More evidence that the Constitutional “originalists” read the Constitution as it suits them, when it suits them. An AP story reports that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is receiving the Citadel of Free Speech Award from the City Club of Cleveland.

Now, we’ll forget about the obvious irony, that a recipient of a Free Speech award should insist on banning the Press — the bastion of Free Speech — from the awards ceremony tonight, because, in all fairness, the Constitutional ban on restriction of speech and the press is only applied to government. Justice Scalia is violating no laws demanding that the press be banned from the event.

Considering, however, that he is receiving the award based on his decisions and duties as an official of the United States government, it is questionable whether he is violating some spirit of the the First Amendment in requiring the banning of the press.

What really bothered me about the article was the Justice’s assertion that

There is definitely vagueness in many areas of the Constitution. The Second Amendment, for example, with its ungainly wording and division into two competing phrases, will always require interpretation.

When it comes to the First Amendment, interpretations are not so easy. “Congress shall make no law…” the text begins, then lists the items which Congress (and the States, by extension of the 9th, 10th, 11th and 14th Amendments) can make no law about: establishment of religion, practice of religion, freedom of speeech, freedom of the press, the right to peacably assemble, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grivances.

There’s no vaguesness in “Congress shall make no law…” so I’m not sure how Justice Scalia can claim that the rights I enjoy are beyond the “minimums” set by the Constitution. Freedom of speech is limited in any number of laws, ranging from public safety laws, to child pornography laws, to hate speech rules, to gag orders, to advertising restrictions. Peaceful assembly is zoned and regulated and often requires permits, involving legal and administrative oversight in a realm where a strict reading of the Constitution admits “no law”.

If Justice Scalia is referring to first amendment rights, then his reading of the Constitutional guarantees as “minimums” is just plain wrong. There is no minimum expressed or implied by “no law”; it is, instead a maximum limitation on Congress’s powers.

And finally, Scalia’s mention of “the rights you enjoy” implies that these rights have been granted us by the government and are subject to restriction or rescention by a paternal government in much the same way that a teenager may find herself suddenly grounded by a change in her father’s mood. This is so foreign to the concept of the basis of government stemming from “We the people”, that I can hardly believe that Justice Scalia would say this. The rights we “enjoy” are natural rights, inalienable rights, rights which define what it means to be human. The government does not grant us rights, rather, we grant the government its very existence for the purpose of protecting these rights.

This conception of rights is so fundamental to the understanding of the Constitution and the nation, that I am more worried than ever about our country’s future. If those men and women who are sworn to uphold the Constitution do not understand — or seek actively to undermine — that which they must uphold, then we are truly fucked.