The Bill of Rights: The Ten Amendments Were Never a Gift From Government | Bill Norton

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin and this is our concluding lesson on the Constitution and our founding principles with constitutional scholar Bill Norton. We had lesson one, two and three. The first few lessons covered the Declaration of Independence. The third lesson covered the Constitution. And today's lesson is going to cover the Bill of Rights. We also have bonus episodes that correspond with each of the lessons that I hope you will check out.

[00:00:44] Bill, thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome. It's great to be here with you again. So our last lesson was about the Constitution and we left at the end of the Constitution and now we're at the Bill of Rights. Yes. So of course we have our amendments to the Constitution. We talked about Article 5, which is all about how to amend the Constitution. Well, they went at it immediately and started amending it and that's where we get the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.

[00:01:07] And we now have a total of 27 amendments. We're not going to get into any of those. We'll just focus right in on the Bill of Rights, primarily because the Bill of Rights is considered part of the original document because they did add those so quickly after. And it was kind of a deal in order for them to ratify there was a promise that Congress would go and take up the amendments. That's right. So let's talk a little bit about that history. Really, I want to dive mostly into the principles behind some of the amendments.

[00:01:37] But let's at least talk about some of the history because it's interesting and good to know. So basically, we're at the Constitutional Convention, 1787, and four months through the summer, it's hot, it's miserable in Philadelphia. It's one of the hottest summers on record and they're in this stuffy building. And so they're pretty agitated and ready to end. And as they're getting toward the end, George Mason of Virginia stands up and says,

[00:02:06] I would rather cut off my right arm than to put it to that document. And everybody's really surprised because George Mason was supporting it all along. And he's this brilliant guy and, you know, wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and all these things. And so James Madison asked him, well, why? Why would you not be willing to sign it? And he said, because it doesn't have a Bill of Rights.

[00:02:33] And so the government will abuse us because it doesn't have a Bill of Rights. And so James Madison says, but we haven't given the government enough authority to abuse our rights. And George Mason says, but they will. They always do. Right? Which is so true. It is true. So that's why he wouldn't sign it. And then Governor Randolph of Virginia stood up and said, yeah, you know, I don't think I'm going to sign it either because of that.

[00:03:00] And Randolph was the one that presented James Madison's 15 resolves at the very beginning. He's the one that presented the Virginia plan, even though Madison outlined it. It was Governor Randolph since he was the current governor of Virginia. They felt like would be the best person to present it. So here's the guy that actually presents the Virginia plan. The Virginia plan turns into the Constitution. And now he's not even going to sign it. And so it's primarily because it doesn't have a Bill of Rights. Now, they had this.

[00:03:29] This wasn't the only time they had discussed this at the convention. But the main reason why they decided not to have a Bill of Rights is because Alexander Hamilton made some really good points on this. And Madison agreed and some others agreed that if we list our rights. Then, first of all, government could say, or at least the people in government could say, well, you didn't list them all.

[00:03:58] So these things that you failed to list must not be unalienable rights. So we can abuse those all we want. So that was the first fear was that listing the rights. We're going to miss some. And that's going to make it so government jumps on that opportunity. The other fear was the moment we put it in the federal Constitution, we're now basically saying that the federal government has authority to interpret those rights, to define them.

[00:04:28] And even though we can try to spell them out as clearly as possible and all that, they absolutely are going to reinterpret and redefine. I remember that being one of the arguments when people were talking about having a marriage amendment. And I kind of brought up, hey, that might be concerning because I'm not sure that we want government to define marriage at that level.

[00:04:55] And they're like, oh, but we'll write it so clearly that they could never, ever misinterpret it. Yeah, kind of like Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It says no law. How many laws has Congress made about religion and things, right? And so that was a concern of mine. And that was a concern of Madison and Hamilton and others. So that's why they didn't necessarily want a Bill of Rights.

[00:05:24] But when the Constitution was completed, they got it out there. It was time for the states to ratify it. Lots of debates happening. A lot of people started bringing up this concern. Hey, there's not a Bill of Rights. Because it was pretty common that they were putting bills of rights in state constitutions. So it wasn't like, hey, this is a good idea. We should include this. It was, no, we've been including this. This is really important. Essentially, it's what the Magna Carta was.

