An Old Column Revisited

"I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the Federal government." Thomas Jefferson, 1788

"The Declaration of rights is like all other human blessings alloyed with some inconveniences…But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil."

Jefferson, 1789

In the 18^th century, some believed that any powers not assigned to the government by the new Constitution would automatically stay with the citizens, and would never be abused by the government. Both Jefferson and a fellow named James Madison knew better, and  argued that a bill of rights should be added to the Constitution, because they correctly assumed that any government, by it's very nature, would grasp more and more power, and thus strip the citizens of their freedom.

Madison proposed 42 such rights. Then the government set to work restricting these. The House of Representatives discarded all but 27. The senate then stripped off 15 more. And the states lopped away 2 more. So we ended up with 10 rights protected within our Constitution as the first ten amendments. The Bill of Rights.

The 10^th Amendment came right out and said that any rights not spelled out in those first 9, or in the Constitution itself, automatically belonged with the individual states or the people. As predicted, the government has largely ignored this one.

The first nine list individual rights that must be protected from government abuse. And as Jefferson also predicted, citizen rights have been "alloyed with some inconveniences". Many have been abused by individuals. Mafia bosses taunt the 5^th whenever they go to trial. So do steroid modified professional athletes. Crooked lawyers make their careers off the 4^th. And all sorts of weirdness gets a pass under the protection of the 1^st amendment.

With rights comes responsibilities, and some people are responsibility challenged. But as Jefferson stated, the good of individual freedom still vastly outweighs the evil. This would be a far less comfortable country had we not preserved our individual rights in the Bill of Rights.

The government predictably continues to chip away at our rights. That's why we'll have to make sure they retire things like the Patriot Act if we can ever end the war waged upon us by certain religious zealots. And it's why we should insist that the Supreme Court overturn the illegal law in Washington, DC that turns good people into criminals, if they use firearms to defend their own homes from criminal attack.

"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (within his own lands or tenements)." T. Jefferson, 1776

I'm not surprised that the court debate over this ridiculous law in DC may well turn into a debate over the validity of the 2^nd Amendment. Those who would ban firearms often claim that the founding fathers never intended for the 2^nd Amendment to be about an individual right, but instead concerned government agencies like the National Guard. Which seems odd, since the Bill of Rights was written to protect citizens from their own government. And all of the other rights our forefathers spelled out in the Bill of Rights preserve individual freedom, not government agencies.

Wise men like Jefferson and Madison predicted this. We should listen to them.