Life, liberty, pursuit of ???

ARGH.  Procrastination bites again -- this time, in the form of an op-ed in today's NYTimes by Dan Savage.  No dount thanks to the extensive editorial and fact-checking process (and the backlog of folks waiting to be published) at the Times, Dan actually posted it a couple weeks earlier (and already generated some of the basic discussion around the issue).

About six weeks ago, I suggested that it's time for a Constitutional amendment to provide explicit protection for individual privacy. I probably owe everyone some additional perspective before picking up my quill and parchment, so here goes.

Some 220 years ago, the Founding Fathers didn't see any need to be so literal, instead leaving us with the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. If you buy Rousseau's idea of the "social contract" and the opening of the Declaration of Independence, then the Ninth Amendment clearly enshrines personal autonomy and liberty. Unfortunately, Rousseau really isn't the bedrock of American political thinking any more. Instead, we're in the age of "strict constructionism" and "close textual reading" and artificial culture wars masquerading as appropriate uses of the police power of the state. If the time has come for us to rise up and make the voices and desires of the populace heard again, then I'm willing to take the following shot:

Congress shall pass no law abridging the personal integrity and privacy of each citizen, except to preserve such rights for other citizens.

I welcome the debate over whether certain abridgements do in fact preserve the personal integrity of others. The vast majority of criminal law, for example, would still be legitimized under the formulation I've proposed.

I do plan to continue commenting on and developing this idea ... but I'm feeling a little defensive this morning now that my "big idea" no longer sounds quite so big. 

In other news, I finally bought some records last week and might even talk about them soon... nothing earth-shattering (i.e. I'm still well behind the cool-kid-curve), but certainly enjoyable.  I'm afraid that the privacy stuff may consume more time, though, since it really is an issue that affects us all.  I'm especially scared as a resident of the land where "taxation without representation" isn't a throwback to the 1770s but a fact of life.

It's truly sad that our country has come to this stage, but it's time to step up and defend ourselves. Privacy and personal integrity aren't "liberal" or "conservative" issues -- they're personal and real and shockingly at risk.