[00:05:54] It's what the English Bill of Rights of 1689 was. And so this idea of bills of rights being important had been around already for hundreds of years. And so the people are like, why are we leaving this out? And so states were saying, we're not going to ratify it without a Bill of Rights. And so finally, James Madison said, okay, maybe a Bill of Rights would be a good idea.

[00:06:21] If you ratify it, then we will guarantee that the first Congress will tackle this and will produce a Bill of Rights. And so, and James Madison had a tough time in his own state getting ratification. Well, yeah, the people who were most opposed to it were his state. And they needed his state because it was the biggest state. That's right. And everything came from Virginia. I mean, it was very, I mean, four out of the first five presidents were from Virginia.

[00:06:50] Virginia was a big deal. And you had Patrick Henry, who was one of the most gifted orators who was against the Constitution and against ratification. And one of the reasons was Bill of Rights along with some others. And that's where the famous quote, you know, I smell a rat comes in. He's like, you know, you're going to destroy the states. And he was very much for state rights.

[00:07:16] And that's who Madison was up against, trying to convince Virginia to ratify. So the Bill of Rights thing became a big issue. And Madison himself realized that, yeah, it probably is important. The concerns that we had were a concern, he said. But the reason for having a Bill of Rights outweigh the fears for having it. And it is an early example.

[00:07:43] It's putting to the test that the people are going to influence the government. And the people wanted this. This is what the people wanted. So they wound up responding to what the people wanted. Exactly. So just like normal, once they were all elected with all their promises that they gave, they got into Congress and they ignored it. Keep their promises. They're like, yeah, we got too many important things to do. We're not going to do this Bill of Rights thing. And Madison kept saying. Exactly.

[00:08:11] And Madison kept saying, but we promised we really need to do this. So Madison is the one that pushed it through. That's why he's not only referred to as the father of the Constitution, because he wrote those 15 resolves that became the Constitution. But he's also known as the father of the Bill of Rights, because he's the one that really ushered them in. So what he did was Congress told the states, OK, give us your suggestions.

[00:08:37] And he gathered all those together and it was over 200 suggestions, but a lot of duplicates, of course. So he took them and he boiled them down to 17. And then Congress passed out 12 of them. They kind of negotiated some of the language and they, you know, tweaked some of Madison's work. And there was different committees that worked on different amendments and stuff.

[00:09:05] And they ended up passing 12. They sent those out to the states. And only 10 of the 12 passed. And so that's why we have the first 10 amendments. Now, what's interesting is that the two that didn't pass were actually numbered as one and two.

[00:09:26] And so when you go to letters of the founders or you read debates in the states and things like that, they'll often talk about the different numbered amendments. And if they talk about the Third Amendment and all this debate and stuff about it, they're not talking about the quartering of troops, Third Amendment. They're talking about what we know today is the First Amendment. Got it. Because those two were numbered one and two.

[00:09:53] And so you just shift all of our amendments numbering by two. Okay. And that will help you understand if you're reading any letters from the founders or whatever, if they're referring to those amendments, you know which ones they're referring to. So interestingly enough, though, one of those two that didn't pass ended up passing almost 200 plus years later and is now our 27th Amendment.

[00:10:20] What happened is there's a law student who noticed that we were only a few states away from ratifying it, which by that time it needed more states to ratify. So that's why it was so slow. It was just gradually. Now, most amendments today, they put time periods on it. Like if it's not ratified within seven years, then it disappears. But this didn't have any kind of expiration on it. And so it had been floating around for a couple hundred years.

[00:10:48] And this law student took it upon himself to see if he couldn't lobby the few states that were left to get it passed. And it did pass. And basically what the 27th Amendment says is that the existing Congress cannot give themselves a raise. If they do vote for a raise, it doesn't take effect until the next Congress.

[00:11:12] And while that's great and we all probably agree that that's a good policy, the states agreed that it was a good policy, too. But they didn't think that it rose to the level of putting it in the federal document. That's why they didn't ratify it. Because they're like, yeah, you know, this isn't big enough. It's not that big a deal. And so we're not going to ratify it. Sorry. So now we're left with these first ten amendments.

[00:11:39] And the Bill of Rights, just like our other documents, the Constitution and the Declaration, the Bill of Rights has been a document that has been an example to the world. But what's interesting is there's actually some language in the Bill of Rights that is identical to the language in the Magna Carta and some that's identical to the language in the 1689 English Bill of Rights.

