Summary of
Article:
The Silicon Valley
millionaire, John Gilmore, has refused to comply with the airline
industry’s requirement to show his ID prior to traveling, calling it an
invasion of his “Right to Privacy”.
On top of that, he has not been allowed to even see the rules that
require and authorize the airlines to check every passenger’s
identity. His protest calls
attention to a government that he believes has trampled on the rights of
its citizens in the pursuit of security.
Commentary on the Right to Privacy
By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
03/02/2005
The world changed on 9/11;
America
was again warned that Militant Islam wants to destroy us. Increasing security throughout the
society was an obvious response to the threats of a sworn enemy. Still, some people believe that a
government conspiracy allowed so that the public would embrace a
reduction of our rights and freedoms. The cynics (e.g. www.democracynow.org etc.) believe that the Administration has no real
commitment to security, the Muslim threat is not serious, the War in
Iraq was
for oil only, and that only power and profits drive our foreign and
domestic policy.
Underneath this cacophony of accusations and
counteraccusations, I believe we find a desire on both sides to legislate
their morality. And since
only one side is right, and both sides believe they are Right, the battle
is fierce and the stakes are high.
The “out of power” party, the Democrats, are attributing evil
motives to their opposition in an attempt to sway opinion and votes. They attribute a lust for power
and profits to the Republicans and offer examples such as Halliburton, no
found WMDs, thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, Enron, the Oil Cartel, etc.
to provide an air of validation to their claims of naked avarice and
power-hunger.
I believe the Democratic Party who us shouting
about the “right to privacy” is using this issue as a tool to advance
their own anti-Christ agenda and to distract attention from the real
battle. In this country we
are facing a spiritual fight between Godliness and rebellion against
submission to His Will and Way.
The Democrats have largely positioned themselves in alliance with
the ACLU/humanist agenda, and the Republicans have largely allied with
Christian principles.
(Although, we can assume there are those with pure and impure
hearts, right and wrong platform stands, and deceitful and truthful lips
in both parties. But, on the
issues of Traditional Marriage and Abortion, the Republicans have
attempted to submit their platform to a Christian worldview, and the
Democrats have flagrantly supported a right to kill unborn children and
disabled adults, and normalize homosexual “marriage”.)
Thus, because of our deference to those among us
with a humanist philosophy and worldview, our nation cannot declare a war
on Militant Islam. We must
instead pretend no religion is evil and declare war on their tactic so as
to not offend the humanist’s politically correct sensibilities. But we cannot afford to capitulate
to the mandates of the PC book of etiquette. Our very survival as a nation of
people who live under the liberty of Christ is at stake. No other philosophy, religion, or
worldview affords the fullness of liberty given to a nation and people who
have bowed their knees to the will and Way of the Lord.
There are spiritual forces operating to distract us
from naming, recognizing, and fighting evil. In this particular day, we face
the evil of Militant Islam attempting to do damage to our infrastructure,
to weaken us, to bring down our economic might. We face the threat of regular
Islam infiltrating our society by conversion, immigration, and
conception. Given enough
time, and a sufficient growth rate, within the next century or two, the
Islamic population could attain a voting majority and legislate an Islamic
state in
America.
But, a more insidious threat is operating within
the homeland. The educated
intellectual aristocracy, the city-bound metro-culture, the peace
religionists, the pagan and atheistic humanists, the
homosexual-adulterer-feminists, and the hip self-validated evolutionist
relativist philosophers are banding together to remove every vestige of
Christianity from our society.
This group believes in the supreme wisdom of humanity, nature,
and intuition. They believe
the rules of behavior are not absolute, but relative to the
circumstance and one’s own sense of truth. This human centered religion has
created a loose alliance with almost anyone of an anti-Christian bent
or non-Christian worldview, and they have penetrated every social
institution. They are using
the tools and tactics of public persuasion to legislate and judge the law
according to humanistic principles, while they proselytize captive
converts in the schools and media.
They are driven by their god, the unHoly Spirit, who seeks to throw
off the restrictive bonds of Judeo-Christian morality that reminds them of
their error and coming judgment.
