There are a lot of bans and things we are not permitted to do out there. After all, the Ten Commandments is mostly a list of things we “shalt not” do.

And the news today is filled with bans: a proposed ban on texting or e-mailing while driving, the ban on smoking within 25 feet of University buildings (and proposal to ban smoking in public places in North Carolina), existing bans on transfat in foods (the most noticable of which is in New York City) or the supposed ban on major assignments during Dead Week.

Yet these bans raise the ire of some civil liberties activists in the Republican party, while the wiretapping, extraordinary rendition and suspension of habeus corpus the Bush administration supported is “all in the past.” And Democrats are, for the most part, the polar opposite: Bush torture bad, bans on smoking, transfat and texting while driving good.

Please. We live in a country where we have enormous amounts of liberty, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time in the near to somewhat-distant future. We have so many rights and freedoms so as to be overwhelmed with our freedoms.

Think about it: even compared to other democratic nations, we have more civil liberties. Do the British let their citizens carry guns? And is gun ownership a pretty big liberty that lets people keep a bunch of their other liberties?

The answers to those questions, respectively, are no and yes — after all, who’s going to argue about a gun owner’s right to public assembly? Maybe someone in a tank, unless the first person had armor-piercing rounds … but I digress.

As far as rights goes, who cares about how many bans there are? It’s a lot easier to tell people what they CAN’T do instead of what they CAN do. Why do you think the Bill of Rights is only 10 amendments?

I’ll tell you: the Founding Fathers realized they’d probably die by the time they wrote down all the rights Americans should enjoy. Just imagine the hypothetical confrontation over this:

James Madison: “Okay, Americans have the rights to free press, religious choice, assembly, petition, free speech, due process, speedy trial by a jury of peers and access to legal counsel, and they are protected from the government quartering troops in their homes, unreasonable searches, self-incrimination and cruel and unusual punishment. What else is there?”

Random guy like Thomas Jefferson: “Madison, I’m tired. Why don’t we just say that anything we don’t have listed here that someone else can do is up to the states or the people.”

Ben Franklin: “Poor Richard sayeth the crops will fail if we don’t listen to Jefferson.”

See? It’s a lot easier to list things people can’t do instead of trying to list what they can do.

For those of you still not convinced, imagine trying to come up with a list of what people can do. Can people consume vegetables on every third Sunday of a leap year? Must people breathe at certain rates? Should we allow Protestants to cross the street for any road containing the letter “v?” Is it legally permissible for one to interpet a thumbs up as a sign for a duel in the public square, where the loser is dragged behind an 18-wheeler on a gravel road?

And can someone please enforce the rule about assignments on Dead Week? I’m tired.

Send Paul your thoughts on civil liberties to [email protected].