America was supposedly founded on the principle that power must be accountable if it is not to be tyrannical. Yet, the recent debate over abortion rights has illustrated once again that too many Americans in positions of power would prefer a populace that acquiesced silently to even monstrous abuses.
Over the weekend, protesters organized a vigil outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to protest the threatened repeal of Roe v. Wade.
The protest at Kavanaugh’s house was peaceful — as you can see from video shot during it. Yet, many pundits and officials reacted as if they were staring down the barrel of an incoming revolution. Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, claimed without evidence that protesters were “threatening violence against Supreme Court justices.”
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John Harwood, CNN’s White House correspondent, intoned, “It is wrong to even hint at physically threatening a public official,” even though no one (except maybe him) had hinted at any such thing. Jen Psaki, Biden’s soon-to-be-ex-press secretary, sent a tweet declaring that protests “should never include violence, threats, or vandalism”— even though, again, the protesters going viral were nonviolent and seemed to have committed no vandalism.
It’s true that nonviolent protesting outside someone’s house can be uncomfortable and annoying for the target of said protest. And Americans generally feel like they should have a right to privacy in their homes. They don’t want their sleep or their family disturbed. Kavanaugh is a very powerful man, which means in most social settings he is treated with deference and even reverence. He isn’t accustomed to having his privacy disturbed or his personal space impinged upon.
Kavanaugh’s presumption of personal inviolability, however, is strikingly at odds with the draft decision he appears to support about abortion. The leaked opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, rejects the right to privacy that has guaranteed abortion rights in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
