In the 20th century, there was once a writer, a neoconservative sociologist with a marked tendency toward nihilism, by the name of Robert Nisbet (1913-1996). In his book, Twilight of Authority, he there, amazingly, had emphatically stated that the American people did not, in fact, possess the civil right of freedom of association because it was not constitutionally granted to them as such.

This is a brilliant, though typical, instance of how an intellectual can so intellectualize something toward its then obviously becoming a rather gross absurdity of the highest order; he was and remains, in at least the opinion of some, an overrated thinker. But, going directly back to the important matter, what about constitutional rights?

Constitutionally speaking, those rights explicitly listed in the US Constitution, meaning inclusive of the first Ten Amendments, called the Bill of Rights, are the enumerated and catalogued civil liberties of the citizens of this country. Thus, for instance, the First Amendment includes “the right of the people peaceably to assemble…” But, rationally speaking, all stated civil liberties become and remain impossible to actually exercise (remain merely theoretical in nature) unless they do exist with allied civil rights.

For each civil liberty, therefore, there must then exist a cognate and reciprocal civil right that empirically and functionally enables the free exercise of that civil liberty. One interestingly sees that such politically complementary functionality must logically occur if freedom and liberty are to be genuinely maintained, not just abstractly assumed or merely posited through a legal positivism of some kind.

If the civil right of freedom of association did not exist, then any supposed freedom of assembly would be purely theoretical and not factual as to being politically a concrete reality. Why? It is empirically, existentially, and politically impossible to assemble, for instance, without necessarily associating in the very act of doing or attempting the assembling. Picture a simple and appropriate classroom exercise for students in a civics or government class.

Tell one student to go to the back of the room, tell another to go to the doorway, and tell yet another to, perhaps, stand up at the front of the same room. Then, give the announcement that these three people, at the count of three, are to then assemble – but must not ever associate with one another in this same process of freely assembling together. Of course, it cannot be done.

None of the students would be able to so physically meet with, associate with, the others. And, about this cited matter, Nisbet was, thus, simply being intellectually idiotic, which was his neoconservative privilege. What is the greater meaning, however, of this plain yet fairly evocative illustration?

Freedom of assembly must, of logical and political necessity, be completely united with the freedom of association; this is so that both can then requisitely create, therefore, the needed composite situation of assembling and associating, as the civil liberty cited can be exercised through the civil right that supports its proper and legal, constitutional, existence.
In notable historical support of this assertion, e.g., the Constitution of the formerly (or, is it presently?) existing Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (AKA Russia) had among the greatest listing of constitutional civil liberties in it of any modern state; but, a Soviet citizen, especially under Stalin, could have been easily killed, in fact, for trying to effectuate any civil right for the proposed sake of attaining the actual exercise of a Soviet, constitutional, civil liberty. Q. E. D.

If the Obama Administration, for instance, should obnoxiously help push through the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress some version of the Orwellian-named “Fairness Doctrine” for talk radio, the above discussion may not, however, prove to be just so airily theoretical. Freedom of speech is truly wonderful- if one is permitted to hear it.
Under the suitably unctuous guise of, thus, promoting some supposed fairness, there comes into being, sooner or later, public censorship of the most effective and insidious kind, the censorship of silence; it will be then effectively sustained, by the government, in the ironic name of aiding an interpretation of assumed “fairness” done on behalf of the American (or, is it Soviet?) people. Political opposition, once loud and large on the radio, will be increasingly deflected and dulled, modified and milked, through the creative absence of speech, as maintained by quotas, “balance,” or other such interesting Machiavellian devices.

Paper guarantees of rights, it can be noted, are meaningless; this is whenever the free exercise of those rights are or become so constrained, restricted, or qualified as to be then practically unobtainable, in the real world of men and events. And, this can be still said, in all fairness, to the highly important subject now at hand. In any event, freedom (whether interpreted through civil liberties or civil rights) isn’t free.