Do Ask Do Tell: When Liberty Is Stressed

The Bill of Rights, reinforced by several important subsequent amendments to our Constitution, is expected to protect us as individuals from whims and abuses by government. As our culture has placed increasing importance on the individual, it may be time to consider further reinforcing our rights. Individual liberties have recently come under severe stress, not only from the necessary war on terrorism but also from corporate misconduct and well-founded concerns about managing exploding technology, as well as more traditional questions about cultural traditions and family values. Many of the affirmative protections in the original Bill of Rights are largely procedural. It would be well to list and review our fundamental rights with a conceptual bottom-up review. These rights would include psychological rights to express to others who we are as individuals and would invoke social rights to ensure basic fairness to all people. How do we reinforce individual rights and, simultaneously, maintain stability, security and social justice in our society? With many issues, the free market provides a much more dependable means of regulation than can government. But there are some areas where law is essential to maintain real freedom. This book is primarily intended to update the vision in Do Ask, Do Tell: A Gay Conservative Lashes Back (1997, 2000) given the new challenges to liberty posed particularly by terrorism and now corporate scandals, as well as the growing understanding of the legal and ethical problems that accompany the opportunities for self-expression presented by the Internet.