Posted on 02/03/2020 2:15:28 AM PST by Jacquerie
Not that anyone would notice today, but ours is a government of defined powers. The prerogatives reside with We The People who compacted to delegate certain authority and no more. Big diff between the American and Brit system, at least on paper.
Imagine the 1st Amendment didn’t exist. In its absence would Congress or Scotus have the authority to establish a religion, or restrict the civil freedoms of religious worship, speech, press, assembly or petition? Without the 1st Amendment, could Scotus have inverted its intent and walled off religiosity from the public square? No.
This was the essence of the Federalist stance regarding a Bill of Rights (BOR) pursuant to the draft Constitution of September 1787. If the new government wasn’t authorized to mess around with religion, speech, press, etc. in the first place, why mention the prohibitions and suggest the government can do otherwise? Without a BOR, perhaps our much-ignored Declaration of Independence would have assumed center-stage importance. What if all the Scotus had were its stirring proclamations of self-evident truths, unalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and consent of the governed?
Delegate James Wilson (PA) remarked that nobody thought of a BOR until George Mason (VA) brought it up late in the federal convention. Every state voted against incorporating a BOR. The government of the Constitution concerned itself with matters of a general nature, and delegates regarded the status and extent of natural, civil, and political rights as state matters.
(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...
bump
Very nice deconstruction and synthesis of debate pro and con regarding the BOR.
Here’s a quote at the end:
“We the People are in a bad way. We’ve lost track of the proper relationship with our government and allow Scotus to define the breadth and depth of our rights. That is up to us, and not a few lawyers meeting in secret conclaves.”
I would add to this last comment that the 17th Amendment contributed substantially if not entirely to this lost relationship between the People and their federal government.
Some of the founders did rightly predict that scoundrels would aspire to public office. They understood human nature, and history has proven, before and since, that bad behavior gets worse when vested with power.
The anti-Trump Democrats and RINOs are prime examples of the "scoundrels" having reached the lowest level of pure unadulterated evil. They are fighting like crazy to avoid investigation and prosecution. Justice is coming.
Hamilton said it best when he stated that including a BoR would imply that the Feral Government would have otherwise had the power to restrict rights such as the 1st and 2nd amendments - even though such power was never delegated. He was exactly right and that is the core reason why so many today assume that the government has the power to restrict the right to bear arms / restrict speech etc ....
I find the argument about ex post facto laws to be spurious at best since the Feral Government IS empowered to pass laws in many areas and this restriction is imperative and included rightly in the body of the constitution.
Ditto re: 17A.
FWIW, you’ll get dozens of hits searching “17th Amendment” at ArticleVBlog.
and the 16th.
I have always contended that studying the “Federalist Papers” without also studying their opposite number was ridiculous.
Unfortunately, the passage of time has proven the anti-Federalists to have been correct....in spades.
Right about what?
You and I may be the only two Hamilton non-haters at FR.
The enemy trashed the defined powers limit long ago.
Without the BoR we would have no limits on government and no rights.
That the Constitution wasn’t strong enough to prevent such unconstitutional things as Social Security, Dept of Ed, War on Drugs, etc.
We are responsible.
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