The humanist virtues include: choice, tolerance,
equality, privacy, and the specious concept of Separation of Church and
State. By framing these
principles as absolute virtues, the humanists on the Supreme Court have
ruled that unGodly behaviors are protected under the color of
Constitutional law. Abortion
and homosexual sodomy are two of the notable examples of private behaviors
that are now “Constitutionally” protected as per the Supreme Court’s
judgment. In particular, the
“right to privacy” as referenced in the 14th Amendment was cited in the
landmark Roe v. Wade, and
Lawrence v.
Texas cases, which then
served as legal precedent to legitimize these practices.
14th
Amendment: Section 1. All
persons born or naturalized in the
United
States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United
States and of the
state wherein they reside. No
state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall
any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.
A quick perusal of the 14th Amendment
reveals no overt reference to a “right to privacy”, just as it does not
mention a right to die, a right control one’s own body absolutely, the
right to perform every sexual act, or any of a number of other modern day
notions of ad hoc “rights” the court has invented to justify every form of
personal and social moral degradation. The Court has inferred a right to
privacy from the phrases, “Nor shall any state deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and “No state shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United
States.” Basing the right to privacy on
these phrases implies that privacy is a privilege, or an aspect of life,
liberty, or property.
If privacy is a privilege, then the privilege is
given because the person engaging in the private behavior can be trusted
to follow Godly principles even when outside of the eyes of those who
would hold him accountable to his obligation to
Godliness.
If privacy is a constituent principle within the
more general rubrics of life, liberty and property, then privacy must be
exercised in proper balance and hierarchy with the other principles that
are applicable to a given circumstance (e.g. kindness, justice,
temperance, patience, loving neighbor as self, and loving the Lord your
God with all your heart, mind, and soul). But, regardless of the
circumstance, Godliness is always the preeminent standard by which we as
individuals and as a society should govern our thought, speech and
actions.
Sodomy and abortion are not addressed in the
Constitution in a sufficiently specific manner to assert that the Framers
intended to place these acts within the set of inalienable human rights.
Thus, the modern legal
advocates of such rights have done so on the basis of a personal worldview
of moral-social conduct. The
Founders, and subsequent legislators, used terse verbiage to codify the
underlying social moral code in the Constitution. The Supreme Court (1892) and
Congressional Committees (1864) examined the culture, history, and laws of
the nation, and declared that “we are a Christian Nation.” Thus we can properly deduce that
the intended underlying moral code of the majority of our Founders and
forefathers for a significant portion of our history was Biblical. And, the fact that our culture
based its Constitutional foundation on Biblical principles implies that we
in later day
America
should likewise judge the Constitutionality of our various laws and
rulings on this same basis.
Until We the People have rejected the God of Abraham from our
hearts, bowed to another god, and rewritten or amended our Constitution,
we should continue to base our moral foundation upon the intent of the
Founders, and base our legislation and legal judgments on Biblical
Godliness. See Founders’ quotes.
When the modern Supreme Court judged blatantly
anti-Biblical behaviors such as Abortion and Homosexual Sodomy as
protected “Rights”, they failed in their mandate to properly judge
Constitutionality. They have
followed the modern mantra of “separating church and state,” and refused
to consider Biblical reference and parable in their judgment of the
Constitutionality of legislation and rulings. They have instead given priority
to humanistic, multicultural, and globalist principles in judging the
propriety of laws.
As a tertiary implicit reference, we can
extrapolate that the 14th Amendment implies that we should
honor a person’s privacy.
There is certainly a time for privacy as we all feel the desire for
privacy around sexual issues and elimination functions. The word “vulgar” means “common”
in Latin; and it is the public display and speech about such
functions that we instinctively declare as vulgar. I believe the desire for modesty
is one of the drives of the soul God has placed within our hearts. Thus, the right to privacy has a
natural resonance in our hearts with relation to abortion and sodomy since
they are typically private acts, and inherently sexual and shameful in
nature. The Supreme Court has
appealed to this natural desire to honor the private intimate nature of
the sexual encounter and blended it with the modern day appeal for
tolerance of all perversions.
From this confusion of natural function and wrong judgment of
values, the Supremes have attributed Constitutional imprimatur to private
shameful acts. Thus, under
the guise of properly judging the implicit intent of the Constitutional
Founders, the modern day anti-Christ Judiciary has ruled that the
repugnant and disgraceful acts of homosexual sodomy and abortion are
protected by our Constitution.
