For 28 weeks in late 2008 and 2009 I wrote a series on the Constitution. It grew out of a realization that while I knew a couple of the Amendments I had never really read the whole thing. Worse I had never taken the time to think about it in part and as a whole. If you’re interested you can find the last one here, and there are links to all 27 of the others. The point is not the series but what I learned from doing it.
There seems to be a failure by many of our fellow citizens to understand that the Constitution is not a Chinese Buffet where you can go straight for the sweet and sour chicken but leave off the bean sprouts. Our Constitution is more of a tapestry, where if you pull out one string that offends you the whole thing is weakened.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
If one wants the protections of a particular Amendment, then one has to support the whole thing. There is no getting around that. If you are a big fan of the idea that the State should not be able to view or seize your private papers and files, then it follows that you must support the 2nd Amendment and its provisions for the ownership of guns by private citizens.
One of the things which complicate this is that the Constitution is not really the last word. While it is the foundation that our protections are based on, it is the case law from the counts which really give the boundaries of our freedoms. This can make it difficult to really understand the lay of the legal landscape. Unless you are a legal junkie like me and actually like to read Supreme Court decisions you are likely to have an incomplete understanding of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
This leads us back to the Park 51 Islamic Community Center and the controversy over its construction. The Radical Right has been braying that the site of the 9/11 attacks are sacred ground. Fair enough, the site of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil has should be respected. Nearly three thousand of our fellow citizens were killed by murderous assholes in hopes of terrorizing a nation they could not harm otherwise. The loss of life alone means this should be respected. However, it should not and can not be used to trump the Constitutional protections that made us a nation that terrorists, no matter how many, can ever defeat.
A lot of the argument has becomes about the optics of the proposed community center being as close as it is (not really very close, nor visible from Trade Center Plaza) to the site of the attack. The point is "Well, they have a right to build where they want, but I think it is a bad idea". There is no prohibition on having an opinion like that, but it misses on of the critical points about the Constitution.
The Framers assumed that we would be adults about matters of policy. Having just broken away from their former nation the development of the Constitution was an attempt to give their descendants the framework to avoid the abuses that they had rebelled against. They never envisioned a time when one segment of the body politic would use fear of the "other" to whip up their base.
The assumption is that when someone does something within their Constitutional rights other citizens might not like it but they are also expected to allow that action, as they will be allowed to do things that others don’t like. This is an adult attitude the President Jefferson summed up quite well when he said
"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
While he was talking about religion specifically this idea expands to one that if an action does no harm to another it should not be the concern of the State. The issue is where one draws the line of harm. Some (though not all by any means) of the families of the victims of the Twin Towers attack feel that they are being harmed by the construction of this Islamic community center. They say that it gives a victory to the terrorists based on the reasoning that in the past Islamic temples have been built on the site of other religions temples. In this the Muslims are not any different from any other religion. The Cathedral in Mexico City was built on the site of the Aztec chief temple and capital.
The question is, if the 9/11 families who object had never heard of the 51 Park Place center would they have been harmed? If this group of anti-extremist Muslim citizens had just built the center and operated it as planned without the Radical Right’s bigoted religion baiting would there be harm? The obvious answer is that there would not. How can you be harmed by something you don’t know?
The harm that the 9/11 families are experiencing comes not from the fact of the community center but from the Radical Right using the deaths of their loved ones as a political chip. It is a cynical ploy the Republicans have used for nearly a decade. They have taken an event which was traumatic for nation because we saw it live on TV and used that trauma to bend the public to supporting them.
There is another group who is being harmed here as well. The members of the mosque who is building the community center; they are not asking to do anything illegal or even immoral. They want to build an extension of their temple to serve the members of the community, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Like the soup kitchens of other religions this is part of their community outreach. It is a very real harm to put the national spotlight on their actions and accuse them of collusion with terrorists and of triumphalism in trying to build a community center.
It all comes back to the Constitution. The squawking of the Radical Right is protected by the Constitution; they are allowed and protected in saying any dammed fool thing they like. The mosque members are also protected in their desire to build a religious building with their own money on property they bought and which the local zoning board has approved.
If one is to be respected then the other must. The same Amendment which guarantees that folks like Fox News and Newsbusters can spout completely skewed so-called "news" on a daily basis also guarantees the right for the community center to be built. You can not have one without the other.
There are no "buts" in the Constitution. It is an all or nothing proposition. If you are going to enjoy the protections it affords, you can not argue for others not to enjoy those same protections. I find it amazingly distasteful for the Radical Right to use this issue as a wedge to divide the nation, but I won’t say it is they should be prevented from doing it.
The Radical Right wants it both ways, they want to be able to say whatever they like and at the same time advocate for others to be unable to say or do things protected by the Constitution. In this dichotomy they show that they don’t really care about the Constitution and its firm commitment that all citizens are protected equally under the law. There is no test for exercising Constitutional rights. As a citizen, hell, as a resident of the United States you have these rights and can use them as you see fit. It is the expectation of the Framers that we will use them in an adult way, but there is not even a requirement for that.
Democracy requires thought and tolerance. It is designed to protect the rights of the minority, even really unpopular minorities, from the tyranny of the majority. This is the problem with the Radical Rights crusade against this community center and mosque building in general. If we start to chip away at the rights of a minority, where does it end? We must keep the tapestry of the Constitution as whole as possible, the strength of that clothe protects us all.
The floor is yours.