[00:12:04] So the Magna Carta that was signed in 1215, that some of that language carried all the way through to us writing the Bill of Rights in 1789, which is pretty cool. That shows you that how, you know, on our very first lesson, we talked about the power of words. And so some of those words in the Magna Carta had such power that they've withstood hundreds of years.

[00:12:34] So that's kind of the story on how we got to the Bill of Rights. Now, the Bill of Rights, there's a couple of features that I want to point out before we get right into it. Number one, it does not grant us our rights. We need to recognize that the Bill of Rights are a protection of our rights. They are not a granting of rights. And so we should never look at that as government giving us these rights. Correct.

[00:13:00] Because if that's the way we're going to look at it, it means that government can take them away or regulate them or whatever. So that's the first thing. And right along with that, the Bill of Rights is a restriction on Congress. It's in the federal document.

[00:13:21] So the 14th Amendment kind of changed this to where the courts have basically said the rights in the Bill of Rights need to be protected based on the Bill of Rights at every level of government. And states, counties, municipalities, everybody. Now, while we all might think that that's great and awesome, and it's true that those rights should be protected at all those levels,

[00:13:49] what happened when the courts did that is when the courts now say, okay, the states have to now follow the Second Amendment, for example, or let's even let's say the First Amendment with freedom of religion, where I just quoted, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Well, the moment we say that that now applies to the states, well, who gets to police that?

[00:14:19] Well, the federal government jumps in and says, well, we'll police it. Right. And so what do they do? They write laws regulating the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. So they end up doing the very thing that the Bill of Rights is prohibiting them from doing, all in the name of policing it at the other government levels. So while states should be respecting those same rights, those should all be handled in our state constitutions,

[00:14:47] and they should be handled in our municipal laws and all those. Those should not be governed, in my opinion, by the federal government because it makes it so the federal government now controls the definition and the enforcement of those rights. So that's kind of a problem. So I just wanted to point that out because it's very clear that the Bill of Rights is a restriction on the federal government

[00:15:16] and specifically on Congress, not on any other level of government. That's something that happened later as a result, primarily of the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. So having said that, let's just get right into it. Because we've already laid enough groundwork with the Bill of Rights by the two lessons with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We've already kind of established all these rights and all that.

[00:15:45] So let's see how the founders, what they did in order to protect these rights. So we'll just start with Article 1. Amendment 1. Amendment 1, sorry. But before we get into that, let's get into the preamble to the Bill of Rights. Did you know such thing existed? I'm sure many people did not, do not. Because it's not something we really study in school. That's right.

[00:16:11] And most of the time when we look at the Bill of Rights, we just look at the Ten Amendments. Yes. We don't look at what came along with that. So there's basically, there's a resolution in Congress when they established the Bill of Rights. And this is what they sent out to the states that was included with the Bill of Rights. And so it starts out, it says,

[00:16:34] The conventions of a number of the states having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers. That further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added. And as extending the ground of public confidence in the government will best ensure the benefit, the, that word's always tough. The beneficial ends of its institution.

[00:17:03] So basically we get into them expressing what the purpose of the Bill of Rights is. They basically give the history that, hey, when the states were in convention, they were expressing a desire. And so this is what we're doing here. But I like that they clarify in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers.

[00:17:25] So misconstruction basically means misinterpretation, a recreation of, of like trying to construe it into something that it was not intended to do. So it's, it's, it's, it's really being clarified that what the Bill of Rights purpose is, is to make it so that the Constitution is not misinterpreted. That we are recognizing that its purpose is to protect these rights.

[00:17:53] And so once it violates protecting these rights, then it's no longer fulfilling its role. And so I love how they just, how they express that. So then they just, they talk about resolved by the state and how the Senate and House of Representatives, the United States of America and Congress assembled two thirds of both houses concurring that the following articles be proposed to the legislatures of the several states. So they've established, okay, we've done the two thirds.

[00:18:23] So we've done our part. Now it's going to the legislatures, which remember when we covered the amending process, it can either go to legislatures of the states or conventions of the states. So this is now where Congress is saying, okay, we're going to do it by the legislatures of the states. As amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles when ratified by three fourths of the state legislatures to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said constitution. So again, just reiterating the process.

[00:18:55] So articles in addition to an amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America proposed by Congress and ratified by the legislatures of several states pursuant to the fifth article of the original constitution. So that's basically now saying, okay, we've ratified it. It's happening. And so now they are, they are officially in place. So now let's get, get into it. So most people, when we talk about the Bill of Rights, they usually, and you ask them, what are some of the rights in the Bill of Rights?

