Lawrence vs. Texas on Personal Animus as Basis for Legislation: Is this a Critique of Expressionism?

Lawerence v. Texas found that personal animus is not a sufficient reason to justify regulation of an activity; a personal (preferential?) or moral judgment of an activity does not render it subject to government legislation.  

This finding seems to recall, and may be equivalent to, the idea of mine that the expressive function of the law ought to be of a lower priority than other legal functions, especially policy outcome.  In general, this principle on which this case was decided seems to me to be similar to the derision for the expressive function of political action that I have often articulated.

Anthony Kennedy's Jurisprudence, Value-Neutrality, and Freedom for Legal Obligation

Does the constitutional principle, one that I associate with Anthony Kennedy most, that people have the right, and the constitution protects this, to define the good life, conception of the good and the good life, the meaning of life, life's value, morality, the summum bonum for themselves, and that this principle forbids legislation that hampers that and people's pursuit/promotion/implementation of their own personal sense/value/view of the good.

But if this is true, then can we even reject internally inconsistent ones?
Even if we say, yes we can
This still leaves many, social darwinism for just one example, conceivable/possible moral conceptions of the good that are internally inconsistent (no matter how implausible or arbitrary or random or fortuitously coincidental given the preferences of those who espouse them) but grievously undesirable and wrong.

Would such a conception of the good that requires murder or theft or assault, like a religion that requires unwilling human sacrifice or a moral nonrealist sociopath, or etc., justify legally proscribed actions and invalidate the laws prohibiting them, at least in these cases/exceptions?

Presumably no, but that means then that this right to define one's own conception of the good, which is really (at least seems like) value-neutrality, does not necessarily invalidate prohibitions, and thus cannot be the sole premise in a sound argument for the rights to establish a freedom and invalidate (again, in any way) its prohibition.

Free vs. Regulated Speech and Campus Protests, Platforms, and Heckler's Veto

The people who's slogan is in favor of free speech in the recent campus protests to shut down a speaker or presentation is actually a position in favor of regulated speech, totally free speech waiting include the heckler.

These groups trying to give talks book for a specific space and the specific time in advance, and publicize about it including at the entrance, to allow people control/free choice/freedom in whether they experience it. And they favor using coercion forced to shut down other people speech, in that space at the same time, to preserve the existence/integrity of their own speech. So they are not pro free-speech as far as meaning anarchy and no legislation on speech at all, but are pro regulated speech to enable/promote/protect a difference, deeper, more important type of free speech, one in which the individual with a unique opinion can be heard and the diversity of speech/of views/of expressed views this condition entails.

This is just like the Lockean notion of restricting some freedom, to some property that is legitimately taxed away, to the right to catch and punish wrongdoers/rights violators, and certain other things, to secure liberty in other areas and make them more reliable, which must be a more valuable type of liberty.

So these are both examples of the principle that it can be legitimate to sacrifice some liberty of a smaller amounts or less or type for the sake of a greater or deeper liberty.

Socialists want to take this one step further, and say it's legitimate to sacrifice further on liberty so conceived when it comes to taxes and regulation, property rights in general, in order to secure a deeper freedom, positive freedom that is, for everyone.

Religious Liberty and Equal Treatment

Hoisted from the draft queue from 3/5/14:

Via this interesting write-up in The American Conservative of the foofaraw over American Atheists' attempt at diplomacy toward the conservative movement at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference, here's the atheist group's political pamphlet that was distributed at CPAC, also hosted by The American Conservative.

There are apparently four items on their public agenda:

An Argument for Transparency

The people need to know what its government is doing in its name so that they have an accurate picture of the history of the conflict between their country and another when taking positions on foreign policy alternatives.  Otherwise, with a rose-tinted view of their side's own past conduct and an un-white-washed view of the other side's conduct, there is a tendency against the mutual understanding that leads to trust and coordinated solutions to the collective action problem of security.  

National Security Criticism

I have lots of problems with national security policy: not enough transparency generally, counter-productive wars and covert actions, detainment without a speedy trial, the militarization of non-military criminal actions and responses, and other general issues of drift and securitization.


But the issues that mostly come up in discourse over civil liberties are the issues I don't have too much of a problem with.  They're definitely not unprecedented in principle.