Interpreting the First Amendment

     Interpretation has always been a big part of how the First Amendment freedoms are enforced. We learned earlier this year that it was only recently, historically speaking, that freedom of speech was even taken seriously. Well, has that table ever turned now.

     The National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, is essentially a list of all the things your employer can't fire you for. The idea is to keep companies from denying rights to their workers through fear of unemployment. But as Teresa Tritch of the New York Times recently observed, "Employees have rights under the N.L.R.A., but no right to be informed of those rights" (full article here). Why? The First Amendment. Requiring companies to tell their workers anything at all would abrogate their freedom of speech, which is not only the right to say whatever you want, but also the right to not say whatever you don't want.

     Whenever I see two laws working against each other, I feel like there must be a deeper issue at the center of it. In this case, the problem is freedom of speech. In general, I'm a fan - as someone who plans to become a journalist, it's difficult to be against it - but I do feel like it's gained an aura of infallibility it doesn't deserve. There are instances when information does not want to be free, and it shouldn't be. There are even more instances when invoking the First Amendment turns into a legislative "so is your face", an irrelevant remark designed solely to make the other guy shut up. Requiring companies to post a poster doesn't seem much different than requiring the city to put up speed limit signs, or making toy manufacturers put safety information on boxes so small children don't choke. It's simply a method of telling people how their world works and what they can expect.

     So where do we go from here? Do we continue as we have begun, and preserve the freedom to not speak? Has the First Amendment, crusader of democracy, gotten too big for its britches and our needs? Or is there a way to reconcile the two sides, and keep freedom of speech at its current levels while enacting a little spirit of the law to deal with those who take it out of context? America doesn't do a whole lot of spirit of the law, seems to me, or fewer people on trial would get off on technicalities and loopholes. But hey, it's not my question to answer. Comments please! Exercise your freedom of speech.

They Make A Better Loophole

     For some time now, both federal inclination and public opinion have been slowly leaning towards creating stricter gun-control laws. (The image in my head is of a stone pillar, which would fall on the heads of criminals were it not for a group of people pulling it back upwards - kicking and screaming. That might just be my inner drama student, though.) Regardless, it looks to me, from statements issuing from DC, that some new and improved legislation will arrive on Congress's doorstep shortly.

     New and improved, but maybe not improved enough.

     This is not a debate about how tightly, or otherwise, firearms should be limited. This isn't a rant for or against the argument that owning firearms saved lives during certain riots of the previous generation. (Although the police should be capable of doing that job. And if they aren't, then send in the army. But I digress.) This is merely an observation that if you're going to bother passing legislation in the first place, you should do it right, so you won't have to do it over. That is to say, make a better law, not a better loophole.

     The full article on the subject can be found here, but the general gist of it is as follows: if you make an organization to own the gun, then they don't have to go through background checks, and moreover can purchase weaponry that is restricted or liable to become so. There are plenty of people who will insist on the necessity of gun trusts, as they're called, and their reasoning can mostly be found at the bottom of page one of the article. Fine. For the third time in this post and the umpteenth on this blog, I'm not here for a fight. I would just like to request background checking on the people from which the gun trusts are formed. This seems a rational way for you to share your firearms without allowing extremely powerful weapons to be potentially sold to criminals. Could be you disagree, though. Fine by me if so, that's your Constitutional right as well. Leave a comment.

Final Exam: Hidden in Plain Sight

     With all the hullabaloo over gun control, people and politicians alike have been mostly overlooking an existing solution. While the two parties rage back and forth over fewer guns! more restrictions! second amendment!, they ignore the fact that there are already laws in place to help. As this NY Times article observed, laws concerning background checks are not being enforced. Less than half of those who falsify a background check are charged with a crime, despite the fact that it's a felony. And people who need to hide something in order to acquire a weapon are "more likely than the average person" to hurt someone with it, meaning that arresting them could seriously reduce firearm violence. So why did it take until last Wednesday for anyone at all in the government to realize this?
     Ostrich-style solution ignoring is far from a new theme in the material we've studied in the last semester. C. P. Cavafy's poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" said it well: "What's going to happen to us without barbarians? / Those people were a kind of solution." Without the barbarians, who are presented previously as the reason that officials aren't doing their jobs, someone will have to find a way to get the government to work. Likewise, Washington has been cowed by the shadows of two competing political philosophies, and as a result nothing has been accomplished.
     Another prominent example is the debate over sweatshops. On one side, you have people demanding better working conditions, and on the other you have people pointing at the bottom line and threatening that such improvements would send prices skyrocketing. Many arrived at a consensus that there was no way to resolve the dispute, and a safe and enjoyable job was "only attainable and realistic to affluent people", as Alana W wrote on her blog. Again, the simple solution was being ignored - a study cited by the New York Times showed that safe working conditions would cost a price increase of "roughly 3%", or fifteen cents on a five-dollar shirt.
     Why would the government neglect the solutions in front of their eyes? Maybe it's because it hasn't always worked out well. The story "Adams" by George Saunders, in which the title is a close anagram of Saddam, is a metaphor for the rationale behind the war in the Middle East. In the story, when a father finds his neighbor standing outside his kids' room in his underwear, he takes the obvious solution: pass out flyers about what the neighbor did, take away anything that could be used as a weapon, and "wonk him". Now, I'm not going to debate the right or wrong of the US's response, but you can't deny that it has resulted in a lot of criticism from a number of places. Perhaps it's understandable that these days, the government doesn't take the first course of action that suggests itself. But then again, perhaps not.
     Consider two analogies from the movie Glory. Firstly, despite the Union Army's need for troops, the 54th Regiment is sidelined. They are used only for parades, just as today the second amendment is paraded around without anyone paying attention to the country's actual needs. Secondly and most powerfully is the case of the quartermaster. He denies the 54th crucial supplies - including guns. He isn't doing anything to keep firearms away from the South when he does this. He only penalizes the Union. Similarly, when background check falsification is not punished, the people who would use their firearms against US citizens are not penalized. They can just go to a private seller, purchase a weapon, and continue unimpeded. While the government should always consider the effects of any action, there is no excuse for failing to utilize and enforce preexisting, pre-thought-out laws.

Taking It on Faith: Thinking for Oneself in the Presence of Authority

     In class on Friday, we discussed the First Amendment, with special focus on when and where it can be limited. The limitations that caught my attention the most were those imposed on teachers. As both government employees and potential role models to their students, they are often prevented, and usually discouraged, from airing their political beliefs, religious beliefs, or generally anything controversial that isn't in the lesson plan.
     The logic behind this seems straightforward at first glance: if a teacher, the local figure of authority, says anything about anything, the student is likely to accept it as truth without further thought, similarly to how they believe what their parents say. After all, most children with religious parents grow up to follow the same religion, so it makes sense, right?
     Well, not always. Their are two key forces to consider. For starters, at a certain age kids begin to question authority. The colloquial name for this is "teenage rebellion". So while limitations on teachers' self-expression may be logical in K-8 schools, by the time high school rolls around the logic is decidedly weakened.
     The second variable is that kids are often not considered capable of thinking for themselves. Which is ridiculous! I can think for myself, and do so regularly, and I would bet that most of my classmates who read this do too. And once students are capable of taking the facts (or failing hard information, the data they're given) and drawing their own conclusions from it, censoring teachers makes zero sense. In fact, from my point of view it cuts down on how interesting and informative their classes are.
Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment please.