[00:19:24] They typically list those that are in the first amendment and then the second amendment. And that's basically all. So that's what most people consider as the Bill of Rights are just in these two amendments. So let's, let's pick this apart a little bit. Amendment one. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

[00:19:49] So originally, the founders referred to this not as the freedom of religion, but as the freedom of conscience. And I kind of like that. There's some ways I like that better because it's more than just your religious point of view that's being protected here. It is, it's your thinking. It's what you believe in, in all things, whether it be religious or non-religious.

[00:20:18] That no law can be made to restrict what you think. And so therefore things like, like hate crimes. I mean, crime's a crime. Yes. And, and to have the hate crime added to it means that I am now going to make it, I'm going to put more penalty on it because of the way you think. So we're now regulating thinking. And that's, that's a dangerous thing.

[00:20:47] Um, you know, Jordan Peterson, the whole reason why he, uh, you know, rose in fame was because he was not going to allow Canada to regulate his thinking and his, and his speech because his speech was, uh, the manifestation of his thinking. And he just was going to refuse to allow that to happen.

[00:21:08] Um, and so, so that's, so really the founders are, but the reason why they, they changed it to religion is because, um, it was more than just your thinking. They also wanted to wrap in, uh, religion as well because they didn't want an established religion to regulate thinking as well. Uh, and so then they didn't want to regulate the exercising, the establishment of religion. They didn't want that to happen.

[00:21:38] And they also didn't want to prohibit the free exercise thereof. Um, so to be free from that. So the founders went through quite a, uh, an evolution on this. Um, when it came to religion and freedom of religion, they started out first by, by talking about the, um, religious tolerance and, oh, we were tolerant of each other.

[00:22:00] And, and they quickly realized that that was a problem because to be tolerant of somebody else's beliefs indicates that you think that your belief is better. I'm just going to tolerate you. Yes. Your beliefs are terrible, but I'm going to tolerate it. And that puts us in a bad state of mind because eventually it makes it get us to the point to where, well, if I'm tolerating it, it means that I can, I can also eventually get to a point to where I decide to not tolerate it. And so I'm just going to shut you down.

[00:22:31] Um, and so the founders recognize that that's not a good place to be. We just, we have to recognize that we all have the right to think the way that we think and that it's nobody's right to say that they tolerate it. Right. Right. Um, and we're seeing this in our society today. Uh, we're seeing people who, who claim to be so tolerant that they now are going to silence the people who they think are intolerant. Yes.

[00:23:01] Which is. And they're trying to control the thought of people who disagree with them. That's right. And, and they, they're effective in that because if you think that by saying something, you're going to be under that control, you're not going to say it. Yes. Even if you think it. Especially if your livelihood is tied to it. That's right. You just won't, you, you may not be able to afford not to. Exactly. Yes.

[00:23:24] And, and so this is precisely what the founders were trying to stop was when it comes to, uh, the freedom of conscience and the freedom of religion in this, in this sense. Um, so, so they, the founders themselves realized that just to be tolerant was not good enough. You had to, you had to be completely, um, open to other people having their own free thoughts and their free beliefs. Um, in fact, Thomas Paine said this about toleration.

[00:23:54] He said, toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience and the other of granting it. So toleration and intoleration, he says is the exact same thing. And, and, and it's because of the result. He's saying it's the same thing because it's the, of the result.

[00:24:25] So, so now we get to the next, uh, right in the first amendment. Now, most people think in the first amendment, this is just a listing of rights. Um, and we're just, you know, here's freedom of religion. Here's freedom of speech. Here's freedom of the press. And then there's these separate things, but they're not. The founders are building on each one.

[00:24:50] So what do we do when we, we have the freedom of conscience, the freedom of belief, the freedom of thought? Well, the next thing is we need to protect what we do with that freedom of thought. And, and what we do with that is we speak, right? We, we express our opinion. We express what we're thinking. And so that's why we come to the next one, um, that Congress cannot abridge the freedom of speech.

[00:25:19] So this freedom of speech really became a serious issue, uh, in America early on. And in fact, through most of the 1700s, we were constantly trying to, to exercise our freedom of speech. Um, in fact, um, uh, Benjamin Franklin, when he was just a teenager working in his brother's print shop, um, he wrote, uh, what we refer to as the silence do good letters, right?

