The Right To Privacy

Earlier today, while waiting for the plumber to show up and fix the main sewer pipe at our house, I came across and interesting article about the importance of marriage.

The underlying premise of the article, the importance of the institution of marriage, is one that I agree with. However, I disagree quite a bit with the comments of Senator Rick Santorum and his assertation that the right to privacy is a manufactured right.

The "general welfare" is not about individual gain, said Santorum, but about the common good-what is beneficial to all Americans. In contrast, the so-called "right to privacy," which has been at the heart of many of the Supreme Court's recent decisions, has only self-interest in mind. The right to privacy-which is not even in the Constitution, but rather has been "found" by an activist court-started with the sexual revolution and has led to many so-called "rights" that are similarly self-centered. These include abortion and, now, with the Supreme Court's recent Lawrence decision, the right to any form of consensual sex. Santorum called the right to privacy a "me-centered" right.

I'll bypass the collectivization tone of that comment for now, as that is not really what I want to focus on. I want to look at the "right to privacy" and why it is not a found right, but like many other unwritten rights, it is addressed in the Constitution. Or more specifically, it is found in the Bill of Rights (how appropriate):

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

I'll grant Senator Santorum that nowhere in the Constitution did the framers come out and explicitly say "The people will have a right or reasonable expectation of privacy." The Fourth Amendment, I believe, implies that citizens do have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Since the Constitution does not explicitly mention the concept of privacy anywhere, and therefore asserting governmental control over that right, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in effect reserve the right to privacy to the people. Maybe it's not as direct as Santorum thinks it should be, but there is a basis for the right belonging to the people.

Our nation was founded in part on the ideal of individual liberty. Individual liberty implies that people will act in their own best interest. You can call it selfish; you can call it "me-centered." But it is part of who we are culturally. We want to be individuals. Individualism requires privacy. It also requires a rejection of the collectivization being promoted by Santorum.

For some reason Santorum has never been one of my favorites. At times, like this demonstrates, he tends to act like a big government Democrat wrapped in family values and compassionate conservatism. He doesn't seem to accept the idea that individual liberty leads to individual accomplishment, which leads to an improvement in the general welfare.

I'll buy his argument that marriage promotes the general welfare and that it's good for society. I don't agree with his continuation that promoting male/female marriages is necessarily an affirmation of the founder's intent. For someone who is complaining about the "activist" court "finding" a right to privacy, I find it awfully ironic that he professes to know the position of the founders in respect to gay marriage, family values and the common good. It sounds like he's reading as much into the founders as the Court is reading into the Constitution.