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March 30, 2006
Rights & Responsibilities
By Gregory KaneIsn't it time we started talking about the other r-word?
We're all pretty familiar with the first one: rights. We all believe in rights. In fact, America may have a surplus of rights.
Our founding fathers came up with a Bill of Rights. Too bad they didn't give us a Bill of Responsibilities to go along with them.
That's the other r-word: responsibilities. And nowhere is there a better example of our willingness to abrogate responsibility in the name of rights than in the push for felon voting rights.
Here in my home state of Maryland -- which won't be my home state for long, if this trend continues -- there is an election-year push in the state legislature to restore voting rights for felons as soon as they leave prison. Four years ago, just before then-Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. became the first Republican governor of Maryland in 36 years, the legislature passed a law restoring voting rights to felons three years after their release, even though there was already a process in place for felons to restore their voting rights.
Before 2002, only two-time felons were disenfranchised in Maryland. To have their voting rights restored, they had to apply to the governor for a pardon.
This process didn't sit well with the more liberal side of the Maryland legislature for two reasons. Number one, it was an election year. Maryland Democrats wanted to hedge their bets and ensure that the state would have another Democratic governor by padding the voting rolls with as many Democratic voters as possible. The second reason was because the process smacked too much of requiring felons to show some initiative and personal responsibility.
If you were a two-time felon in Maryland before 2002, restoring your voting rights was your responsibility. After all, you were the idiot who chose to commit not one, but two felonies. Because you failed to live up to your responsibilities to live the life of a law-abiding citizen, you had your voting rights taken away. You needed to show some responsibility to have those rights restored.
See how it's supposed to work, this marriage of rights and responsibilities? Of course you do. This isn't three-variable calculus or quantum physics. This is actually pretty simple stuff. So simple, in fact, even liberals in Maryland should be able to get it.
But they don't.
We all have the right to free speech. We all have the responsibility to keep civil tongues in our heads.
We all have the right to freedom of the press, whether we own a wealth of printing presses or crank out a piddling, online newsletter. We all have the responsibility not to commit slander or libel.
We have the right to peaceably assemble. We also have the responsibility to keep it orderly.
We have the right to vote. But in order to exercise that right we have the responsibility to obey the laws of the land. Should we fail in that responsibility by committing a grave crime, however, the right to vote is taken away and must be earned back.
Four years ago a Maryland state senator explained how simple it actually is. Andrew P. Harris is a Republican from Baltimore County. I interviewed Harris for my column in the Baltimore Sun about the then-proposed bill that granted voting rights to felons after three years. His answer is as appropriate now as it was then.
"Taking away a felon's voting rights says that person has broken a contract with society," Harris told me. There is, Harris continued, a three-stage process to restoring the contract.
"The first stage is prison," Harris said. "The second stage is parole and the third is restoring voting rights."
Harris added that the process must be on a case-by-case basis, like parole. That way, we can distinguish the felon serious about becoming a law-abiding voter from the one who will, for example, go back to some of the same corners where Baltimore's notorious Stop Snitching DVD was shot.
Harris' proposal is based on the premise of responsibility. No wonder liberals in Maryland rejected it.
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