A nice dialectical point from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson:

“This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

—Terminiello, 337 U.S. 1, 37 (1949) (Jackson, J., joined by Burton, J., dissenting).

Everybody seems to understand the “Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact” differently. It’s an ontological question: what dies in the suicide? Physical people? The legal institutions that uphold the Bill of Rights? The popular credibility of the Bill of Rights? The democratic tradition that makes liberty possible? The principles of our government? The vision?

I’ll say one thing: To decide between two things, both must be understood or one has no decision to make.