The conversations about people carrying guns to town hall meetings made me comment that it’s legal and should stay legal, but it’s probably a bad idea.
Which started me thinking about why it could be a bad idea. It could be a bad idea obviously if someone does something violent and/or stupid. But is that someone likely to be the person who carried a gun openly to the meeting? Probably not.
So why else could it be a bad idea? Well, it could be a bad idea if it makes gun owners look bad. But wait. If exercising your rights makes you look bad what does that mean? Does it mean we should all only exercise our rights when it’s super important and super relevant? Or should we say that if we have the right to do X or say Y then any doing of X or saying of Y is just as legitimate as another, or just as profound as another?
This came up a few weeks/months ago when a young couple in (I think) college had an abortion party. Some commented that it made the pro-choice side look bad, and while I can’t remember if I commented or what I said I agree that it does make the pro-choice side look bad. But a right that you refuse to exercise because of what people might think can turn into a right that you no longer have because it’s seen as unimportant AND becomes a default win for the other side. They silence you not through the law but through custom and the end result is that you’re silent.
We don’t have rights just for the big, important, clever stuff we want to say and do. We have them for the silly little things, too. Trying to get people not to use those rights for the little stuff but save them for the big stuff makes rights into something almost irrelevant to real, every day life. Every day life is about the little stuff, not the big stuff.
So, I have two warring feelings, the idealistic versus the practical.:
You should exercise your rights. If you look silly, so what? Rights don’t wear out and don’t need to be saved up for the big stuff. Making waves is what rights are for.
Don’t make an ass out of yourself exercising your rights. You’ll look bad and make your side look bad, and you may even turn people against you–putting those rights in jeopardy. Making waves just hurts you long-term.
Does anyone else have these two competing ideas struggling for supremacy? Should the practical overpower the idealistic or vice versa?
I think this is bogus. We have the right to freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that everything we say, no matter how asinine, hurtful, harmful, or obnoxious it is, is a good thing because we’re exercising that right.
It’s a mistake to think of rights as an end in and of themselves. The rights we have (e.g. as guaranteed by the Constitution) are there to protect us from certain evils and guarantee certain goods. For instance, much of the debate over gun control and the “right to bear arms” focuses on what end that right is supposed to be for or to protect us against.
So I guess I’m voting for what you call the practical over the idealistic—or maybe I just have different ideals.
As far as the law goes, the boundaries on our rights are determined and defined by their foolish use. Is it a good idea to burn a flag, refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance or pray, hand out pamphlets opposing the draft during a war, march your Nazis group through a Jewish neighborhood, or advocate revenge against blacks and Jews and the government during a Klan rally? For most of these, the answer is no, at least depending on how you define foolish.
I think what you’re basically dealing with here, jsgoddess, is the intersection between constitutional rights and social mores. And I remember thinking about this a lot when I was learning about these rights in high school. I’m constitutionally allowed to do a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean my friends, family, or coworkers will appreciate it or that I won’t experience any bad consequences from doing them. Just because an action is Constitutional, meaning the government can’t stop you from doing it, does not mean everybody else is going to put up with it.
I think the bottom line is that yes, it’s important that people keep pushing the boundaries of what’s allowed and what’s acceptable, because otherwise people tend to assume that things have to be exactly the way they are. But in doing so they have to realize there are consequences and be prepared to face them in return for doing the right thing, or at least doing a brave or unusual thing.
It’s not just someone disliking you, but someone taking your exercising of your right as a reason or influence to take away that right.
Take a gun to a town hall. People become less sympathetic to gun owners. “All those people are nuts!” Attitudes change. Gun rights have more trouble.
Have an abortion party. People become less sympathetic to abortion rights. “All those people are nuts!” Attitudes change. Abortion rights have more trouble.
That sort of thing. Not just “Timmy doesn’t like me anymore.”
There are plenty of reasons one might choose not to exercise a right, having nothing to do with fear of losing the right. For instance, if one is trying to persuade undecided people to join a cuse, extreme demonstrations can be counterproductive. Very few people in the middle are going to be won over to a cause by an abortion party, an open carry at a Presidential rally, or a flag burning, and many will be actively repelled. These may be useful tactics for inspiring a base of believers, but if one is attempting outreach, one might decide to tone them down.
