December 15, 2011, marks the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the “Bill of Rights,” the first Ten Amendments to the United States Constitution, a milestone of liberty which has inspired nations and peoples throughout the world.
December 15 was first proclaimed to be “Bill of Rights Day” by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941—only eight days after America was attacked at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and one week after America declared war in response, and entered World War II. Some 16-million Americans would serve in the armed forces in that war, and some 400,000 would sacrifice their lives in defense of American liberty as expressed and guaranteed by America’s founding documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill Of Rights.
The Founding Fathers creation of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, then the Constitution in 1787, and then Bill of Rights in 1791, marked American exceptionalism from its inception. Until then, the glory of kings, monarchs, tribes, nations, countries, and empires, had been marked by the extent of their governmental power over the people. The glory of the United States of America was then and is now the ideas of liberty of the Founding Fathers, which extended the power of the American people over their government.
The Declaration of Independence adopted July 4, 1776, primarily authored by Thomas Jefferson, who would later become the third president of the United Sates, declared the United States to be a nation which believes that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and that government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Those breathtaking assertions of “self-evident” truths that rights are derived from God not government, and that government derived its powers from the consent of the people, not the other way around, were unprecedented in history, and shocked the monarchs and potentates of the 18th Century as Americans boldly set out to create what would be the only free, independent, constitutional republic “of the people, for the people, and by people” in the world.
America would then fight for those principles against the greatest military power on earth at the time, England, whose colony America had been for more than 150 years. The citizen-soldiers of the ragtag Revolutionary Army led by Commander-in-chief Gen. George Washington, underarmed, underpaid, under-supplied, underfed, and most often under the more powerful and plentiful guns of England’s mostly mercenary professional army, fought heroically under the most adverse conditions imaginable, and ultimately secured American freedom with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1883.
The Founding Fathers, having secured independence for the former colonies of England, rejected the notion of an “unwritten constitution” by which England governed itself. Instead, they crafted a written Constitution establishing the way in which Americans would govern themselves. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Gen. Washington was unanimously elected president. After months of debate, on September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was agreed upon, signed by thirty-six of the original fifty-five delegates.
On March 4, 1789, the United States Constitution went into effect, having been ratified by the States, as required by Article VII of the Constitution.
 |
| Madison’s Notes on Bill of Rights |
A major cause of debate and disagreement at the Constitutional Convention was concern that the federal government was not effectively limited and would usurp the powers of the States, and of the people. Demands were made for inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Some of the delegates refused to sign the Constitution because of the lack of a Bill of Rights. A compromise was reached by agreement that legislation would be introduced at the First Congress after establishment of the Constitution to provide the specific guarantees against expansion of the power of the federal government.
Ironically, James Madison who is often called the “Father of the Constitution,” opposed inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution itself. He believed it was unnecessary because the existing terms of the Constitution guaranteed against federal government usurpation of the powers of the States and of the people. He introduced legislative proposals amounting to a bill of rights at the first Congress, leading to Madison being called also the “Father of the Bill of Rights.”
Creation of the Bill of Rights was a complex, difficult, often tedious, work, at which Madison, who would later serve as America’s fourth president, was at the center. It was not until September 25, 1989, a little more than two years after the Constitution had been adopted by the Constitutional Convention on Sept. 17, 1787, that Congress agreed upon a Bill of Rights and proposed it to the States for ratification. It would be another two years before ratification.
The original Bill of Rights consisted of twelve amendments to the Constitution. The states ultimately adopted ten amendments, and rejected two: The first rejected amendment involved apportionment, i.e., how many seats there would be in congress, and how they would be apportioned. The second rejected amendment, involving compensation for members of House and Senate, was later enacted by this generation of Americans, in 1992, as the 27th Amendment: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.”
The First Ten Amendments, which came to be known as the Bill of Rights went into effect on December 15, 1791, the date on which Virginia, the home state of Madison, voted to ratify, providing the sufficient number of ratifying states under Article VII.
There can be no doubt that the intent of the Founding Fathers who framed the Bill of Rights was to expressly limit the power of the federal government, not the States, nor the people. Nor can there be any doubt as to how important are the Bill of Rights to American liberty.
