Protests, public assembly 2 of our core freedoms
Judge Greg Galler
Guest Columnist
They had been pushed too far. Government was unresponsive and ignoring even basic elements of fairness and justice. They described how they had suffered under a long train of abuses which seemed designed to reduce them to living under absolute despotism. They could stand it no more and so they assembled, in the heat of the summer, to do something about it.
Is this Occupy Wall Street or The Tea Party? It is neither, it is the summer of 1776 and it is the American colonists assembling in Philadelphia.
Protest and public assembly are two of our core freedoms. In the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers declared that sovereignty, the right to exercise the power of governance and to set and enforce the rules of society, resides in the people as a gift from God.
Our Constitution embodies the ideal of limited governmental power that remains with the people and may only be exercised with their consent.
This “American Experiment” in self-governance radically departed in its’ view of the rightful holders of sovereignty. Human history had favored a “divine right of kings” where monarchs possessed absolute sovereignty and could dole out such freedoms as they chose.
Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are similar in that they have each assembled to publicly express their views of the proper role of government. However, their demands, which I express no opinion on, are fundamentally opposed to each other.
The Tea Party argues that government has expanded past its’ defined constitutional limitations improperly seizing the sovereign power of the people. They demand that government reduce its scope and size. They seek greater freedom of opportunity to succeed or fail and less overall governmental .
Occupy Wall Street appears less cohesive, but generally argues that capitalism is inherently unfair because a relative few will achieve phenomenal success while most will realize a lesser outcome or even fail altogether. Some want to scrap capitalism completely. Most want government to expand in scope and size to protect and provide for those who have not succeeded. They seek greater equality of outcome and more overall governmental control.
These citizens propose fundamentally different views regarding the amount of sovereignty the government should possess and exercise.
Should government get out of the way and let people largely succeed or fail as the natural consequence of freedom? Or, should government play a larger role in our lives to minimize failures and insure more evenly distributed outcomes?
Our founders believed in the people’s right to alter or abolish governments – and to institute new ones – in such form as they deemed most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Each group pursues its’ vision for better governance. While their goals are contradictory, they are each exercising sovereign rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
Judge Galler is chambered in Washington County.