[00:25:48] And he took on that, that pen name because he didn't want his brother to know it was him. And so he would write these letters and leave them at the doorstep of the print shop and for his brother or others to find them. And then, and then they would print them. And this was Benjamin Franklin exercising his freedom of speech. You know, he wanted to, but he had to hide his himself from his brother, first of all,

[00:26:14] and his brother was a little nervous and others about printing some of them because you could still be punished by, by government officials. If, if your speech got too radical. Um, and, and so the founders really worked on this and not just the founders, but the founders, parents and those that went on before them. But there's a great, uh, case, a court case that really started changing things in America.

[00:26:42] And it actually happened as early as 1735. And it was the, the Peter Zenger case. And he was the newspaper publisher and he had criticized, um, the governor and the governor of New York and it was, which was William Cosby. And they, and Cosby had Zenger, uh, arrested. Wow. Because he didn't like the criticism.

[00:27:11] And so they brought him to court and they were trying him for libel. And so Zenger's defense attorney, a guy by the name of Andrew Hamilton, he ended up, uh, defending Zenger by saying it can't be libel because what he said was true. And at the time it didn't matter whether it was true or false. Libel is libel.

[00:27:40] And you, you could be punished for, uh, for libel, even if you were publishing what was, what was true. Um, and so, uh, but the, but the jury ended up acquitting him, which is a case in which we realized, Hey, juries are pretty cool. Um, but also it gave us, uh, it really changed things in America because it made us realize

[00:28:06] that, Hey, we can speak and we're going to protect each other in our speech. The jury protected Zenger and, and, and it kind of opened it up to where people were more free, uh, to speak for themselves. In fact, Gouverneur Morris, um, who was a delegate to the constitution convention from Pennsylvania. Um, he said of that court case, he said that it was the germ of American freedom, the morning

[00:28:33] star of that Liberty, which subsequently revolutionized America. Wow. So he's saying that that was kind of the starting point of a freedom of speech. And so 40 years later, uh, that principle is still being tested though, because in 1798, Congress passed the alien and sedition acts and John Adams signed them.

[00:28:59] Um, so we, we often talk about alien and sedition acts, but really we're usually only often referring to the sedition acts. Um, there, there were four particular acts, two alien ones and two sedition ones. And basically the sedition acts essentially said, you can't criticize the government or government officials or their families. And if so, you're, you're going to be landed in jail.

[00:29:27] And did that pass before the bill of rights was ratified or not? It was after because. Wow. It's crazy. What did he not understand? I don't know, but, but here, well, so here's the other thing. This was a very, very partisan thing because that particular bill sunsetted. It had an expiration. And guess when it sunsetted? When? 1800, which was the next election, which means that you can't talk bad about us, but if we

[00:29:55] lose the next election, we want to be able to talk bad about you. You can't talk about what the record is and it makes it hard to campaign. Yes. Yeah, exactly. That, that was the other difficult thing. Um, so anyway, so, so John Adams signs this alien and sedition acts, which makes it illegal to talk bad about the government and, and, and these officials. Um, and, and there were some journalists that did get arrested and, and ended up serving some time as a result.

[00:30:24] Um, but that's, that's probably, I don't know exactly, but probably one of the reasons why John Adams lost that election in 1800 to Thomas Jefferson, who really fought hard against those, those particular acts. Um, and so, in fact, in response, um, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson wrote what we refer to as the, uh, Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798. Okay.

[00:30:54] And in those resolutions, that's where they introduced this idea of nullification that, that, hey, you as states, the alien and sedition acts are unconstitutional. So just ignore them, nullify them by ignoring them. And that's essentially what those resolutions said. Um, and, but, but they said more than, they basically showed why it was wrong. Why not only they were unconstitutional, but why it was wrong to violate these rights, why it's wrong to not be able to speak out against government and all that.

[00:31:22] And so those resolutions really kind of clarified a lot of stuff for us there. So we get into this freedom of, of speech, how important it is. Um, and, and how critical it is. And we should be, we should be protecting all speech. Um, especially when it's political speech and especially when it's, um, opinion, speech, religious speech, things like that.

[00:31:49] Now that doesn't mean that a local community can't regulate, um, profanity and things like that. Um, the Supreme court's been kind of back and forth on some of that. Um, but when it comes down to a local community, uh, we, we can regulate some of that and, and we should be able to, but, but we're not regulating thought and we're not regulating religion and we're not regulating political speech.

