Of course, they weren’t the first to have made these mistakes. And, the Conservatives waging today’s war on education hope that they won’t be the last.
When I was a teenager, it was a felony in parts of the United States to advise a married couple about how to practice birth control. This ended in 1965, in the Griswold v. Connecticut case before the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Court reversed the criminal conviction of a Planned Parenthood program director who had discussed contraception with a married couple, and of a doctor who had prescribed a birth-control device to them.
The majority of the Court summarized their ruling by saying, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy….”
However, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart disagreed back in 1965, saying that he could find no “right of privacy“ in the Constitution of the United States. Using his logic, under the laws of the day, the couple in question could themselves have been sent to prison for using birth control in their own bedroom.
As Justice Stewart wrote in his dissent in the case, “Since 1879 Connecticut has had on its books a law which forbids the use of contraceptives by anyone…. What provision of the Constitution, then, makes this state law invalid? The Court says it is the right of privacy ‘created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees.’ With all deference, I can find no such general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution, or in any case ever before decided by this Court.”
In that view of American law, Justice Clarence Thomas—who still holds a seat on our nation’s highest court—agrees.
In his dissent in a 2003
Texas sodomy case, Thomas wrote, “just like Justice Stewart, I ‘can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,’ or as the Court terms it today, the ‘liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.’”
This type of rationale is how we ended up with the Patriot Act and the NSA, but someone with a real knowledge of our history would see where these men were wrong. The Constitution doesn’t grant a right to eat, or to read, or to have children. Yet do we doubt these are rights we hold?
The simple reality is that there are many “rights” that are not specified in the Constitution, but which we daily enjoy and cannot be taken away from us by the government. But if that’s the case, Thomas would argue, why doesn’t the Constitution list those rights in the Bill of Rights?
If you know your history, you know that the reason is simple: the Constitution wasn’t written as a vehicle to grant us rights. We don’t derive our rights from the constitution.
Rather, in the minds of the Founders, human rights are inalienable—inseparable—from humans themselves. We are born with rights by simple fact of existence, as defined by John Locke and written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Founders wrote.
Humans are “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights….” These rights are clear and obvious, the Founders repeatedly said. They belong to us from birth, as opposed to something the Constitution must hand to us, and are more ancient than any government.
The job of the Constitution was to define a legal framework within which government and business could operate in a manner least intrusive to “We, The People,” who are the holders of the rights. In its first draft it didn’t even have a Bill of Rights, because the Framers felt it wasn’t necessary to state out loud that human rights came from something greater, larger, and older than government. They all knew this; it was simply obvious.
Thomas Jefferson, however, foreseeing a time when the concepts fundamental to the founding of America were forgotten, strongly argued that the Constitution must contain at least a rudimentary statement of rights, laying out those main areas where government could, at the minimum, never intrude into our lives.
Jefferson’s insistence on a bill of rights exemplifies the progressive thoughts and actions that fill our rich history, and provide a perfect example of why education is vital to our democratic republic.
Jefferson was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, “I will now tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land….”
There had already been discussion among the delegates to the constitutional convention about whether they should go to the trouble of enumerating the human rights they had held up to the world with the Declaration of Independence, but the consensus had been that it was unnecessary.
The Declaration, the writings of many of the Founders and Framers, and no shortage of other documents made amply clear the Founders’ and the Framers’ sentiments that human rights were solely the province of humans, and that governments don’t grant rights but, rather, that in a constitutionally limited democratic republic We, The People—the holders of the rights—grant to our governments whatever privileges our government may need to function (while keeping the rights for ourselves).
This is the fundamental difference between kingdoms, theocracies, feudal states, and a democratic republic. In the former three, people must beg for their rights at the pleasure of the rulers. In the latter, the republic derives its legitimacy from the people, the sole holders of rights.
Although the purpose of the Constitution wasn’t to grant rights to people, as kings and popes and feudal lords had done in the past, Jefferson felt it was necessary to be absolutely unambiguous about the solid reality that humans are holders of rights, and that in no way was the Constitution or the new government of the United States to ever be allowed to infringe on those rights.
The Constitution’s authors well understood this, Jefferson noted, having just fought a revolutionary war to gain their “self-evident” and “inalienable” rights from King George, but he also felt strongly that both the common person of the day and future generations must be reminded of this reality.
“To say, as Mr. Wilson does, that a bill of rights was not necessary,” Jefferson wrote in his December 1787 letter to Madison, “…might do for the audience to which it was addressed….” But it wasn’t enough. Human rights may be well known to those writing the constitution, they may all agree that governments may not infringe on human rights, but, nonetheless, we must not trust that simply inferring this truth is enough for future generations who have not so carefully read history or who may foolishly elect leaders inclined toward tyranny.
“Let me add,” Jefferson wrote, “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”
Madison took Jefferson’s notes and shared them with Hamilton, Adams, Mason, and others, and then sent a letter to Jefferson outlining the objections to a Bill of Rights that had been raised by the members of the constitutional convention.
On March 15, 1789, Jefferson replied to Madison: “I am happy to find that, on the whole, you are a friend to this amendment. The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences, and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly overweighs the evil.
