Yesterday I wrote that I think we need to have serious discussion about what is liberty, and here is what I mean. I believe the fundamental purpose of the U.S. Constitution and thus the fundamental purpose of all branches of the Federal government, and in particular the Supreme Court is to preserve liberty.

For liberty to be preserved there needs to be agreement on how liberty is preserved, what conditions must exist or how to we determine there is liberty. For example, I think individual privacy is required for liberty to exist and I think personal autonomy (control over one’s body) is required for liberty to exist. Neither privacy or autonomy are enumerated in the Constitution, but amendments such as the fourth amendment function in maintaining privacy and autonomy. Furthermore, liberty cannot exist in a country where people are at risk of being killed, so viewing the second amendment in the context of preserving liberty also means the government has the obligation to create and enforce laws about weapons.

Consequently, it is wrong for SCOTUS to go hunting for literal references to privacy and autonomy in the Constitution, they are not there and it does not matter because the prime directive of liberty is what above all matters. The ninth amendment states that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution should not be understood to mean that other rights retained by the people should be denied. In my opinion the use of originalism by SCOTUS is a violation of the ninth amendment.

I think the real reason why politicians and Supreme Court Justices avoid the fundamentals of liberty is that most do not agree with the idea of liberty applies to all citizens. They do not accept that women and blacks are equal to white men. Keep in mind that if one wants to think the only valid form of the Constitution is the original document and the Bill of Rights then women and black people are not citizens and therefore politicians and Supreme Court Justices do not need to preserve liberty for non-white men.

We literally fought a Civil War over this topic. The only people who want to live within the literal constraints of the rules and societal norms of 100 years or more ago are those for who doing so provides an advantage over everyone else. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution says:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The preamble states why the Constitution was written, it was done to preserve liberty for the current and future generations. Liberty is the prime directive, but I also think the key word within the preamble is the word more. Clearly the authors of this document did not believe that how they had been living was perfect, and thus I believe they expected we would all strive to continue making a more perfect Union. I do not accept that the authors of the Constitution would think of it as a dead document, they provided an amendment process for its change and a Congress to pass laws to make the Union more perfect in securing the Blessings of Liberty.