I used to believe that the Constitution should
be interpreted literally. I was appalled by the
notion of activist judges doing from the bench
that which should properly have been legislated.
I was deeply philosophically disturbed at the
Supreme Court's apparent endless ability to discover
new inalienable rights buried in the text of our
nation's legal code. I was firmly in favor of The Letter
Of The Law over The Spirit Of The Law.
That changed for me rather suddenly during the 1996 Presidential
election. One day I was flaming the hell out of some idiot
on whatever political site it was that I frequented at the time.
It was a great political flame, the kind that you just know will finally
get that guy to just shut the hell up, once and for all. It had Constitutional amendments
cut and pasted in, quotations from The Federalist Papers, questions about
the recipient's ancestry, passages from obscure court decisions, scare stories
about totalitarian regimes--everything that an extremely net-addicted
political junkie could get his hands on to support his ultra-libertarian viewpoint.
Well, this time, as I reread the message for coherency before
posting it I thought to myself something along the lines of,
"Wow, I'm so glad that I live in a time where I can communicate
instantly around the world and that I live in a place where I have
a guaranteed freedom to say whatever the hell I want."
I happened to be glancing at a passage from the first amendment when
it hit me that even though I was thinking about freedom of speech, I wasn't
really speaking, I was typing into a computer connected to the Internet; two
subjects that receive surprisingly scant attention in the actual
text of the First Amendment.
*beep* Warning from philosophical viewpoint subsystem: possible consistency violation
That's ok, it not speech, it's press. Hmmmmm....... no printing press anywhere
around here.
*beep* Warning from philosophical viewpoint subsystem: probable consistency violation
Assembly? Petition? Please?
*beep* Error in philosophical viewpoint subsystem: consistency violation detected--reboot belief system, adjust viewpoint, go to sleep and hope this passes(r/a/S) a
Now I don't know what I believe. Probably there is no hard and fast rule for when
it should be Letter or when it should be Spirit. I do know that I never posted
that flame.