"Rights" always change.
What was a "right to privacy" yesterday
is not necessarily the same thing today.
God-given rights aren't: they come accidentally.
Mari and I have just come home from a week-long visit to Tucson.
Each of us checked a bag, unlocked, fully expecting, and accepting,
that someone might go through the contents of the bag. The events
of the last few years, and even of the last few weeks, convince us
that it is better to be searched than to be blown up in an airplane.
We have a box full of small keys and luggage locks.
After the Underwear Bomber set fire to his apparatus, recently--
in a suicide attempt that only a hopeless religious zealot might
contemplate, it appears all of us wanting to take a plane trip
might have to be X-rayed right down to our privates, just to
make sure we have not stuffed our bloomers with explosives.
No one likes the idea, but if the option is personal modesty
of a public explosion, most of us are willing to redefine "rights".
Not in Texas!
Taylor Pugh is four years old, and is in pre-kindergarten.
Taylor says he likes his hair long and curly, but the school board
in Mesquite, Texas says Taylor has to cut his hair. Unanimously,
they say Taylor looks too much like a member of Led Zeppelin,
or those--Do you remember them?--the Beatles.
Taylor says he doesn't have to cut his hair.
The school board proposed that Taylor braid his hair, and pin it up.
Taylor's parents said no.
Taylor is too disruptive, the school principal decided, so he sent him
to the library to study alone with a teacher's aide.
Taylor says he misses his friends.
Maybe we could arrange a compromise of sorts:
If the school board members were willing to be X-rayed
during a meeting before the concerned citizens of Mesquite,
maybe Taylor would trim his hair just a tad, even if
doing so was a curtailment of his God-given rights.
Even Taylor might agree that would be fair. And fun.
What was a "right to privacy" yesterday
is not necessarily the same thing today.
God-given rights aren't: they come accidentally.
Mari and I have just come home from a week-long visit to Tucson.
Each of us checked a bag, unlocked, fully expecting, and accepting,
that someone might go through the contents of the bag. The events
of the last few years, and even of the last few weeks, convince us
that it is better to be searched than to be blown up in an airplane.
We have a box full of small keys and luggage locks.
After the Underwear Bomber set fire to his apparatus, recently--
in a suicide attempt that only a hopeless religious zealot might
contemplate, it appears all of us wanting to take a plane trip
might have to be X-rayed right down to our privates, just to
make sure we have not stuffed our bloomers with explosives.
No one likes the idea, but if the option is personal modesty
of a public explosion, most of us are willing to redefine "rights".
Not in Texas!
Taylor Pugh is four years old, and is in pre-kindergarten.
Taylor says he likes his hair long and curly, but the school board
in Mesquite, Texas says Taylor has to cut his hair. Unanimously,
they say Taylor looks too much like a member of Led Zeppelin,
or those--Do you remember them?--the Beatles.
Taylor says he doesn't have to cut his hair.
The school board proposed that Taylor braid his hair, and pin it up.
Taylor's parents said no.
Taylor is too disruptive, the school principal decided, so he sent him
to the library to study alone with a teacher's aide.
Taylor says he misses his friends.
Maybe we could arrange a compromise of sorts:
If the school board members were willing to be X-rayed
during a meeting before the concerned citizens of Mesquite,
maybe Taylor would trim his hair just a tad, even if
doing so was a curtailment of his God-given rights.
Even Taylor might agree that would be fair. And fun.
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