Billmon: Surveillance Polls Don't Matter

[cal04]

The whole point of having civil liberties is that they are not supposed to be subject to a majority veto. Hobbes may not have believed in natural rights, but our founders did. And their opponents, the anti-Federalists, were even more zealous about restraining the powers of the federal superstate, which is why they forced the Federalists to write the Bill of Rights directly into the Constitution.

It defeats the purpose of having a 4th Amendment if its validiity is entirely dependent on breaking 50% in the latest poll. It would be nice to have "the people" on our side in this debate, and obviously a lot of them are, even if Doherty's plurality still prefers Leviathan's crushing embrace. But some things are wrong just because they're wrong -- not because a temporary majority (or even a permanent one) thinks they're wrong.

Real conservatives used to understand this. But the authoritarian right, for all of its talk about moral absolutes, understands and respects just one thing: power. In our system power flows from votes -- and having the money to demagogue those votes. It doesn't get more relativistic than that.

We can't do anything about how a corrupt, oligarchic system works (or rather, doesn't work) but we can at least stop accepting the other side's terms for the debate. What the government is doing is illegal and unamerican, and that would still be true if the polls showed 99% support -- in fact, it would be even more true.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/13/15959/1853

http://billmon.org/archives/002441.html

[Dudley_DUright]

1. Bravo Billmon

I am glad to see he has spent one of his now sadly infrequent posts on this issue. The bill of rights in NOT subject to majority vote or veto.

[Gabi Hayes]

2. gee, isn't that the precise reason for the bill of rights?

to protect the powerless minority from the all-powerful majority?

seems pretty obvious to me