Monday, September 25, 2006

How much less trouble would we have with The Left if the last line of the following were in our (yes, I'm USA-centric) Constitution?

American Minute with Bill Federer
September 25

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Thus began the Ten Amendments, or Bill of Rights, which were approved this day, September 25, 1789.

George Mason, known as "The Father of the Bill of Rights," wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights from which Jefferson drew to write the Declaration of Independence. Mason was one of fifty-five who wrote the U.S. Constitution, but was also one of sixteen who refused to sign it because it did not abolish slavery and did not limit the power of the Federal Government. He worked with Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams to prevent the Constitution from being ratified, as the abuses of King George's concentrated power were still fresh.

It was through Mason's insistence that in the first session of Congress ten limitations were put on the Federal Government.

George Mason had suggested the wording of the First Amendment be:
"All men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others."
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Then again, some black-robed wonder would probably just define "others" as: Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mohammedans, whatever... Bah.

1 comment:

Bike Bubba said...

Quite right with your last statement; the debate over the Constitution's fairly broad powers centered not on whether the text was fairly obvious to all, but on whether jurists could be trusted to adhere to its limits.