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Communism, Subversive Activities
"And if it is round, will the king's command flatten it? No, I will not sign."
Thomas More
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Gibson
v.
Florida Legislative Investigation Committee
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Communism,
Subversive Activities
Justice Douglas Concurrence
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March 25, 1963
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Excerpt:
We deal here with the authority of a state to investigate people,
their ideas, their activities. By virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment
the state is now subject to the same restrictions in making
the investigation as the First Amendment places on the federal
government.
...Once the investigator has only the conscience of government as a guide, the conscience can become "ravenous," as Cromwell, bent on destroying Thomas More, said in Bolt, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. The First Amendment mirrors many episodes where men, harried and harassed by government, sought refuge in their conscience, as these lines of Thomas More show:
More: And when we stand before God, and you are sent to paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?
Cranmer: So those of us whose names are there are damned, Sir Thomas?
More: I don't know, your grace. I have no window to look into another man's conscience. I condemn no one.
Cranmer: Then the matter is capable of question?
More: Certainly.
Cranmer: But that you owe obedience to your king is not capable of question. So weigh a doubt against a certainty — and sign.
More: Some men think the earth is round, other think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the king's command make it round? And if it is round, will the king's command flatten it? No, I will not sign.
Where government is the big brother, privacy gives way to surveillance.
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