Why the Bill of Rights Would Never Pass Today
When the Founders were debating the Constitution and the framework for this country, there was vigorous and at times, violent debate. But, the vision for a country founded on principles of liberty was the goal. Thankfully, that goal was reached.
Charles C.W. Cooke is a columnist for the National Review. He published a column on May 4th, 2015 that postulated a chilling point of view.
Posited in 2015, the First Amendment’s speech protections would likely be characterized as "anti-gay" or "pro-racist" measures that had been cynically contrived to protect the capacity of bigots to say disgraceful things with impunity and to reinforce the various power structures and privileges that are at present claimed to be destroying America.
Based on headlines and attempts to limit our free speech, would the First Amendment pass the political correctness of today?
The "freedom of the press," meanwhile, would be openly disdained as an overture to the corporate purchase of elections; the "right of the people peaceably to assemble" would be regarded as a direct threat to the sanctity of the land around the entrance to abortion clinics; and the wide-ranging conscience protections contained within both the establishment and the free-exercise clauses would be cast as a devilish recipe for theocracy that would allow the irrational to operate without oversight and the backward to undermine the great cause of Science.
Would we have the right to bear arms?
…the Second Amendment would be cast as a recipe for "Wild West" anarchy, an open invitation to sedition for those white, mountain-dwelling racists of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s nightmares, and an overture to the execution of children.
Without the guardian 1st and 2nd Amendments, the rest would also fall.
The Fourth, the Fifth, and the Eighth would be denounced by both overzealous law-and-order types and totalitarian feminists as damnable "soft on crime" provisions intended to help dastardly types get away with raping college students and selling drugs to the vulnerable. And the Ninth and Tenth would be attacked viciously by our seemingly endless plague of ambitious public-policy graduates, almost all of whom believe down to their ill-fitting boots that there is no problem so small or so personal that it cannot be solved nationally.
The 3rd Amendment is often overlooked.
Precisely because it has such a limited effect in restraining the government, the only provision that would remain would be the Third, about quartering soldiers, although one can only suppose that John McCain and Lindsey Graham would put up quite the fight.
The column is well written and thought provoking. This final quote is the concluding paragraph.
If it sometimes feels as if the Bill of Rights is the only thing standing between the little guy and majoritarian tyranny, that’s possibly because it is. Americans may be freer than most, but it is often thanks to Supreme Court decisions and not to public opinion that America remains an outlier. It is because judges have stepped in that it is legal to burn the American flag in protest; that the Westboro Baptist Church may stage its execrable funeral demonstrations without fear of tort liability; that seditious speech may not be punished by the government; that disgusting videos may not be banned; that conservative Christians have been spared the indignities of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate; that collections of citizens may engage in political criticism; that parents caring for their children may not be forced by the state to join a union; that the residents of Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other "blue" cities may buy and own handguns for their protection; that the government is prohibited from searching cell phones without a warrant; and so on and so forth. Looking around the country — and examining the attitudes that prevail in Washington, D.C., on our college campuses, and in our hopelessly excitable media — can we honestly conclude that three-fourths of We the People would vote today to so restrain ourselves? We are living on borrowed wisdom.
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