Winter 2006 Issue No. 5
I was watching a very interesting Boston Legal (Tuesday 11/1/05) somewhat controversial episode with its subject matter being defending structural protest against the IRAQ war and my emotions on another issue resulting from reasoning for and arising from that war; protection against terrorism causing an intrusion on privacy rights flared -right? wrong? I decided to write.
Is Democracy Being Tested?
Isn't Democracy where we citizens all have the right to vote on how we should be treated and how we should treat others? But we citizens all have also agreed by participating in and receiving the benefits of said Democracy to abide by the decision of in most cases the majority of our other citizens, provided we citizens all agree not to tread on certain inalienable individual rights. Where does the right of privacy fit in here and does the majority of citizens all who choose to participate have the power to determine if protection of all is a matter paramount to that right? Is not the right to protect ourselves confirmed in our Bill of Rights as one of those inalienable rights? But what if the right to protect ourselves intrudes on the right of privacy? Is there a rule of priority? This writer does not believe so. All of we citizens' inalienable rights are of equal stature. So what do we do concerning the conflict here? We should not compromise on rights as are provided as a foundation of our physical existence. We citizens act for the good of ourselves as a democratic state through our being represented by a governing body. We must trust such group of able fellow citizens who we have entrusted decision-making for all we citizens participating in this Democracy. We all however shall also never lose sight of our right to all be heard individually and we should never hesitate to set forth our opinion. This writer feels that there must be a way of reconciling the right of privacy with the right and need of protection. Maybe the answer at least in part is that there be a shift in responsibility for protection the closer we come to the point of conflict between privacy and protection.
Maybe there can be found a certain area of privacy where protection is the purview only of the focus of that privacy and protection from outside that area must be requested before it is thrust upon us, but we must be accepting of the possibility there that protection from the outside source might not be there or may be slow in coming if we have the right to deny it and we citizens cannot blame anyone other than ourselves if we are not adequately protected within our sphere of off-limited privacy. Its just a thought but one developed by the various disturbing occurrences lately in this great country and abroad and being fueled by the doubt I sense rapidly growing in our readiness to protect ourselves from extraordinary and unexpected significant and dangerous occurrences.
Were we or should we have been ready for Katrina? Are we making satisfactory progress in Iraq? Can we adequately handle an avian flue epidemic? Will privacy concerns interfere with our being able to protect ourselves sufficiently? Can terrorism be constrained without such interference? Is our fear of being sued and our proclivity to sue out of place here and is it a major part of the interference. Are our homes that area of privacy where such interference is not to be countenanced? This writer thinks so, but of course that is my opinion and as a fellow citizen I am entitled to it.
I was prompted to write this short story by an article in this months ABA Journal on the benefit of Lawyers input into how we citizens can magnify our readiness to withstand and combat the potentially pending avian flue epidemic which if it should spread to our shores may be just another example of how inadequate we all can be if we do not start coming together as one citizenry and reaching sufficient compromise with a goal of protecting the whole and not focusing detrimentally on our individual differences.
Happy Holidays , Happy New Year and Peace to all !