Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
The original Constitution didn't even have the Bill of Rights, so you've gotta add on those authors and that Congress as well
BTW, if you think there's a lotta overlap between the signers of the first 3 founding documents, there's a total of 2 people who signed all 3
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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Is this another rabbit hole to escape from the subject of this thread? We could keep morphing from one subject to another and never have to start another thread. I guess that would be to your advantage. Do you want to discuss the Mayflower Compact, or the Northwest Ordinance, or the Missouri Compromises. Maybe the various state constitutions. Perhaps the libraries and letters of Washington and Madison and Jefferson and Hamilton. The Gettysburg Address is a really good one. We could go through the Federalist Papers one by one. The Anti-Federalist Papers would be really good to talk about and very pertinent in regards to how the Constitution has been Progressively "interpreted" in ways that turn it upside down and converted it into a document of nearly unlimited federal power instead of limiting that power.
Yeah, Madison did not originally want a bill of rights. The way the Constitution was written, a bill of rights was not necessary. The Constitution once, as written, reserved for the people that vast residuum of rights that remain beyond the few, limited, rights specified for the federal government. The individual rights specified in the Bill of Rights were already understood to be incorporated within that vast residuum embedded in the Constitutional structure, and the enumerating of a few specific rights of the people, Madison feared, would give the government a plausible pretext to claim that it was only those specified rights given in the Bill of rights which could be claimed by the people, and all else would remain within government power to manipulate as it wished.
But Progressive Courts have basically "interpreted" that quietly understood residuum of rights not listed in the BOR out of existence by giving the federal government nearly unlimited power through, in effect, rewriting various clauses such as the Interstate Commerce Clause, and the Welfare Clause, and others in a way that vanquishes much of the limitations by which the Constitution once constrained government. So now, generations later, the people are under the impression the Constitution guaranties us only those rights listed in the BOR.
So Madison's fear has come to fruition. And even those few rights in the BOR have been whittled down in scope, some to near non-existence. And the first two are now on shaky ground.