“I cannot refrain from making short answers to the objections which your letter states to have been raised [by others]:
“1. ‘That the rights in question are reserved, by the manner in which the federal powers are granted.’ Answer: A constitutive act [the Constitution] may, certainly, be so formed, as to need no declaration of rights. …In the draught of a constitution which I had once a thought of proposing in Virginia, and I printed afterwards, I endeavored to reach all the great objects of public liberty, and did not mean to add a declaration of rights. …But…this instrument [the U.S. Constitution] forms us into one State, as to certain objects, and gives us a legislative and executive body for these objects. It should, therefore, guard us against their abuses of power, within the field submitted to them.”
In this, Jefferson is stating openly that the purpose of the Constitution—and even the Bill of Rights—is not to grant rights to the people, but to restrain government. It doesn’t grant, it limits.
And, Jefferson said, his proposed Bill of Rights was only a beginning and imperfect; it would be nearly impossible to list in detail all the rights humans have. But a start, a try, is better than nothing—at least it will make clear that the purpose of the constitution is to limit government:
“2. ‘A positive declaration of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude.’ Answer: Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.”
His third point was that the states may try to limit peoples rights if the explicit nature of government and rights wasn’t spelled out in the Constitution through a Bill of Rights, so the constitution protected citizens from tyrannical state governments who may overreach (as the Supreme Court ultimately ruled Connecticut had done in banning birth control).
And, finally, Jefferson noted that if they were to err, it would be better to err on the side of over-defining rights—even if past efforts had proven unnecessary or nonviable—than under-defining them.
“4. ‘Experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights.’ True. But though it is not absolutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely inefficacious. A brace the more will often keep up the building which would have fallen, with that brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the characters of the inconveniences which attend a declaration of rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconveniences of the declaration are, that it may cramp government in its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, moderate and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a declaration are permanent, afflicting and irreparable.”
A Bill of Rights wasn’t necessary, but it was important. We all knew the constitution was designed to define and constrain government, but it’s still better to say too much about liberty than too little.
Even though this thrown-together-at-the-last-minute Bill of Rights doesn’t cover all the rights we consider self-evident, and may inconvenience government, it’s better to include it than overlook it and risk future generations forgetting our words and deeds.
Beyond that, there’s good reason to believe—as the majority of the Supreme Court did in the Griswold case, the Texas sodomy case, and at least a dozen others—that the Founders and Framers did write a right to privacy into the Constitution. But, you probably had to sit through an AP history course to hear about that reason.
Living in the 18th Century, the Founders never would have actually used the word “privacy“ out loud or in writing. In fact, a search, for example, of all 16,000 of Thomas Jefferson’s letters and writings produces not a single use of the word “privacy.” Nor does Adams use the word in his writings, so far as I can find.
The reason is simple: “privacy“ in 1776 was a code word for toilet functions. A person would say, “I need a moment of privacy” as a way of excusing themselves to go use the “privy” or outhouse. The chamberpots around the house, into which people relieved themselves during the evening and which were emptied in the morning, were referred to as “the privates,” a phrase also used to describe genitals.
Privacy, in short, was a word that wasn’t generally used in political discourse or polite company during an era when women were expected to cover their arms and legs and discussion of bedroom behavior was unthinkable.
It wasn’t until 1898 that Thomas Crapper began marketing the flush toilet and discussion of toilet functions became relatively acceptable. Prior to then, saying somebody had a “right to privacy” would have meant “a right to excrete.” This was, of course, a right that was taken for granted and thus the Framers felt no need to specify it in the Constitution.
Instead, the word of the day was “security,” and in many ways it meant what we today mean when we say “privacy.” Consider, for example, the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated….”
Similarly, “liberty” was also understood, in one of its dimensions, to mean something close to what today we’d call “privacy.” The Fifth Amendment talks about how “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property…” and the Fourteenth Amendment adds that “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property….”
And, of course, the Declaration of Independence itself proclaims that all “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So now, thanks to the war on education that began with Ronald Raegan, we have come to that remote period in time Jefferson was concerned about. Our leaders, ignorant of or ignoring the history of this nation’s founding, make a parody of liberty and flaunt their challenges even to those rights explicitly defined in the Constitution. And, perhaps worse, they allow monopolistic corporations to do the same.
Our best defense against today’s pervasive ignorance about American history and human rights is education, a task that Jefferson undertook in starting the University of Virginia to provide a comprehensive and free public education to all capable students. A well-informed populace will always preserve liberty better than a powerful government, a philosophy which led the University of California and others to once offer free education to their states’ citizens.
As Jefferson noted in that first letter to Madison: “And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them…. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”
The majority of the Supreme Court wrote in their opinion in the 1965 Griswold case legalizing contraception that, “We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights [and] older than our political parties…” saying explicitly that the right of privacy is a fundamental personal right, emanating “from the totality of the constitutional scheme under which we live.” But, they never would have understood that inalienable right without a real education about our history.
We must teach our children and inform the world about the essentials of human rights and how our constitutional republic works—deriving its sole powers from the consent of We, The People who hold the rights—if democracy is to survive. And, we must stand up to anyone who tries to block us from sharing our progressive history.
Thomas Jefferson (Credit: White House Historical Association)
Sure, the war on education helps Republican lawmakers destroy unions and slash government spending, but it’s our history of progressive change that makes Conservatives hate accurate depictions of our past.
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