[ExGeeEye]

Granted, they have been made less so over time through gradual encroachment of the State.

This is not a good thing.

That they were originally written to be as rigidly observed as the Ten Commandments is my absolute opinion. About the only thing the framers didn’t do was engrave them in stone, or as mentioned above, specify penalties for breaking them.

[Rockingham]

You are correct in the sense that the Bill of Rights enjoyed widespread support in the early years of the Republic as a set of legal and political principles with near universal support. You are mistaken though on some details, which I will elaborate on in a spirit of agreement with your larger point.

The Bill of Rights was not drawn up by the framers because it was not part of the original Constitution but consists of the first ten amendments adopted by the states. The Federalist Papers argued against a Bill of Rights as being unnecessary, but twelve amendments were proposed by the first Congress at James Madison's initiative in order to placate the opponents of ratification and thereby consolidate support for the Constitution.

Moreover, although the Bill of Rights could be raised as a defense to criminal charges and some other government actions, the practice of enforcing its guarantees by filing federal civil litigation as a plaintiff is a relatively recent development, with the legal foundation set only after the Civil War. Such litigation became common only in the 1960s.

One of the little appreciated ironies of American history is that in the Reconstruction era, in order to protect newly freed slaves in the former Confederacy, it was Republicans who proposed and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment and a federal law providing for an individual right to enforce the Bill of Rights as a plaintiff. These continue to provide the basis for virtually all civil suits in federal and state court that seek to advance claims under the Bill of Rights.

Through an abundance of such litigation, the Bill of Rights now reaches more deeply into American government and life than ever before. Liberals seem to be increasingly discomfited by this because, in recent years, conservatives have won important legal victories because we developed the organizations and legal talent to defend our rights in federal court. In doing so, conservatives are advancing our first principles as Americans and as the true heirs of revolutionaries -- which we are both proud to be.