What would the Founding Fathers do?

Washington Post blogger Emily Messner offered this quote from James Madison to try to decide how the Founding Fathers would respond to the domestic spying:
A “man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. . . . He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley

9 Comments

  1. writerdog
    Posted January 6, 2006 at 6:47 am | Permalink

    “What good does it do to have all the rights in the world if we’re dead? Let’s not be stupid“. That is a quote from today’s opinion line, to which I responded (giving away a secret of my own. Which would be no secret to anyone who writes) “Gee I bet those who died defending those rights wished they had thought of that!”.

    The right to privacy is covered under the forth amendment and to a certain extent under the fifth amendment. Let us not forget that these rights came from another time when a foreign power wished to stop this country in it ideas. That these rights were paid for and defended with blood. The deaths of those that believed in those rights and held them to be a God given right of those that lived and died for them. America is a name for this country, what America really is can be defined by the believe in those rights. There are many names for many countries, but there is only one United States of America. Why is that?… Look to the Constitution and find the answer.

  2. PL
    Posted January 6, 2006 at 11:38 am | Permalink

    Very moving, Writerdog. Well said.

    What strikes me as I read these words by Madison is that our current president probably has never read them or if he has he wouldn’t understand them.

    But their dream lives no matter what pygmy occupies the White House.

    As Edward R. Murrow said, “We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.

    “This is no time for men who oppose George W. Bush’s methods to keep silent. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.”

  3. Jed
    Posted January 6, 2006 at 11:51 am | Permalink

    Well, our Founding Fathers didn’t explicitly say that the government couldn’t tap cell phones or data-mine e-mails, did they? Of course, they also didn’t specifically address superhighways, air traffic control or the war on drugs either. That’s why we have a court system that keeps the Constitution a living document, and not a relic of ages past! Anyone who tries to read the Constitution that narrowly to justify his own ends, or refers to it as a “goddamn scrap of paper” is a treasonous bastard, and should be treated as such by any true American!

  4. JQ Public
    Posted January 6, 2006 at 8:24 pm | Permalink

    Our founding fathers broke away from out mother country because of over taxing their goods. What the hell would they have done if the king had sent all their jobs and livelyhoods overseas?

    The current administration has offloaded millions of computing and engineering american jobs to: China, Russia, and India … to name a few. What would our founding fathers do if their jobs were stolen for good?

  5. Rage
    Posted January 6, 2006 at 11:21 pm | Permalink

    writerdog,I might have mentioned something about the Ninth amendment, but I enthusiastically second the comments of PL and others. Great post! Good dog! (Sorry, my smartass side couldn’t resist that one!).

  6. writerdog
    Posted January 7, 2006 at 7:24 am | Permalink

    so where is my treat? I like Bacon!!!

  7. k
    Posted January 7, 2006 at 9:41 am | Permalink

    I agree with the opinions here. The constitution (imo) was written as a living document because I believe our founding fathers were intelligent enough to know that the world will change and you have to keep up with it. They saw the change that happened in the past few hundred hears and knew change was inevitable. That is why it annoys me when I hear crap from quite a few of the conservatives (e.g. Alito) who say the Constitution isn’t a living document. So we must apply ~225 year old thought to a 21st century problem?

  8. nix
    Posted January 17, 2006 at 8:52 am | Permalink

    does anyone have a link fort he madison quote please?

  9. nix
    Posted January 17, 2006 at 8:53 am | Permalink

    nevermind. found it.

    http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/thedebate