Our most basic right -- the right to be left alone -- is not guaranteed.

Let's suppose you're living in whatever country and the police knock at your door at 2 a.m., when they know you'll be there and most likely in your pajamas. They're looking for your husband or son or even you. They haul you out to a police van and whisk you away to some interrogation center, where you may be beaten or shocked with electric probes or otherwise abused. Raped, if you're a woman. And all this while you're half-asleep!

You're likely to admit to anything, right? Just let me go home!

It happens all over the world, at every hour of every day. Take right now. Is someone being tortured in some hidden cell somewhere in the world? Of course!

Why? Because they don't have the right of privacy. The right to be left alone if they're minding their own business and otherwise being good citizens.

We take a right to privacy for granted in America -- and probably in Europe and Australia and all the other countries we consider First World and civilized -- but there really isn't such a right guaranteed in the Constitution or The Bill of Rights. It's just something we all assume. Why would anyone bother us if we aren't bothering anyone else?

Leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. Common sense, no?

So what if the authorities mistake your house for another, or have bad information? They break down your door, terrifying everyone inside with their big guns and riot gear. And then they leave, saying they're sorry. Your family is likely up all night, trying to process the intrusion.

Where do you go to protest? City Hall? The cop station? All you'll get is an official apology.

You have no right not to be accosted by the police, if they have an order from a judge. Your house is no refuge from early-morning break-ins.

You don't have the right to be left alone.

What's wrong with that? Well, in the first place, most of us live lives that are kind of predictable, getting the kids up in the morning and off to school, getting ourselves to work, etc. We come home expecting an orderly flow of things -- homework, household chores, a little TV, etc. The last thing we're expecting is someone knocking down our front door to arrest someone we've never heard of who is allegedly living in our house or apartment.

Cops at the door is not just an intrusion but is traumatic, the kind of thing little kids don't easily get over and that they always remember and that might make it hard for them to sleep the rest of their lives.

It doesn't happen to most of us who live the middle-class lives of working parents with kids. But it does happen all the time to those of us living under the radar, poor working parents with the same kids in school but who can't afford to live where things are nice. The cops are always at our door, or so it seems.

I'm thinking that our un-scripted right to be left alone is among our most sacred and should only be violated -- by the authorities or by anyone else -- in extreme situations, when lives are in danger, not when someone is suspected of growing marijuana in a closet or when an illegal immigrant might be harbored in a basement or when a kid is truant from school or a dilenquent husband hasn't paid his child support. You only burst into someone's home when someone is in danger of being killed. Otherwise, butt out!

In America, right now, if I'm not mistaken (and I hope I am), you have no right to be left alone. You can be doing your best to bring up up your kids in trying circumstances, but if you live in certain neighborhoods, in certain cities, the cops are likely to show up at your door, any time of day or night. No warning.

Where's cousin Julio? Do you have any guns in the house?

I say stop it!

Pay attention to crime in the street, the really dangerous guys, for sure. But don't forget the upscale thugs. Arrest the street hustlers, but remember to track down the ones of your own color who wear expensive suits and show up to charity events with their wives while all the time thinking of ways to get richer -- at our expense!

If you want to find out who's taking all that money from innocent people, look to the thieves and burglars and bankers and insurance people. Leave the rest of us alone.

But it's so much easier to break down the doors of poor people than it is to break down the doors of multi-millionaires, no?

They have the right to be left alone. Why don't the rest of us?

I do realize that there's no way to write this without seeming to be over-sensitive. Of course the government has a right to know if I'm up to no good and has a right to snoop on me that way. But if I've never shown any propensity to that kind of ill-doing, then leave me the f*ck alone!

In other countries, and in other times -- and in some to this day -- the government keeps a close eye on its citizens. Many were, and still are, arrested and jailed -- maye even executed -- for offenses that we consider trivial at best and not even crimes: publishing offensive materials, giving offensive speeches, meeting with other like-minded free-thinkers.

We think it couldn't possibly happen in our own country, where freedom of the press still rules, but we must always be on the lookout.

The price of democracy, someone once said, is constant vigilance. Never assume that you have a right that isn't written down somewhere. Never believe that all your elected leaders will do their best to keep you out of jail if you speak out against them. Never think that your home is your castle. Cops with search orders can cross your moats and haul you away on any given night.

This all sounds like doom-and-gloom but isn't meant to. Most of us Americans live lives free of police intrusion or harrassment. But not all. There are parts of this free country where you are not safe in your home or anywhere else if you fit a certain profile, and your family isn't, either. You're just a judge's easy-to-get order away from having your front door knocked down. And the newspaper won't say anything about it. Just another drug bust. Ho hum.

To reiterate: We all have, or should have, the un-written, un-spoken right to be left alone. If we're not suspected of doing wrong, we should not be bothered by the authorities. Period.

It didn't work that way in Nazi Germany, and it doesn't work that way in lots of lawless parts of the world, but it should work that way here in the United States of America.

Okay, here I get political: You know as well as I do that if Rove and Cheney and others had had absolute power in this country -- I mean Nazi-like power -- they would have made short order of liberals and gays and anyone who disagreed with them. It didn't happen because of our way of government wouldn't let it. But that way of government is only as solid as the people we elect, who can change the government if they have the votes. Bush and Rove and Cheney et al didn't have the votes last time around. But maybe they will in the future, or maybe someone even more dangerous will. Vote and then hope for the best.

In the meantime, mind your own business, and I'll mind mine. Fair enough?

Good. We understand each other, right? Right.