A CALL FOR FREEDOM

Twi judicial rules:

Under the 5th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, no person shall "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."

The judicial subpoena power allows a judge to order someone to testify in a case involving another party if that person's testimony is thought to be relevant to the case.

So a person may be forced to testify against others but not against himself. From where I sit, those two basics of American jurisprudence are clearly contradictory.

The classic reasoning given for the rule against self incrimination is that it precludes a government from using abusive kangaroo court tactics to obtain confessions and convictions by making those confessions unreliable and inadmissible. But if that reasoning is valid, then it ought also be applied to preclude the government from using abusive tactics to obtain subpoenas.
And if subpoenas are believed to eliminate the abuse problem, why doesn't it also do so in regard to self incrimination?

Interesting, too, that our system excludes spouses from having to testify against each other. Justice, apparently, is not as socially important as happy marriages. Other family relations and friendships are not so protected and vulnerable to the subpoena power.

It is argued by some that no one with relevant information regarding a case involving a third party could have any moral reason to withhold such information...that the failure to testify as to known facts could contribute to an injustice being perpetrated in the courtroom. and make the person refusing to testify a contributor to that injustice. If that is so, which it appears to be, why does that argument not override the 5th Amendment? If we advocate, and herald the glory of, justice, should we not want it for ourselves as well?

The resolution of the self incrimination/subpoena contradiction is this:

We are each free and the government has no right to force us to do anything other than as punishment for a criminal conviction. ANYTHING.

Freedom is an absolute, or we are not free.

No moral goal can be obtained at the cost of our freedom, no matter how noble, how desirable, that goal may seem to be.

The government solution to every perceived problem must be made with the protection of our freedom, and not the abuse or limitation of it. No exceptions.

The subpoena power must go.