But, notwithstanding the great importance of the Bill of Rights, and the intent of the Founding Fathers in creating the Ten Amendments protecting those rights, they are often imperiled by the interpretations of the Founding Father’s Constitution and Bill of Rights by the modern judiciary, i.e., lawyers sitting as judges since only one class of Americans are deemed fit serve in the judicial branch of government, while all Americans who meet age, citizenship, and residency requirements may serve in both the Legislative and Executive branches.
It would seem nearly impossible to create words more clearly and definitively evidencing that the Founding Fathers intended the Bill of Rights to guarantee the rights of the people from deprivation by the federal government, to expressly limit the federal government and restrict it to enumerated powers only, and to apply the Bill of Rights not to the States but to the federal government only, than the first five words of the Founding Fathers in the First Amendment. It is perhaps the amendment with which most Americans are familiar, even if they are not familiar with the import of the first five words, which are emphasized here:
The First Amendment provides: “Congress shall make no lawrespecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” These are rights with out which there is neither freedom, nor human dignity. But the great mass of human beings can only dream of these rights.
The Second Amendment with equal clarity protects the equally fundamental right of citizens to arm themselves to defend themselves and their liberty, including against an oppressive government which denies the rights of the Bill of Rights, by providing “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The Third Amendment protects Americans from having their homes taken over by an oppressive federal government acting to quarter military troops, as the American colonists endured when ruled by England, by providing: “No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
This is not a mere anachronism. Contemplate, for a moment, imposition of Sharia Law on Americans as openly sought by such organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) domestically, or by foreign enemies like the Muslim Brotherhood or the bombastic threats of President Amareallymad in Iran.
The Fourth Amendment bars the government from carrying out “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and requires “warrants” which must be issued on “probable cause.
The Fifth Amendment provides protections against governmental actions in criminal prosecutions providing that no one may be held to answer without a presentment or Grand Jury indictment (except persons in the armed forces “in time of war or public danger.”). It protects against “double jeopardy. It prohibits the government from compelling a person to testify against himself. It prohibits the government from depriving a person of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law and it bars the government from taking “private property” for “public use, without just compensation.
The Sixth Amendment mandates “speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury” after an accused is “informed” of the charges against him or her. It secures the rights “to be confronted with the witnesses against him;” the right to subpoena witnesses to testify; and to have the assistance of legal counsel.
The Seventh Amendment provides a right to jury trial in civil matters, and safeguards on review.
The Eighth Amendment bars excessive bail, excessive fine, “nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
The Ninth Amendment again evidences the intent of the Founding Fathers to limit the power of government, and protect the rights of the people: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The Tenth Amendment, like the Ninth, limits the federal government, and protects the rights of the States and the people: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
These rights are, indeed, unprecedented when established by our American Founding Fathers established them 220 years ago, and are non-existent in most of the world today.
They are precious rights. But they are also fragile rights. They are threatened externally by enemies of America who wish to destroy the rights of Americans contained in the Bill of Rights by imposing on Americans, by means peaceful or otherwise, the extremes totalitarian communism, as in Communist China, or totalitarian Islam under Sharia Law.
The rights of the Bill of Rights are threatened internally by Sharia-Law seeking Islamists like CAIR, as well as by mobs of social-engineering liberal “progressie” lawyers epitomized by the ACLU, aided a modern activist judiciary in which only one class of Americans may serve, i.e., lawyers. Those lawyer-judges interpret the Constitution not in light of the expressed intent and the values of the Founding Fathers in creating the Constitution, but upon the intent and values of those lawyer-judges today. They are transforming the country the Founding Fathers created and bequeathed to us, by re-writing the Constitution in the guise of interpretation rather than forthrightly amending it as provided for in Article VII of the Constitution – a process in which the people, not merely lawyer-judges, will have a voice.
On Bill of Rights Day 2011, on the 220th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights, we Americans of this generation have a responsibility to preserve and protect the rights the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us, and almost 1.5-million veterans died to preserve for us. We do that by taking a stand against all enemies of those rights, whether foreign or domestic, whether jihadist Islamist terrorists with a bomb in one hand and Sharia Law in the other, or unelected, unaccountable, lawyers in dresses sitting as life-tenured judges and transforming the nation in their own image by issuing constitutional decisions in complete disregard of the intent of the Founding Fathers, like feudal lords ruling over ignorant, sheep-like peasants without rights. Or the courage to fight back as did the Founding Fathers.
[Rees Lloyd is a longtime civil rights lawyer, a veterans activist, and a member of the Victoria Taft Blogforce.]
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