While privacy is an aspect or privilege of life,
and it is certainly a privilege of liberty, it cannot be taken as the
supreme consideration under which all others must submit. There is a time for privacy, and
there is a time to rend the veils of privacy and expose private acts. If privacy is the highest
principle in the hierarchy of human relationship, then any act, murder,
rape, theft, and abuse of all sorts is protected.
The common man knows that such an extension of
logic is absurd, but the arcane world of judicial rulings is far removed
from the ability of the citizenry to comment or combat it
effectively. The Judiciary
has simply chosen to elevate the principle of privacy to the highest level
to forward the cause of instituting sexual immorality as a right, and
prevent dismantling the activities of terrorist religions. If a Christian judge were
to righteously and proactively legislate morality based on Christian
principles, the Left would mobilize the political-media establishment
to oppose what they would call social engineering to
promote a Church-State agenda. This is evidenced by the Democrats
in the US Senate prohibiting any fully qualified candidate from serving on
the Federal bench if they embrace Christian values. We see evidence of the Left’s
agenda as they attempt to legislate their own humanistic morality, and
pretend that there is no church-state violation in so doing. The behavior of the humanist in
their legislation of morality is hypocritical. When Christians use moral
principle to justify a law, the Left objects. In its place the humanist
legislates or rules based on his humanistic principles and hides under the
appearance of totally neutral secularism. In fact, no such values-free
ruling can be made; someone’s values will prevail in every culture and
nation. It is simply a matter
of whether we choose a Judeo-Christian ethic which promotes life and
liberty or a secular religion whose end result is slavery and death. I believe we should simply
acknowledge our Christian heritage and declare ourselves a Christian
Nation.
The word most often used in justifying an
involvement by the state in private affairs is the principle of a
“compelling interest.” And to
be sure, there are private human activities where the state has no
compelling interest in monitoring.
To date, no one has threatened the general welfare of the state by
engaging in the normal intimate activities of husband and wife. But, according to Scripture,
prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, and abortion threaten our survival
as a culture. Biblical text
reports the judgment God passed on
Jerusalem when they turned to
other gods, sacrificed their children, and when the society had degraded
to the point where it was common for men to lay with men. Such behavior was sufficiently
egregious against their relationship to God that He allowed their enemies
to breach their walled cities and take His people into captivity. In effect, God wants relationship
with His people; and given that we cannot see God, the way that we engage
relationship with Him is by listening to His voice. He is always speaking to us
through the Holy Spirit. To
reject His voice, and to violate His leading, is to lose
relationship. In turn, God
moves in the hearts of a man’s enemies, and the proud man is cast low.
God will not be mocked, His
judgment cannot be avoided, and the unrighteous will fall.
A casual examination of one’s own experience of
life reveals privacy as a need of the psyche, a commonly felt desire
embedded deep within our human nature. We innately experience shame or
embarrassment when engaging in public intimate behavior, and we likewise
experience shame as we violate God’s laws. We each know that privacy has an
important place in our lives, and as a nation, we must pass laws to
protect the privilege of the good and Godly to private sacred
practice. Likewise we must
pass laws which properly judge and expose the shameful.
The Libertarian Godless Left has taken our sense of
God-given modesty about sexual behavior as a validation of the right to
privately engage in any cause de jour sexual behavior. The reasoning turns Godly morality
on its head, justifying homosexual sodomy because it is
private. As a nation we should instead recognize the shameful
nature of homosexual acts, and use our justice system to
provide help and alternatives to the people who are possessed by
this spirit.
Justifying homosexual sodomy in
Lawrence v.
Texas was merely the most
recent example of wrongly using a privilege of Godliness to justify the
violation of Godliness. If
the pattern holds, there will soon be claims of “Rights” violation by
polygamists and prostitutes. People are naturally driven
to perform shameful deeds in private. The Left has taken this
illicit desire for privacy, ignored the shameful deed,
and mandated that acts done in private must be
protected. The
appropriateness of privacy being the primary principle in some situations
need not be debated, just as the principles of choice, tolerance, and
equality are likewise the primary virtue in some circumstances. But, none of these principles are
supreme virtues to be applied to all arenas of life. Placing privacy on the altar as
the highest of all sacred rights allows one to justify every immoral act,
as long as it is done in secret.
But, murder, rape, and theft committed in private do not become
justifiable because of their secret commission.