[00:32:19] That's kind of where some of those lines are drawn. And there's some states in which their courts have said, yeah, you can't even limit profanity, um, and things like that. So we'd leave that up to the local municipalities and local individuals to handle that at their level. So then we get into the next stage.

[00:32:42] So once you think, and then you speak, then you want to, you don't want to have to be able to speak it to everybody all the time, everywhere. Right. So you want to write it down. And, and we want, so we have the freedom of the press. Now the press, I always find it interesting that the press as in journalists like to think that this only relates to them because they call themselves the press, but, but that's not

[00:33:12] what the founders are talking about here. They're not talking about journalists. They're talking about the freedom to document your beliefs and thoughts. They're literally talking about the printing press and, and our ability to put that information out there. And so that's, that's the next step, um, in this, in these rights.

[00:33:36] We, we think we speak, and now we put the information, information out, uh, in written form. And then once we get that information out and we want to gather together, um, as, common believers, then we have the right to peaceably assemble. And I do like that they've included peaceably.

[00:34:01] That's, it's pretty critical because there are different types of protesters out there. Um, I've been involved with a lot of protesters with Tea Party Patriots and other organizations like that. And I have rarely seen, um, anything that, that ever scares me in the sense of any kind of violence or anything like that.

[00:34:25] It's always very, very peaceful, very, um, lots of smiles, lots of very kind people. Um, even January 6th, um, the majority of that crowd had no idea what was even happening. Right. And they were very peaceful, uh, protesters. And, and of course there's questions as to, you know, how the crowd got riled up and how they even, um, you know, got to the point that they, that they got to.

[00:34:52] But nonetheless, um, there are other protests that we've seen over the last number of years that are very violent. Uh, and they have all the intentions of the world to be violent because they bring the tools of violence with them. Bricks. Uh, yeah. Bricks and frozen bottles, you know, bottles of water. Shields on their body. Yeah. Exactly. Um, and so. The concrete milkshakes that Stephen Crowder got originally. Cars on fire.

[00:35:20] And then of course, Charlie Kirk and his assassination. So it, it, it goes to full range all the way up to the absolute worst, most possible, worst possible scenario. Absolutely. So there are definitely different types of, of protesting. And so I'm glad that they included peaceably, uh, to assemble because it's, that's important. Which means you don't have the right to unpeacefully assemble. So if you're doing all those other things we talked about, you can be broken up. You're not allowed to do that. That's right.

[00:35:49] And, and, and you shouldn't be allowed to do that because, because that's violating so many other rights. That's why. See, it's important to, to realize, to recognize, um, that some rights supersede other rights. Um, so for example, you have the right to move from point A to point B, right? Yes. And you know that you have that right because you're created with legs. You're created with the ability to do that.

[00:36:15] But that doesn't mean that you can take any path from point A to point B. Like if somebody is standing in your way, you don't have the right to just plow over them or you don't have the right to, to trample across somebody's garden, uh, and destroy their flowers and things like that. Even though you have the right to move from point A to point B, they have a right to their property and that supersedes your right to move from point A to point B. Um, and so again, it goes back to trampling rights and infringing on others' rights.

[00:36:43] And so to not peacefully assemble, um, would be a trampling of the rights of others. Right. Um, and so the, this idea that, you know, just let the people speak and, and, you know, lighting cars on fire and bashing in windows and stuff is just a form of free speech. No, it is not a form of free speech because they're violating other people's rights. So we do have the right to assemble.

[00:37:08] Um, and then lastly, uh, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. And so that's the last thing that we, we can do with all these things. And if we want to petition the government for a redress of grievances, we have to make sure that all those other rights preceding that are secured. And petitioning the government, it's not just you have the right to petition, but you can, you have the right to complain about what the government is. That's right. Which is what the alien and sedition acts was actually prevented. So awful.

[00:37:39] Yeah. And it's, and it's not just to petition the government with your grievances. It's for a redress of grievance. Yes. A correction of grievance. Like, Hey, you owe us because you have, because of these grievances. Um, and so that's, that's an important point as well. So the first amendment, it's just, it's so packed, um, with so many rights in there for

[00:38:04] us to, and you can even get into property rights there because, because you have the, uh, that's part of the redress that we can ask for. If we have a grievance, if the government has come in and, and taken our property, we can demand that we get our property back. And, and all, all of your rights are kind of included in this first amendment, this protecting of, of the first amendment. Um, so then we get to the second amendment.

