Being responsible for your rights

In opposition to violations of the law

By Sunthosh Madireddi
From the May 2007 Print Edition

            The right to protest, for the individual American, has always been the single greatest weapon against monopolization of power and influence. The right to protest has molded America into a pluralistic society capable of accommodating anyone in its great melting pot. However, the right to protest is not a categorical right. It is conditional on whether an individual decides to utilize his or her right in a responsible manner.

            We must always remember that rights delegated to the individual and protected by the state are housed in a delicate social contract that binds the state to act in the collective interest of society and resolve disputes involving conflicting individual rights in the public sphere. The nude protest in the Memorial Oak Grove in Berkeley last month goes to the heart of this issue.

The whole controversy was started last year when the University of California announced that it was going to build a new athletic training facility next to the Memorial Stadium. Unfortunately, in order to construct the facility the University would need to raze oak trees currently growing on the site. The announcement of such a vile act rang out like a war cry through the bowels of Berkeley’s communes and soon the minutemen of the forest rallied their troops to Memorial Grove. Like Custer before them and those who chose to remain at the Alamo, this was going to be their last stand. The onsite roll call of protest participants revealed that most were longtime nudists and activists and some were artists and performers.

One of the ringleaders of the activist group was a woman named Debbie Moore, who was also the co-founder of Berkeley’s nude theater troupe, X-plicit Players, and has been arrested a dozen times and put on trial seven times for public nudity. She proclaimed the Memorial Grove protest an activity she was proud to support. Moore explained that the act of public exposure is a truly liberating experience, allowing the individual to feel free and unhindered.

In  Moore’s mind, public exposure is simply tantamount to free speech, and any restriction on individual expression is tantamount to oppression. Such an outlook with regard to constitutional freedoms is not surprising on the political left. The left would want us to believe that the absence of any semblance of governing authority will let rights flourish. All that is needed is the fondling embrace of Mother Nature and everything else will fall into place. The idealism of the left may be something to be admired, but the tragic reality is that rights cannot be protected without the existence of a governing authority.

In most cases, a truly free society is characterized by the strength of the rule of law. The state of California and the city of Berkeley have strict laws against indecent exposure in a public place. Why? This question instinctively causes the liberal mind to enter a state of fantastical delusion. Once the LSD has started pumping, the possibilities become endless.

One possibility could be that the corporate bosses in city hall have ordered their police minions to order a 1984 crackdown on intellectual thought and expression, and outfit everyone to adopt a new language termed newspeak, where there is one word and only one word in the government-sanctioned dictionary: CONFORMITY.

Or it could be a simpler answer. For the conservative, there is an elegant answer, for it is one grounded in practical reality. Could it be that some people might be offended at seeing someone’s round posterior while leading their children to school, taking a jog, or simply conducting their own personal business in the public square?

One crucial difference I perceive between liberals and conservatives is their striking ideological disparity with regard to the pubic and private spheres. The conservative believes that the individual is the guardian of the private sphere, and government is the custodian of the public sphere. To a conservative, law and order go hand in hand with individual rights. The liberal believes that government is the guardian of the private sphere, micromanaging people’s lives right down to what type of light bulb they may use at home, and the individual is the custodian of the public sphere.  The liberal mind seems to be caught in a self-enforcing positive feedback network, in which individuals are given the public rights and it is they who protect them, which equals a recipe for disaster.

When you have a group of leftist activists seemingly living in a “state of nature,” they cannot be far from reaching their state of anarchical bliss. Individual rights come with the caveat of responsible judgment and common sense. Man is no longer an isolated Homo sapien living in the trees. Man is now a citizen of a collective state, where individuals must learn to work together, tolerate one another, and respect the rights of one another. This means that one’s individual rights end when they infringe on another citizen’s rights. It is both ironic and revealing that those on the left can understand evolution but cannot comprehend the change that man has undertaken over the years; they still yearn nostalgically for the days of prehistoric man.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting the Patriot