Your Rights Come Before Politics

Politics are real. Politics sets priorities between competing public interests. The process is never perfect. It gets ugly when existing political interests work against your individual rights.

Let’s take an easy example first. Suppose you want to gather people together and voice your opinions. The government says you need a permit for a public gathering. The rationale is that we don’t want several groups trying to use the same space at the same time. Now you learn that there is a permit process, a required interview, and an application fee. The bureaucrats say they are busy and schedule your interview for nine months from now due to Covid-19. Clearly, your right of free speech has been infringed.

Things like that happen more often and in more ways than we’d like to admit. The reasons are easy to understand. Politicians don’t want the protester’s complaints voiced in public. The news media might pick up the story and amplify the citizen’s concerns. Politicians don’t want to see a large group of passionate people expressing a clear and compelling message. The politician might have to change how public resources are spent because that will upset the existing interests that got the politician elected.

Scheduling a demonstration on public property was first called a public safety concern but it was quickly manipulated by politicians to serve their personal interests. When politicians restrict the right of free expression, many protesters simply bypass bureaucratic roadblocks and hold illegal assemblies.

That was an easy example of public policy. Now I’ll make the example more difficult, but no less hard to swallow.... .....