|
That's what constitutions are FOR. Constitutions don't say if "free speech" is granted to a person crying "Fire!" in a crowded theater or to D.H. Lawrence and his publishers. They say "free speech" is a RIGHT. Courts, judges, plantiffs, petitioners, prosecutors, advocacy groups and the general public work out the details over decades and centuries, whenever the constitutional right of free speech is encroached upon.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that "free speech" is a fundamental right specified in the Constitution. Otherwise, city, state and federal governments and business corporations could EASILY and arbitrarily destroy that right--with restrictions that effectively eliminate "free speech" or with punitive measures based on the morays of a particular era or place, or the propaganda desires of big business.
The Bush Junta and collusive Democrats have succeeded in various egregious restrictions of "free speech"--for instance, Patriot Act laws that permit searches of library records and gag laws against librarians with regard to those searches, or by subjecting foreign journalists to special visa laws, or by police practices of "caging" political protestors away from political conventions. And corporations have succeeded in monopolizing news and opinion outlets, and in equating money with "free speech," and are so wealthy that they can afford to have numerous paid operatives on the Internet, the last bastion of "free speech" in broadcast media.
These show us that even a Constitutional right enshrined as the FIRST RIGHT of this land, and that has stood the test of time as a near absolute right, can be eroded and destroyed in a particular country. But the right of "free speech" has nevertheless "gone viral" (as they say) over the two centuries since the American Revolution. The PRINCIPLE of "free speech" is now worldwide and considered a fundamental, basic HUMAN right. It has become the first criterion used to evaluate democracy itself. And this makes it very restorable here, in a general restoration of American democracy--if the American people should ever be so inclined--and more easily establishable elsewhere, in struggles for democracy.
There were many struggles leading up to the establishment of the right of "free speech" in the U.S. Constitution as the first right of the "Bill of Rights"--struggles across Europe and England, and elsewhere, with kings, popes and oppressive governments ever trying to punish critics and "free thinkers." It did not get established overnight or on a whim.
The same is true for the rights of Mother Nature. Many struggles have ensued, and many environmental laws have been written, that aim to protect the integrity of particular natural ecological systems--say forests, or ocean fisheries--or to establish natural principles as law, such as protecting biodiversity or clean water. But these laws have failed. We are losing the Earth anyway. And, among the reasons they have failed, is that the laws are often tied (by statue or by practice) to human injury (say, polluted water or air that harms humans). So--as with the American Revolution and its formal establishment of "certain unalienable rights"--a more fundamental principle needs to be established that Mother Nature has a right to exist and prosper REGARDLESS of the needs or desires of human beings.
There may be no local community, tribe or workforce that is directly injured by, say, the clearcutting of a remote forest. But, with this Bolivian Constitutional provision, the birds, fish and other animals, the waters and soils, and the ecological integrity of that forest is protected by a HIGHER RIGHT--a fundamental principle of the law.
This makes it more difficult for corporate and other scofflaws and profiteers to proceed with environmental destruction. It makes it more difficult for "bought and paid for" politicians to permit them to.
When a corporation running a shopping mall tries to ban political petitioners at a mall, those petitioners have a FUNDAMENTAL principle of the Constitution to call upon in asserting their civil right to petition in a public space. And corporations, bad politicians, bad judges and so on, have to go to considerable trouble and expense, and have to devise twisted arguments, to ban them (and, thus far, in our constitutional history, have not succeeded on this particular restriction of "free speech").
The Equal Rights Amendment (women's rights) is a good example of why failure to establish a fundamental Constitutional right can make protecting certain rights extremely difficult. The fascists and misogynists in this country are now on a rampage of repealing a woman's right to control her own body, as it has been established during our progressive era in lower level laws. Next may be a woman's right to equal wages and so on. There is no fundamental "Bill of Rights" protection of women from unequal treatment. The ERA would not have guaranteed women's rights--just as the First Amendment does not guarantee "free speech"--but it would help enormously, if women could point to specific Constitutional provision stating women's equality in unequivocal terms.
Lower level laws are not doing the job on women's rights. Lower level laws can be easily repealed, at the whim of a particular era or heinous power establishment, or easily eroded and undermined by scofflaws who don't want women to be equal or who are cynically using that issue for rightwing/corporate political purposes.
So, too, protection of Planet Earth, our only home, which our Industrial Revolution has placed in such peril. A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE needs to be ESTABLISHED to significantly HELP--it can never ensure--the survival and integrity of Planet Earth.
WHO will advocate for this PRINCIPLE is not the issue, and cannot be addressed in a Constitutional framework. The U.S. Constitution did not establish the A.C.L.U. as the advocate of "free speech." And it is not the ONLY advocate of "free speech." There are other groups. And the Department of Justice, the courts and other government entities, and individuals, as well as the "Fifth Estate" (journalists) all have responsibilities with regard to this right.
The government will take a more or less active role, or no role at all, depending on politics and the tenor of the times. If a George Bush-type is in office, the government will do everything it can to let transglobal corporations destroy the environment for profit, by defying and violating the Constitution on this matter (if it contained a provision establishing Mother Earth's rights). But those seeking to ensure the survival and health of the environment will have a strong weapon to fight back with--as the librarians had, with the First Amendment--and the PRINCIPLE will remain, for further efforts. A Constitutional right for Mother Earth presents a serious obstacle to scofflaws and predators--whereas, say, federal funding of the EPA is no obstacle to environmental predators if they have a Diebold-ES&S (s)elected Congress.
Not that a Diebold-ES&S (s)elected Congress would give a crap for anything in the Constitution (including their own right to declare war), but they would feel obliged to pretend that they did. People would have to fight through that crapola to get at the truth, and struggle to get their democracy and their country back, but such fights for fundamental rights and the rule of law have gone on forever. We are not the first to have a scofflaw government and transglobal/war profiteer rulers. Bolivia may have such a government in the future (especially if CIA plans for overthrowing Bolivia's democracy succeed). The establishment of Mother Nature's rights in the Bolivian Constitution will present them with an obstacle to giving away, say, Bolivians' water rights to Bechtel Corp. And even if such a junta rescinded Pachamama's law, it would live in the peoples' memory, as the First Amendment would here, if some junta ever removed it from the U.S. Constitution.
But they probably won't do that BECAUSE it is such a ikon of freedom in most people's minds. There are many ways to erode "free speech"--including the Supreme Court equating money with speech. But look at the lengths to which they've had to go, and the money it has cost them, to do that. The First Amendment doesn't guarantee "free speech." It just makes it a long hard and expensive battle for the bad guys to destroy it in other ways--and the PRINCIPLE lives on, some day to be recovered. So, too, with Constitutional protection of Mother Earth's rights. It begins the process of restoring a viable planet and protecting it in the future. The PRINCIPLE needs to be stated and established as fundamental law.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
