to different points of view, not realizing that the creation story is quite different in different religions, and that if they were really going to teach creationism as an open question they'd have to teach the American Indian stories, Hindu stories, African stories.... Actually that would be fine with me as long as they called the class something other than science.
Those are the kinds of things we've been fighting for a long time. We know the issues and how to respond to them, and though we may lose a motto here or a prayer there, we can always hope that sooner or later the Supreme Court will remember what the Constitution says. What is of serious concern now, however, is the eagerness of the government to use the terrorist threat to make serious inroads on our freedoms, and the equivalent eagerness of too many of the American people to encourage them to do so. We pant for the Star Chamber, for summary judgments, for the suspension of habeas corpus, for, one assumes, the firing squad. This is not entirely new. Whenever people have felt their safety threatened, often their first idea is to suspend the guarantees of the Constitution and even of common law. Probably the most appalling example of that in the past, and I understand that it is still the law in some places, was the confiscation of property belonging to people accused, not convicted, of selling drugs, and of whoever happened to be with them, whether they had anything whatever to do with it or not. A large number, I suspect most, of our citizens strongly object to the protections offered to people accused of crimes. Until the information became public of all the people on death row proven innocent through DNA testing (which prosecutors and even judges tried to block) it was widely proposed that to save money the appeals process for capital crimes should be significantly curtailed.
We do not want freedoms for others. It seems that if we are frightened enough we don't even want them for ourselves. I don't mean such things as increased security at airports, although I must confess that having to remove my shoes four times, once within ten yards and fifteen minutes of the last incident on my trip to Quebec a couple of years ago seemed a little excessive. Particularly as it is pretty obvious that random checks are not going to do any good at all, or, rather, if they do it will be purely by chance, and to boast of including Ray Charles and an 85-year-old lady in your randomness seems to me to be carrying political correctness to a rather unnecessary extreme. However, I took my shoes off four times going north and twice going south with only mild boredom.
This year General Assembly is in Fort Lauderdale. This will be an opportunity that we seldom have - an almost local GA with its excellent and sometimes even life changing lectures, presentations and workshops, opportunities to connect with Unitarian Universalists from all over the country, and even, perhaps (though this is unlikely) a chance to influence the future of our movement. Although attendance has been growing at this occasion for years, it is a possibility that this year it will be sparsely attended, because the convention center there is in a port area and has been designated by the Homeland Security Office as high risk, and therefore certain limitations on our freedom of speech and assembly have been instituted. In the interests of purity of conscience, some people have decided to forgo the experience. The venue for General Assembly was chosen before these precautions, which seem to be limited to requiring everyone to show a government issued photo ID. To change the location or cancel the meeting would cost the General Assembly office almost a million dollars, besides other costs and dislocations for many. Various people have suggested responses of boycotts of area businesses, demonstrations and other "teaching moments". None of the suggestions will even make a dent in Homeland Security's defenses. I would be surprised if they even penetrated to their attention. However, they will disrupt our own meetings and harm the nearby stores and restaurants who probably don't like the restrictions much either.
At the meeting I attended in Phoenix last weekend, one individual there told us that members of his congregation were agonizing over the possibility of inadvertently sending an illegal alien there as a delegate and getting them in trouble. I suggested that it was there choice to go or stay, and if they were able to get there at all - since most people will fly (and certainly those from his area of the country) - they would certainly have a government issued photo ID. The issue is free access to the practice of religion. The people who are upset are rightly upset. Their answers to the problem are misdirected and futile. I hope that none of you will be deterred from attending and volunteering.
What worries me are the justifications that are given for the suspension of rights and liberties. We are at war, we are told, not just in Iraq, but against terrorism everywhere. Even if we are, and I don't think that the struggle against terrorism fits the definition of war, the right to suspend our guaranteed freedoms is strictly circumscribed. That is, if we're concerned about what the Constitution says. More telling, perhaps, for many is the suggestion that if we are dead our liberties won't matter to us anyway. It is this argument that I have seen used as a clincher. If it is indeed this panic fear that persuades us, it is little less than despicable. We are to give up freedom; we are to give up justice; we are to give up honor to protect us from the risk (and not a very high risk) of death. Our forebears risked "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" for freedom for themselves and their posterity. We seem to be ready to give up our freedom and our honor for the sake of our lives and fortunes. If such is the case, it seems to me that our lives are hardly worth it.
Because of the exigencies of my calling I am asked more often than you might expect whether I believe in God. Certainly I do not believe in a personal God, one who holds the world in his hand, taking an interest in each person and event. However, when I think of such matters as these that I have been discussing, it seems clear to me that I do believe that there is something outside of and more important than human survival, either personal or as a race, that should demand our loyalty. Should the day come when no human being puts goodness above his or her material well-being, even mere life, however imprisoned or dishonored it may be, if there is no saving remnant, then I would say that the human race itself is not worth saving.
Luckily I do not believe that that time will ever come. I do believe in the human spirit which places a love for freedom and justice above fear. If it be only a saving remnant to resist the tyranny of the majority, let us be that remnant. Let us stand firm for freedom, firm for justice, firm for the honor of our country's ideals. I do not believe - I try not to believe - that those who would suspend the Constitution for the sake of safety are doing it for any other reason than fear. If it is for power, I don't believe they recognize that motivation in themselves. And so they try to persuade us that our survival depends on these actions. Perhaps they are really convinced that our survival is the only important thing - that it doesn't matter if we have to destroy all that makes it valuable to save it - but let us not allow them to convince us. Let us never allow the bulwark of our liberty to be breached.