Читать книгу Keeping the Republic - Christine Barbour - Страница 166

Although the right to privacy is not spelled out in the Bill of Rights, it goes hand in hand with the founders’ insistence on limited government. Their goal was to keep government from getting too powerful and interfering with the lives and affairs of individual citizens. They certainly implied a right to privacy, and perhaps even assumed such a right, but they did not make it explicit.

The right to privacy, to be left alone to do what we want, is so desirable that it scarcely needs a defense. The problem, of course, is that a right to privacy without any limits is anarchy, the absence of government altogether. Clearly government has an interest in preventing some kinds of individual behavior—murder, theft, and rape, for example. But what about other, more subtle behaviors that do not directly affect public safety but arguably have serious consequences for the public good—such as prostitution, drug use, and gambling? Should these behaviors fall under the right to privacy, or should the state be able to regulate them?