If you don’t mind my saying, bringing an AR-15 to a rally at a Presidential event is not a “silly little thing”. It is a brash, bold statement deliberately intended to evoke significant emotion and discussion on both sides of the aisle, both locally and nationally. If you choose to stand in front of the nation and make a statement, as these people do, then that statement is going to be scrutinized, and you are going to be judged by it.
Just like with the 1st amendment, you have the right to speak your mind, but when you do, people may think you are an idiot, and should have kept your idiotic mouth shut.
I think that’s the way people are. They’re okay with you using your rights in circumstances that they are uncomfortable with (aborting a pregnancy if you are raped, target shooting, protesting a war), but use it a different way (voluntary abortion, or bringing a gun where the president is, or calling the president Hitler) and they say it’s not alright. If something is constitutional when it’s done in an important situation, I think you usually have to accept that it’s constitutional when it’s done frivolously. Most people resent that, though - particularly if they feel strongly about the right, or fought to make it a right, and believe people are now taking it for granted.
It’s true that if you are afraid to exercise a right for fear of having that right taken away, then for practical purposes you don’t have that right in the first place. I think the “people who do X make Y-supporters look bad” is a bullshit argument in more than 99 percent of cases, especially if the reasoning is that everybody will lose a right as a result. That’s why it is so often valuable for people to push the limits: there’s always going to be a balance between what is allowed and what is permissible.
But that may not be the immediate cause that you’re fighting for. If you’re trying to oppose a partial-birth abortion ban, or support expanded public funding for abortion for the indigent, staging an abortion party is your legal right, but it may turn people off of those causes. Or if you’re opposed to the current proposed health care reforms, bringing a gun to the Presidential rally may be your legal right, but it’s going to repel other potential reform opponents who might otherwise have joined you. Likewise for burning a flag at an antiwar rally.
There is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution that cannot be abused. Sure, you have the right to free speech, but that won’t protect you from getting your nose broken if you pop off to the wrong guy. Sure, you have the right to keep and bear arms, but try carrying one into a school and see how far that right extends. You have an absolute right to protection from self-incrimination, but when you’re in the pokey because the jury decided that they wanted to hear you say you didn’t do it and you didn’t, is that any sort of consolation?
In other words, the practical application of your rights is generally preferred unless you choose to take a principled stand on a certain matter, in which case you better be prepared to suffer the consequences of your decision.
I disagree. I don’t think it’s a bullshit argument. I’d be in favor of everyone having the absolute right to do anything at all, if I could trust everyone not to misuse those rights. It’s because people can’t be completely trusted that some restrictions are necessary.
The best way to protect a right is to contribute to society’s consensus that it’s a good thing for people to have that right—that everyone is better off when they have that right.
And rights are frequently in conflict with one another. One person’s right to play their stereo loudly or run their leaf blower early in the morning conflicts with another person’s right to peace and quiet. A parent’s right to discipline their children as they see fit might conflict with the rights of the children or of society. One person’s right to indulge in dangerous activities conflicts with another’s right to safety for himself and his property. What happens when you push a limit to exercise one right but thereby infringe on another?
I’m not talking about trusting people to use their rights responsibly. I’m talking about a specific argument we see on this board all the time, and one which frustrates me to no end: “don’t do that, it makes us look bad and provides our opponents with ammunition.” As a reason to avoid doing the behavior, I think do think it’s a bullshit argument.
Yes, they are. And extreme or foolish examples are usually how we figure out how to deal with the conflict.
I don’t think so, but maybe I’m missing something. There’s no guarantee a hard case makes a good law, but if it was an easy case it probably would not be made law in the first place. I think difficult and interesting cases are how we - and I mean all of us, not just the courts - figure out how we feel on the complicated boundary issues.
I’ve been a proponent of that argument at times, and I think my comment in the town hall gun thread boils down to that–which is what I’m rethinking now.