A list that stops you from boarding a plane today is a list that might deny you a license to drive, speak, or vote tomorrow.
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My objection to the no-fly no-buy proposal, while certainly based on Second Amendment grounds, is more broadly one of opposition to any system that allows almost entirely unaccountable bureaucrats to restrict constitutional rights without notice, recourse, or accountability. No matter how meritorious you believe your cause to be, excising rights at the behest of a government executive or agency should terrify any right-thinking person. If you think the terror watch list is merely an affront to the Second Amendment, you’re not paying attention.
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The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches? Surely, these dangerous terror masterminds on the watch list should be monitored with warrantless wiretaps? Perhaps the FBI should install keyloggers on their computers, plant spyware on their phones, and monitor their private email and social-media messages? Why bother with a warrant or due process? They’re on the list. (As an aside, I’m old enough to remember when the Democrats viewed the National Security Agency’s programs to monitor potential terrorists as an impeachable offense and a profound affront to the Constitution.)
On Twitter today, I jokingly proposed removing the Third Amendment rights of those on the no-fly list so we can quarter soldiers in their homes. It’s a simple fix, and seems like a cost-savings for the government and a deterrent to terrorist shenanigans. Why not really go for the Constitution-shredding gold and suspend the Fourteenth Amendment rights of people on the no-fly list? At that point, they’re not even human. Problem solved!
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On a hundred-year time scale you have more to fear from an unaccountable government than you do from radical Islam. A bureaucracy empowered to place you on a list where your rights can be excised or suspended will follow the inevitable path of all government agencies and programs: its scope will grow, it will become more opaque and resistant to oversight, and it will resist reform at every moment. Islamic terrorists have signifiers, tells, and structures we can attack with either our intelligence services or military options. Government agencies are nearly impervious to all forms of challenge.
The list that denies a potential terrorist the right to buy a gun today may expand to animal rights activists or Black Lives Matter protestors or anti-abortion campaigners tomorrow, all depending on the whim of the executive or even some a nameless bureaucrat. A list that stops you from boarding a plane today is a list that might deny you a license to drive, speak, or vote tomorrow.
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As a conservative and a constitutionalist, I embrace the essential friction our founding document imposes as a check on both the impulses of the state and of the people. A few steps back from the facile arguments about guns and terror is the terrain we should be looking to when we consider whether to place Americans on a list that denies them an enumerated constitutional right, even if Democrats don’t like it.
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My new piece at @FDRLST https://t.co/OpnBhxFZ26
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 24, 2016
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