A conservative friend recently posted the following meme image to his Facebook page. It read:
Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first States that will require drug testing when applying for welfare. Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. How is this unconstitutional???? It’s OK to drug test people who work for their money, but not for those who don’t? … Re-port this if you’d like to see this done in all 50 states. If you can afford to buy drugs and extra illegal things then you can afford your own groceries.
My friend frequently posts other memes supporting the Second Amendment and other rights made possible by our Constitution. I thought it a bit disingenuous to claim to support the Constitution when it protected something important to him but not when it protected something important to someone else.
In the case of Florida’s welfare drug screening, Federal court established that poor people are no less entitled to the right against unreasonable searches than anyone else. This would be the protections offered by our Fourth Amendment, for those of you following along. Suspicionless searches and all that.
My friend proceeded to argue that there is a difference but in my mind there is none: you either support the Constitution fully or you don’t. The rights it affords cannot be withdrawn from people simply because you don’t like those people.
That my conservative friend had no problem with a government free to violate the privacy of whomever it pleases on a whim is another matter entirely. Does he really put that much trust in the government? Or only when it’s going after someone else?
I didn’t expect to change his mind and I wasn’t committed to putting in the effort to do so. Heck, he might not have put much thought into it when he shared the image. I do, however, expect people to stop and think about what they claim to support.
If you think the Constitution protects your rights but not everyone’s rights, you’re reading it wrong.