Murdering the Bill of Rights by Anthony Gregory

Anthony Gregory writes:

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Every year around this time some politicians will say something obligatory about Bill of Rights Day [15 Dec 1791] and the cherished freedoms and liberties of America's heritage, and perhaps about how the troops fighting in the foreign war du jour are fighting for those very freedoms and liberties.

As these politicians describe it, government is the mother of liberty. Freedom is granted by the state. The Bill of Rights is just one of the many charters that empowers the state and enables it to give freedom to its subjects...

The Bill of Rights is, as best understood, an anti-government document. Its main purpose is not to call upon the government to provide rights; it is rather a list of restrictions on federal authority, spelling out some particular rights that the government shall not violate. It is a prohibition on the federal government from engaging in... any and all activities not specifically authorized by the Constitution.

In this sense, the Bill of Rights underscores a radical conception of liberty: that the state does not create liberty, that in fact the state’s actions inflict harm on liberty, and that to protect liberty all we must do is keep the state away.

If the government actually obeyed the Bill of Rights, it would do virtually none of what it is doing now. Practically every federal law, regulation and activity is an affront to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. These two provisions have long been ignored completely, at least since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

A horrifying amount of what the government now does is also specifically prohibited by the first eight amendments. According to the document that supposedly justifies the government’s existence, almost every action carried out by its officials is illegal, and those officials are criminals in violation of the law. For any of them to talk about the greatness of the Bill of Rights is akin to Al Capone sermonizing on the virtues of temperance...

Human liberty is a natural right. It existed before the Bill of Rights. It will exist after the Bill of Rights. It exists wherever it is left free to exist. Those ten amendments supposedly protect liberty, but they are not the origin of liberty, no matter what anyone says to the contrary.

The rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness were not invented by the Founding Fathers. The Founders only recognized the natural rights that humans were born with and attempted to defend them more rigorously than had ever been done before...

Ultimately, no law can bind people unless it is upheld in people’s hearts and minds. This includes Constitutional law. To arrive at a day when the Bill of Rights means anything, the principles it presumably defends must first be shared and cultivated among society.

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Murdering the Bill of Rights by Anthony Gregory