Posted by
Nerdus Maximus on Monday, June 09, 2008 12:28:36 PM
A number of liberal groups are up in arms because the Metro Police are running traffic checkpoints in an area of Southeast DC known as "Trinidad" because there have been twenty-two murders in the area already this year. The contention is that this violates the constitutional rights of the people stopped. There are a few things these groups have forgotten.
The first thing is that the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" implies that there is an hierarchy of these three broad groups of rights. The state, with due process, does have the right to revoke the liberty of an individual if that individual violates the rights of others. Twenty-two people in this neighborhood have had their right to life (That phrase alone can cause a heart attack in some liberals that might violate their right to life, but it is OK since they don't believe in it for others.) denied without due process. The right to live is a necessary precondition for any other right to have meaning. The state revokes people's right to liberty by imprisoning them for such things as fraud that do far less to the rights of other citizens than does murder. A traffic checkpoint doesn't seem like that big a loss of liberty to prevent the loss of life.
Another forgotten thing is that driving is not a right, but a privilege. Few people object to traffic checkpoints aimed at catching drunk drivers so that they will not deny others their right to life through vehicular homicide. This makes sense because life is a right and driving is not. It is also hard to see how the police checkpoints violate anyone's rights any more than airport security does. Airport screeners not only diminish the traveler's liberty by forcing them to go through a checkpoint and prove that they have a right to do what they are doing, but they also perform very invasive searches without a hint of a warrant. There is little liberal outrage at this because the liberals might be on the next highjacked plane, but most of them will never venture within half a mile of Trinidad in Southeast DC. Perhaps I should be more charitable and say that the lack of outrage is because it is clear that air travel is not a right and that the minor loss of liberty is a reasonable trade off for the protection of life that is achieved.