Politics, Culture, and Civil Liberties1. Modern claims over violations of civil rights would have shocked the Founding Fathers, who thought that they had dictated what the federal gov’t could and couldn’t do, not what the state gov’t could and could not do.
i. Even the added Bill of Rights was never intended to control state governments’ actions.
2. The political system of the United States has always facilitated the actions of small groups to help them stop acts that would have imposed great burdens on them.
3. There are three reasons to why the liberties claimed by some people ever become a big issue:
i. There may be rights in conflict (called “interest group politics”).
ii. Passions may be inflamed by a skilled policy entrepreneur (called “entrepreneurial politics”).
iii. Due to the U.S. political culture, there are constant differences in opinions, and from time to time, one opinion is favored over another.
4. The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of rights contain many competing rights that can conflict each other:
i. The right by a person to a fair, unbiased trial vs. the right to broadcast whatever rumors about that person on trial.
ii. The right to publish something w/o censorship due to the “freedom of the press” guarantee from the Constitution vs. the right to “provide for the common defense” and keep information and intelligence secret, lest the wrong people hear about it and hurt the United States.
iii. Freedom of speech vs. preservation of order (i.e. saying defamatory things).
5. Sometimes, special interest groups are on the opposite sides of a fight for certain rights and liberties.
6. A skilled policy entrepreneur can sometimes arouse people to take action against the rights and liberties claimed y political or religious dissidents, but such action usually happens during certain times, like a war.
i. The Sedition Act of 1798 made it a crime to write, utter, or publish “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” with the intention of defaming a gov’t member…this during the French Revolution, and the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-18 were passed to ban people from defaming the military or the war effort for World War I and prevent suspected German spies from overthrowing the gov’t.
ii. The Smith Act of 1940, the Internal Security Act of 1950, and the Communist Control Act of 1954 all banned the advocating of the violent overthrow of the gov’t.
7. In many of these acts, there was a war or some tumultuous activity going on, and when they were passed, the Supreme Court was often called to judge the acts’ constitutionality, and the Court usually upheld the acts at that time and ruled them unconstitutional later, when it was less chaotic.
i. Nowadays, to be found guilty of sedition, though, one usually must be proven of acting to overthrow the gov’t, not just of thinking or talking about it.
8. In early American history, most people were white Protestants, and as a result, the prevailing views were those of the white Protestants, not the blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, or Jews, but immigration to this country brought forth a flood of new people and new ideas and opinions.
i. Thus, more varied views means more disputes over certain rights.
ii. For example, many Jews find a gov’t building display of Jesus Christ in a manger during Christmas time to be offensive, while Christians have no problem with it; does a religious display violate the “separation of church and state” doctrine?
iii. Is mandatory bilingual education constitutionally required because certain languages are “part of the nation’s heritage”?
