Why the Right To Privacy is Not in the Constitution (A History Lesson)

From the Book: The Trouble With Democracy ^ | 2001 | William D. Bairdner

[MalcolmS]

Please note that the following excerpts have been typed in manually. I apologize in advance for any typos and spelling errors. This material is not available online. The link goes to the book's page on Amazon

From Chapter 1, Unpacking the Myth of Democracy

In sharp contrast with the Athenian system, which (at least for the controlling class, called citizens) operated on the basis of the equal rights and public merit of all voters, the American founding was shot through with the influence of Christianity, for which the determining feature of humanity has never been innate goodness, but rather a tendency to imperfection and sin.

From Chapter 2, Freedom, Democracy, Slavery

The modern Christian population--that is, just about everyone at the time Canada and American were cobbled together--held that true freedom could come only to submission to divine law, the moral strictures of one’s civil and religious community, and proper fulfillment of one’s duties and obligations. ... This meant that they believed in corporate freedom: they expected their moral community to lay down the laws of acceptable behavior for all. The modern idea of declaring oneself “free” by virtue of escaping these Christian ideals they would have held to be extreme selfishness, sin, and madness. They thought of uncontrolled liberty as a bad thing, and were quick to characterize it as mere license.

Like the stoics before them, what they understood as true freedom for the individual was instead an ordered liberty, a life lived in keeping with the natural law of God, right reason, and the restraint of one’s unruly passions in the service of community.

The most stirring understanding of this personal and public standard was Edmund Burke’s eloquent and memorable warning that “men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. ... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” This was the widely accepted wisdom of the Western world, and it was deeply rooted in the image of the chains of slavery.

Bondage to sin and the passions, then, was a most horrible slavery to one’s own animal self, and to be released from this bondage—the pathology, we might say today—was as real as to be released from a human tyrant or slave-owner. In start contrast to our present understanding, a freedom of uncontrolled self-expression meant immediate moral slavery. The ideal was for men to be free not for but from their own desires, so they could subordinate and devote themselves to others in their moral community, and above all to God. ...

That is why our founders expected, indeed sought fervently to live in, the proper sort of “intrusive community”, meaning one that supplied common beliefs and standards that allowed its members to rest in what they called true freedom.

[Puddleglum]

Read the Federalist Papers, letters of Madison, the Founding Fathers, etc.

[headsonpikes]

Spirit of the 4th of July bump.

[tdadams]

There is a reason why they did not explicitly put privacy in the constitution nor why they would consider it a "natural right" falling under the ninth ammendment.

I would have to disagree. Looking at the third, fourth, and ninth amendments in context, I would say that the right to privacy was well in mind. "The right of the people to be secure in their...houses". Seems pretty clear to me.

The problem with natural rights however is that anyone can claim virtually anything is a natural right--including your property, or your life.

You see that as a problem???

There are very few if any, even among the fundamentalists, who would like to see the return to the days of the scarlet letter

You obviously haven't run into some of the Freepers I have.

Manifest harm and morality laws frequently go hand in hand.

Yes, they do, and with the element of manifest harm, those laws are proper. But absent the element of manifest harm, they're simply a tyrannical imposition of someone's personal morality.

A society has to agree to some type of shared morality and values.

OK, how about this. I won't impose my morality on you, and you don't impose yours on me. If I shoot you or damage your property, I've harmed you. I should be held accountable by the law.

[Double Tap]

I don't have an arguement with your post. However, this thread is about the "right to privacy". That, IMO, fits right into what the ninth was suppose to accomplish. That it is a right held by the people that is not enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

[LiteKeeper]

I am a retired Army officer (artillery, MI, and chaplain). I have the privilege of teaching several classes in Colorado Springs to high school, college, and adults on comparative worldviews (biblical vs secular). As I read the various threads, some impress me as good for illustrating different worldviews. So, using some Army terminology, I mark "incidents" as "SPOTREPS" (spot report) and "descriptions of the current world scene" as "SITREPs" (situation reports). INTREP (Intelliegence Report) provides information of an event involving those of the "opposition;" INTSUM (Intelligence Summary) provides more general information. When I get home, I download these SPOTREPs and SITREPs to a database for future use.

Does that help?

[Snuffington]

That, IMO, fits right into what the ninth was suppose to accomplish. That it is a right held by the people that is not enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

Not exactly. According to the Ninth Amendment it may or may not be a right. It doesn't say yes, and it doesn't say no. There may be a right to privacy. There may not. The Ninth Amendment offers no support to either position. It leaves it to the states and the public to work out for themselves.

[steve50]

"If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way in which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for through this, in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. " Washington's Farewell Address 9-19-1796

Sounds like Washington would have required a Constitutional Amendment to allow the government to invade privacy.

[Snuffington]

Sounds like Washington would have required a Constitutional Amendment to allow the government to invade privacy.

Washington was talking about the federal government. Not state governments.