In short, privacy is an important human privilege
to be exercised by those who are Godly and trusted to follow His
ways. There is an inherent
standard of judgment against which we must compare all principles involved
in any given situation. The
problem is that Privacy has been used as a Trojan Horse to bring
ungodliness into our society under the guise of honoring the intended
Constitutional protections of every citizen. In fact, the unHoly Spirit is
using this pretense as a tool to fool the naïve. The real battle is for the hearts
of God’s people and the possession of His nations. We were established as a Christian
Nation, and that Righteous heritage is being stolen piece by piece. In its place we are building a
nation based on tertiary virtues, disregarding our obligation to
judge everything in society by its conformity to Godliness. Such wrongheaded legal precedent
will serve as the legal precursor to slavery. As a nation which has turned from
Godliness, and worshipped the idols of choice, tolerance, equality, and
privacy, we deserve the coming chastening in exile.
There appears to be two issues that John Gilmore is
confronting: 1) He is challenging the underlying right of anyone to
require identity disclosure prior to traveling, and 2) He is challenging
the existence of secret laws, in particular the undisclosed law that
requires airlines to validate identity.
As mentioned above, the right to privacy extends
only to the sacred. Privacy
cannot be exalted to the status of a supreme right. The assumption that all people
will behave rightly in their private affairs is blatantly false. As a result, we cannot absolutely
remove the government’s right examine and judge the private acts of the
citizenry. The
government is God’s surrogate agent on earth.
Ideally
America
would be totally free in all its aspects such as the information
transmission system, the transportation system, and the financial
system. A society of total Godliness in all its citizens would
require no examination or restrictions on travel, banking, or
relationships. This will be
appropriate when everyone is trustworthy and deserves such unrestricted
freedom. The problem is that we have been invaded by people who
are not trustworthy, they hate the True God, and they are trying to kill
people who want to live Righteous lives. And yes, it's
awful that the rebels, renegades, and degenerates are spoiling the
beautiful trusting society that is the promise of a nation under
Christ.
Our nation has established rules because
of lawbreakers. Laws would be
unnecessary if we were each faithful to the Laws of Life written on our
hearts. There are those who wish to transform society by using the
principle of “privacy” for justifying their standing for "Freedoms". They believe they have a right to
perversion of every form because of Constitutional protections to
privacy. Such naiveté is shocking. Freedom comes only as a
reward for the very difficult task of creating a society of near
uniform Godliness. To oppose the enforcement of a law that
facilitates the identification of violators puts us in a place of
blindness. Future problems will arise as as result
of suppressing symptoms that indicate the presence of deeper
problems. Removing the laws, and the associated discomfort with
compliance and punishment, does not remove the violation, it only
removes our indicators of error. God's standard still
remains supreme and the consequences of violating His law remain in
effect.
When Godless people roam the airways,
highways, and byways of
America
with the intent to wreck havoc and kill innocents, we have a
deep societal problem. And the problem is the presence of
evil people in a nation which has in the past declared itself a
Christian nation. Trying to
stop the killers them by monitoring the movement of every person in the
world is inconvenient, expensive, and only somewhat effective.
But, simply enforcing everyone’s "Right" to travel freely in the country
without any restriction is to ignore the fact that Freedom is the
fruit of Righteousness. As long as we have violators in the
country, a government of righteous men will make rules to
provide for the general welfare of the citizenry. As a people we
will impose laws restricting various "Rights" because of the
fraction of the population who violate the rights of others.
The result is a collateral damage to the freedoms of those who are
non-violators. Such is the nature of law. We could protest
against every law passed by every legislature and court on this same
basis. But the fact is that until man turns his heart over in
submission to the perfect leading of the Holy Spirit, we
will continue to impose law and enforcement upon ourselves in an
effort to subdue those who threaten life, limb, and property.
If you want to solve the problem, then contribute in the effort to change
men's hearts to Godliness. Such action will do more good than
protesting against laws that contribute to the detection of
violators.
The issue of enforcing private laws is an entirely
different consideration. The airlines and the
government should publish the laws that require identity
verification. I can think of no
situation where a law should be secret.
When the Court adjudicates in favor of unGodly
conduct, they put the nation in jeopardy of God’s judgment. As long as we judge ourselves
rightly, we will not be judged by God in eternity. The motivation of those who judge
wrongly may be in rebellion against the God, may be
worshiping another god, or may simply misunderstand the proper
priorities of life. But
regardless, the land will not be blessed by God while its people are
governed by wrong principles and worship false gods.
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