After successfully defending the Beastie Boys, my firstborn son is considering becoming a lawyer.
I think it’s a bad idea to give a law license to someone who believes society should still allow pistol duels. But I won’t stand in the way of Firstborn’s roving aspirations until they affect my enjoyment of FM radio.
“Gah, I hate that song,” I said Friday morning while driving Firstborn to a swim meet.
Sitting in the back seat under three bags of snacks and his duffel bag, Firstborn scowled.
“I LIKE this song,” he parried.
The Beastie Boys spat some nonsense: “You gotta FIGHT – for your RIGHT – to parrrrrr-tayyyy!”
“What does that even mean?” I grumbled. “You don’t have a RIGHT to party.”
We gotta be careful about piling on lots of rights, because every time you make a right, you make causes for litigation. Backlogs in the court system. Disputes that devour years.
But more concerningly, each additional right has the potential to weaken the others.
If you enshrine too many rights, you end up with North Korea.
I’m not kidding. The constitution of Supreme Leader’s country promises a right to “relaxation.”
So.
Keep them few, but keep them sacred.
Guard the essential rights with a fiery sword and let society work out its lesser entitlements via duel. But, you know, handfighting duels. Ahem.
“What about COVID?” asked Firstborn.
Ah, COVID. The pandemic. When I discovered journalism-from-home. When I perfected my headstand. When I homeschooled my kids by group writing a narrative about a sheriff who traveled to the moon.
On the one hand, it was nice to be home for weeks with just my husband and my kids. On the other hand, I questioned whether the state of Wyoming actually could ban gatherings of more than 10 people.
That was a question for a judge, not a mom with a pocket constitution. At least, that’s what I learned from a kindly defense attorney who has always taken time out of his schedule, and borrowed focus from his ADHD, to explain things to me.
“There’s this thing called strict scrutiny…” the defense attorney began.
Turns out, the government can violate your rights, but only if the government has, like, a really good reason for it and only does it a little bit.
Little did I know, that attorney’s patient explanation of constitutional standards of review would serve me again, and again, and again.
“But you DO have a right to party,” countered Firstborn.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
“Yes, you do, it’s in the First Amendment.”
I counted off the rights on my fingers. Free exercise of religion. Freedom of speech.
Freedom of the press.
“Yee-haw!” I bellowed. “The only way to assert your right to publish, is to publish!”
Firstborn rolled his eyes. I’ve been quoting “The Post” for three weeks straight.
“Next…?” he prompted.
“The right of the people… peaceably to assemble,” I murmured.
Firstborn nodded. “To party.”
“WHAT.”
But Firstborn knew he’d won.
The Beastie Boys aren’t from North Korea. Their song still sucks. But they passed a 15-year-old’s constitutional standard of review.
The truth is, Firstborn, that real rights – not the made-up ones that communists put into their sanctimonious constitutions – exist whether they’re written on paper or not.
And the only way to give their existence meaning is to choose them. To assert them when the odds are stacked against you.
To fight for your right to speak – to publish – to party.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
