The ‘pursuit of happiness’ means having the right to privacy

Americans face two contradictory visions of democracy. One is represented by a right-wing, activist Supreme Court and Christian nationalists. The other needs a leader. In the first vision of the United States, a sliver of the electorate (White, Christian, male) exploits anti-majoritarian aspects of our democracy (e.g. the filibuster, the electoral college, gerrymandering) to use the awesome power of the government to impose values rooted in the 19th century on a diverse country. (Unsurprisingly, the beneficiaries are largely White, Christian and male.) Oppositional forces (modernity, science, diversity) are foreign, elite and alien. This vision posits that to achieve “ordered liberty” for a diverse, noisy, rambunctious people, we must respect the right to self-determination — to choose one’s family, one’s lifestyle, one’s profession and one’s philosophy of child-rearing. That necessitates restriction on government so as to protect a sphere of private conscience. It’s what Louis Brandeis called the “right to be left alone.” The latter view is shared by a majority of Americans in diverse policy arenas, including contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, child rearing and lifestyle. And until Friday, the Supreme Court dating back nearly a century had jealously guarded that sphere of privacy. Before Griswold v. Connecticut was decided in 1965, the court in the 1920s protected the right to send your child to the school of your choice and receive instruction in a foreign language; in the 1950s, the right to choose your profession; and the right to travel in 1958 — none of which are expressly set forth in the Constitution but all of which are essential to a free people. The court in 1923 held that “liberty” includes the right “to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” All of that — all of it — is up for grabs if the views expressed most directly by Justice Clarence Thomas are accepted. It’s a world few progressives or conservatives would really want to chance. But aside from the court, the invasion of all personal decision-making of privacy is now the driving force behind the MAGA movement. It wants to control how schools teach race, what teachers say about sexual and gender identity, how parents treat transgender children, and, now, whether women can be forced to give birth against their will. Whether tyrannical busybody rules are adopted by political bodies (made less democratic by gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.) or the court, the society that results will be antithetical to the modern vision of a society in which individuals define their own lives and make intimate decisions without fear of the government or deputized vigilantes punishing them. This conflict between two views of America comes at a time when the Democratic Party is struggling to articulate the values of ordinary Americans and to both unify its own base and expand to a larger share of the electorate. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s reckless and reactionary activism, we can see clearly the common value in dire need of support: the right of privacy. As the Supreme Court for about 100 years has explained, this entails the right to self-determination, to self-realization and to personal autonomy. Privacy, like liberty, is threatened by a Christian nationalist movement that wants to freeze the United States in the 19th century and remove our individual choices. The interests (the right to abortion, to same-sex marriage, to contraception, to raising your child as you see fit, to set up a household of your choosing) are varied. Some interests are as old as the republic with newfound urgency (e.g. the right to be secure in one’s home without no-knock raids), and some are entirely new (the right to control your own online data). The theme however is singular: The right to live free from the tyranny of the government and the mob. Quite simply, privacy makes possible the “pursuit of happiness,” which each person must define for themselves . Perhaps the Democratic Party can construct a unifying theme (Privacy is on the ballot!), or perhaps it requires a new political movement akin to other advocacy organizations (Americans for privacy). It might entail a new fusion party that can endorse candidates who respect the right of privacy. One can imagine an agenda dedicated to codifying rights of privacy in federal and state law, to securing privacy rights in referendums and initiatives and even passing a simple constitutional amendment that preserves the right of privacy as it existed before Dobbs. In sum, Americans need a counterweight to a Christian nationalist movement that seeks to impose on the majority the set of social beliefs of the minority. They need a movement to defend the myriad ways 330 million Americans engage in “pursuit of happiness” — ways as diverse as the country itself. All they need is the leadership, energy and determination to harness that most innate human desire — to fulfill one’s own destiny. Opinion | We need a pro-privacy movement to combat Christian nationalism - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/27/privacy-christian-nationalism/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F37375fb%2F62b9ba7ccfe8a21601c54261%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62b9ba7ccfe8a21601c54261&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b