Bill of Rights

After a small but organized gang of extremely wealthy, well-connected, highly educated, and influential subversives, whose organization was called the Continental Congress and sometimes The Confederation, instigated a revolt against the British government and promptly claimed command of its colonies on the New World, they faced several dilemmas. The greatest of these was that the leaders of the rebellion hardly agreed on anything, and yet had to find some compromised system of government by which they could all have influence. Perhaps the next greatest problem was the obvious realization that they had made themselves vulnerable to having the excuses they used in rebelling against Britain used against them.

The official document listing grievances against King George III, called the Declaration of Independence, was written a year after the war with Britain had already begun, and one of its objectives was to convince the colonists that the rebellion was justified. In this regard, it wasn’t nearly as effective or influential as the pathos of Patrick Henry or the writings of Thomas Paine. But perhaps its main objective was to claim sole responsibility for the coup de etat so that when the dust settled they would be considered the winners and not the many other less organized militias and terrorists also fighting the Brits. In retrospect, the Continental Congress would have been given credit anyway, as the arbitrarily chosen leader of their ad hoc army, George Washington, turned out to be one hell of a military general, and their connections with France via Benjamin Franklin proved invaluable.

A committee outlined the themes to be included in the document, then the Declaration was hastily written by Thomas Jefferson. It underwent surprisingly little editing, despite its incredible vagueness, redundancies and the absurdity of some of the reasons (among those being the king’s allowance of Native Americans to inhabit the Americas and defending himself against those challenging his authority), before being agreed upon by the Continental Congress (often known as the founding fathers although I prefer The Man). The document opens by stressing the importance of individual rights and of citizens to be able to overthrow its own government. The Man was desperate enough at the time that they probably didn’t worry too much about how they would deal with the obvious implications of their own words once they took over.

The foremost advertised and most popular reason for the war was to free the citizens of the colonies from tariffs. Of course, the members of The Man put themselves into a lot of debt funding the war, and they wanted to get their money back. When Washington became president, he put Hamilton in charge of this task by appointing him Secretary of the Treasury. While some proposed a lottery for raising money, they settled on Hamilton’s plan of implementing virtually the same tariffs that the British had imposed (in fact that was literally the first thing the newly formed government did after writing the wording for swearing themselves in), hypocritically making it illegal for the states to do the same thing. They hoped nobody would notice. They might have considered an income tax, but their own Constitution had explicitly made that illegal, probably because they didn’t want anyone realizing how much money they were making….

It is ironic but not surprising that when these traitors set up the government by which they’d rule, the one crime they went out of their way to denigrate was treason. It is also not unexpected that, sensing the sham of the takeover, the public demanded a guarantee of their promised liberties, freedoms and inalienable rights. Moreover, they wanted it explained to them what the hell these things were. (The common man did not understand that the inalienable rights Thomas Jefferson alluded to was a very obvious reference to the works of John Locke and Adam Smith. Jefferson was a vocal advocate that individual rights should be included in the Constitution, which is probably why The Man had shipped him to France while they wrote it.) Not until they were backed into a corner with the threat of the Constitution not being signed did The Man agree to placate the masses by giving them their rights- after they got their signatures. That The Man was able to convince all of the states to agree to submit to their previously non-existent authority without using military force is an extremely impressive and perhaps unparalleled feat.

Now The Man had to figure out a way to present an official list of individual rights to those suspicious of their motives without actually relinquishing any of their hard-won authority. In the early days, the biggest opponent of individual rights was Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, who wanted to bring back the monarchy (and presumably anoint himself king), founded the Federalist Party, which favored a strong centralized power. The Anti-Federalists, a less organized group of citizens in favor of state and individual rights who’s most prominent voice was Patrick Henry, had been vocal in demanding a bill listing individual rights. James Madison, who along with George Washington was the most influential early supporter of Alexander Hamilton, was an outspoken opponent of any bill of rights, and publicly argued with Patrick Henry and privately with Thomas Jefferson regarding them. So when Madison himself introduced the Bill of Rights in 1789, apparently not enough eyebrows were raised (although the same thing happens in politics today all of the time). In fact, The Federalist Papers, the articles most influential in promoting the Constitution while explicating resistance to any bill of rights, were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison! Even later in life, Madison chastised the amendments as being “useless.” In the Bill of Rights, The Man managed to enumerate individual rights without relinquishing government power or giving individuals means to overthrow it.

In fairness, it should be noted that James Madison would later split from Hamilton and join with Thomas Jefferson to form what is now referred to as the Democratic-Republican Party, which opposed Hamilton’s economic and foreign policies and favored state rights over federal power. In response, Patrick Henry, being such a staunch opponent of Madison, would jump ship and become a Federalist! (After Thomas Jefferson became President, his Vice President, another Federalist turned Democratic-Republican named Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel instigated by Burr, well aware that Hamilton had a long history of accepting duels but of never actually shooting anybody. Burr’s political career in the United States was ruined, excusing him to live on the land he had already leased in Mexico, on which he began assembling an army with which he intended to conquer Mexico and become its emperor. Jefferson spent the years just prior and forever after the assassination of Hamilton going to such astonishingly extreme measures to distance himself from Burr (while simultaneously acting completely unsurprised and initially doing nothing when he was told of Burr’s plans of conquest), that nobody ever questioned whether Jefferson had any role in his main rival’s death. The cunning of politicians cannot be underestimated, especially when circumstances like these reveal themselves.)

