Freedom and Restraint in the Constitutionalist Regime Sample Clauses

Freedom and Restraint in the Constitutionalist Regime. Many people never exercise some of the rights they possess, and do not value living in a community in which others exercise these rights. Others, although valuing certain basic rights, would nevertheless prefer on balance to live in a community in which no one exercises those rights. For both sorts of people, freedom from others exercising the rights a constitutionalist seeks to guarantee may seem necessary for activities or communities they do value. A stable and committed religious community, for example, may prove difficult to maintain absent some degree of 'establishment' with which to enforce religious conformity within its geographical bounds. Similarly, those who seek child-free surroundings cannot form an initial community of 'adults,' much less remain secure in the environment they have created, without the legal means to remove children when they appear. A society that requires all communities to respect civil liberties obstructs choices perceived by many to be sufficiently valuable that they would knowingly sacrifice both the right not to conform and the benefits that may flow from living in a more heterogeneous community. It is only because they perceive conformity by their neighbors as necessary to maintaining a desirable community that people turn to a legal device such as the residential covenant. Thus, the constitutionalist cannot reasonably claim that one who enters a residential association that denies basic liberties necessarily makes herself less free in every case. Indeed, both the consent arguments and constitutionalism are theories of freedom and restraint. Each theory extols a particular form of freedom: buying into a residential development bound by certain covenants or participating in an unfettered democracy may permit plans of life otherwise unavailable in America today, whereas constitutional rights guarantee a minimum level of personal autonomy and democratic procedures that neither past decisions nor the will of the community can infringe. Nevertheless, as theories of restraint, each view recognizes that a diversity of interests, values, and personalities within a community is inevitable; each is a method of controlling dissension among those who live together. Both consent theories justify suppression or exclusion of those who fall away from community standards; they would allow the community to foreclose any nonconforming behavior it chooses. Under the constitutionalist theory of association government, legal means cannot b...