The preservation of life and liberty necessarily requires a willingness to compromise on what -- in the comfortable world of abstraction -- seem to be inviolable principles. For example:
- The First Amendment doesn't grant anyone the right to go on the air to compromise a military operation by American forces.
- An armed person or group of persons demonstrably bent on committing mayhem must be disarmed before the mayhem occurs, the Second Amendment notwithstanding.
- Regardless of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, a person who is caught in the act of transmitting a command to a terrorist cell should be deprived immediately of all the rights normally accorded a criminal suspect and questioned by the most effective means, for as long as it takes.
There can be no absolute liberties where life is at stake. Without life liberty is meaningless.
