The Farmville Herald

'The Right To Be Let Alone

"The right to be let alone."

That is our most civil liberty. Remember it and be of good cheer as senators from the South filibuster against the so-called civil liberty bill.

Civil liberty is indivisible. It is the whole Constitution, the whole deal: When you sacrifice one part for another you decrease and endanger the total. When the right to jury trial is impeached to save the right to vote there is net loss, and the same loss runs the whole Constitutional gamut.

Basically, all American rights are civil rights. States rights are civil rights: The rights of Congress against the Supreme Court are civil, and of the Executive against each, and vice versa.

And when the federal government (or the state), invades areas never intended or authorized there is violation of the most civil right of all--the right to be let alone.

If the Founding Fathers made a mistake, if they failed to look ahead enough, if they should have anticipated a future so social and inter-related that nothing short of a totalitarian central government and law would serve, we should face it and get a new Constitution. Certainly we should not undertake to cover the situation by ignoring the Constitution in one place and insisting on it in another, sacrificing one civil right to make another safe.

Most of us believe no mistake was made, that liberty and justice can still be had in the great terms of the Constitution.

If the President could just be reached on this jury trial issue in the civil force bill: many of us who go on liking him believe he would see the South's case as the nation's. The Baltimore Sun makes it thus:

"The injunction contemplated would forbid actions--already forbidden under federal criminal laws This being so, the injunction procedure is obviously a judicial short cut, and one which would deprive those cited for contempt, of a right, which would be guaranteed them under the federal Constitution (if they) were indicted for the same offense.

It is proposed to assure one right--the right to vote--by ignoring another right--the right to a jury trial."

As pointed out here many times, jury trial should be stretched just as far as contempt is stretched, you would think. The "civil rights" bill would stretch contempt into areas that ordinarily involve jury trial. It should not be permitted to deny jury trial, therefore, on the plea that contempt cases don't allow for them.

Proposals that there be some sort of coordinating committee for the South have got nowhere thus far, but the same situation applies and calls for something similar. Perhaps we aren't capable of that much co-ordination; however. There are so many of us with so many convictions on the right and only way.

The best answer to foolish knights is the wise one. Alabama's young Judge George Wallace is the wise one. None is more resolute and un-surrendering, but none is more modern about it, either. Not for him the foolish talk of "blood and guts" or the infantilism of those who imagine themselves "men of boys."

He writes this column to agree that the South must make great distinction between outlaw resistance and resistance in the very name of our law.

"If there are to be any clashes," Judge Wallace says, "let them be clashed between the authorities, federal and state--and let the issues be resolved between them. There should never be any clashes among the people. Strong executive, legislative and judicial arms of our state governments can maintain segregation within the law and maintain too, the peace and tranquility of our citizens."

Amen