There were originally twelve articles presented by The Man to the states that were intended to become constitutional amendments. The first one has never been ratified. It proposed a system for increasing the number of members in the House of Representatives in an attempt to strengthen that branch, of which Madison was a member. The second proposed amendment was ratified in 1992, and became the twenty-seventh constitutional amendment. It disallows members of congress from giving themselves raises which take effect before the next election. Congress ignores this amendment entirely; they now give themselves “cost of living adjustments” instead of raises.

Looking back, it’s surprising that what we now know as the first amendment wasn’t always leading the pack, because it’s really a crowd pleaser, imposing broad limits on federal power. Even more surprising, Madison had originally made around twenty proposals (that he felt should be added into the body of the Constitution itself) that The Man edited down, and the first one of those, which I’m sure he intended to have immediately shot down and included only as a motivator to encourage The Man to help him weed out anything similar he may have accidentally written, declared that the role of government was to benefit the people, and that the people had the right to change that government. (Nothing else he proposed came even close to this acknowledgment.)

The first amendment keeps the Congress from prohibiting any religious beliefs or creating any laws regarding any religion. Contextually, the reference is in regard to the English Reformation, which had caused an upheaval in Britain two and a half centuries prior and was a major catalyst for American immigration, and the French Revolution, which was a current event. (I’d love to go into more detail here, but I’m writing a blog post, not a novel.) In practice, this amendment has been of most use in allowing for churches not to pay taxes. It has traditionally not been applied to religions other than mainstream Christianity; for instance Native American religions were made illegal, as was the Mormon’s practice of polygamy and many modern-day “cults” (remember Waco?).

The first amendment also prevents government from being able to censor the spoken and written word. Alright, that’s worth the price of admission. Finally, it allows for citizens to peacefully gather and to formally ask the government to correct any wrongs they feel they have been done. For me, here is where things start to get suspicious. Who defines “peaceably?” KKK rallies are generally allowed because they’re peaceful yet Black Panther rallies have consistently been considered violent. I have a problem with that. According to the next phrase, my recourse is to fill out the appropriate paperwork and navigate the red tape in order to mention to the government that I feel there’s something wrong about that. No promises are given that the government will listen or do anything whatsoever, and the individual is NOT given the right to take these matters into his own hands! By its clever wording, the amendment is giving the government MORE power, not less. The bill of rights NEVER grants the citizens of the United States the right to act on their own behalf in any way.

The second amendment is a confusingly constructed sentence fragment. There is no way this amendment should have been ratified without demanding that the wording be fixed. It allows for states to keep “a well regulated” militia. This wording is significant because state militias were notoriously unruly. The Man could have easily disbanded any militia it deemed a threat. The other and more famous part of the amendment is fascinating to me because most people don’t seem to realize what the word “bear” means to carry and hold up, in the same way that we say a truck bears a load. According to this amendment, one should be able to walk down the street holding a gun without any recourse. However, the poorly written fragment allows lawmakers to claim only people in militias can keep and bear arms. In practice, an odd compromise has been reached which generally allows everybody to own weapons but allows each state to dictate who can carry them. It turns out even the highly-influential the NRA has actually relinquished half of its constitutional right in regard to weapons. This amendment does not allow for anybody to have or carry bullets or use their weapons, nor does it specify whether all types of guns can be carried. Although the ninth amendment should (but doesn’t) prevent lawmakers from using this as an argument, the tenth amendment lets the states make laws regarding these things.

The third amendment addresses a specific grievance mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. It disallows soldiers from making themselves at home in a citizen’s house in times of peace. In times of war, a law must be written before a soldier can do so. War is something declared by Congress, so that definition depends entirely on them. All the government needs to do to allow soldiers to take over your house is declare war and then write a law saying they can. History has shown that getting Congress to declare war is enough of a pain that our government usually just wages wars without declaring them, but still the trend of the bill of rights giving the government more power instead of less continues….

The fourth amendment, like the third, protects private property. John Locke had made private property a huge concern with his late seventeenth century writings, which were highly influential on the Congressional Congress gang, especially Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. My point is not that there’s anything wrong with the amendment, but that it was written because it was a concern of the government and not necessarily the citizens as was advertised at the time and generally believed to this day. The government has always interpreted its laws in ways that protect itself much more than they protect its citizens. Who decides when searches and seizures become reasonable? The government, of course! Getting any government official to reveal any of their papers is much more difficult than it is for them to get us to reveal ours.

The fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth amendments all deal with due process in the judicial branch. These amendments have proven themselves worthwhile, and I truly believe that without them we as citizens would be seriously screwed. Nonetheless, they contain several ambiguities and self-contradictions. The wording always has an “out;” the government cannot buy your land without “just” compensation, for example. And what exactly would an impartial trial held in the district where the crime took place look like? Others will claim it is exactly the ambiguities in the Constitution which make it strong. I find this ridiculous; comparable to claiming the plot holes are what make a movie good. It does, however, give the government the flexibility to interpret the document in whatever way is most convenient for them at the time.

The ninth and tenth amendments admit the limitations of the federal government; arrogantly conceding that individuals and states can do things other than what the government says they can do as long as it hasn’t explicitly stated we can’t. Gee, thanks.