[00:38:31] Now the second amendment, when, when we wrote the book behind the bill of rights, it was, it was so interesting to me to really gain a stronger understanding of the second amendment. Cause I've always been, uh, pro second amendment, you know, right to bear arms. That's right. And so the second amendment is all about the right to bear arms and that's what the founders are protecting. Um, but not really.

[00:38:57] The second amendment is written in such a way that it, that it's, it's made it so that there's been a lot of debate on it because is it talking about the individual right to bear arms or is it talking about the collective right to bear arms? Is it talking about just the militia being able to bear arms? And when we're talking about the militia here, we're talking about like the national guard and, and, and, and things.

[00:39:21] Um, the militia is, and I wish that like the media and stuff would correct themselves when they talk about like different militias, like maybe, uh, you know, the Ruby Ridge thing back in the nineties in, in, uh, in Idaho. Um, you know, it's just a group of people that are kind of these sovereign citizens that, that, that label themselves as militia and they're armed and they train each other and all that stuff. That's not the militia.

[00:39:52] The militia is, um, first of all, it's the people in general. It's not even really organized yet. Um, but, but then there is the organized militia and it's very clear in the, in the constitution that that militia is organized by the government and funded by the government and trained by the government. Um, and, and typically it's the state governments that do that. And so, so that's the militia we're talking about here.

[00:40:22] We're not talking about a group of people up in the mountains of Idaho. We're talking about national guard and things like that. And, and just the general public that, Hey, if we're, if we have a major war come up, then we're going to do what the U S code calls for. And that is, we're going to ask every male between the ages of 17 and 47 to come and fight. That's who the militia is.

[00:40:47] Um, and every female who is already in the armed forces or in the national guard. That's what the, that's what the code says. Um, so the question is, is this talking about just arming the militia, arming the people collectively or, or the people being able to be armed individually? So it's actually just talking about the militia and people collectively, which I know is going

[00:41:15] to upset a lot of people, but hold on because it's also talking about the individual right. Yes. But it's kind of a secondary thing. Um, and the reason why it's just secondary, and this is what really surprised me when I went to the, to the founders about the bill of rights, when we were writing behind the bill of rights. And the founders really didn't say a whole lot about this, about the right to bear arms. I mean, they say a lot about it, but they just talk about how it shouldn't be infringed

[00:41:44] or they talk about how it's important for protecting here and there, but they never really get into the fundamental principle of it all. And I discovered in my research, why it's because the right to bear arms had been part of English common law for hundreds of years. In fact, early on, um, it was the law that you had to have a weapon back in England long

[00:42:13] before there was ever firearms. It was a law that you had to own a longbow and you had to know how to use it. And the moment your sons became a certain age, you had to make sure they had longbows and knew how to use that. So that they can protect the property of the king. Of the king and the earls and all that. That's right. Because so that when you are called up in time of war, then you were ready. And so the right to bear arms was just second nature. Of course you have the right to bear arms.

[00:42:43] Of course you have the right of self-preservation. Of course it was so self-evident that we didn't really need to even put it in the bill of rights. But luckily it made it in here because today it's not so self-evident because we don't need arms as much as we used to. As far as individual individuals, there's a lot of individuals out there that don't own a firearm and they're perfectly fine.

[00:43:11] But 200 years ago, you wouldn't have been perfectly fine because you had to defend yourself or you had to go out and hunt or you had to go out and whatever. And so... It was going to take a long time for somebody to show up as your backup and you couldn't exactly pick up the phone and call. Exactly. Yeah. But today that's just... We don't have that. And so a lot more people can be unarmed today, which is a testament to how far our society has come.

[00:43:41] Yes. So it's a good thing. But I recommend learning how to use a firearm. Absolutely. And owning one. Yeah. Or a few. And the founders in their day, it was unheard of to not be protected like that. And so that's my point is they didn't need to put the right to bear arms in here because it was so second nature, so common, so self-evident that it wasn't there.

[00:44:09] But the reason why they ended up putting it in there is because they're like, okay, we need a well-regulated militia. And the best formula that history has shown for well-regulated militia is to make sure that the people are armed at all times, which means that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. And so it was just kind of this second thing.

[00:44:36] Like, okay, we need this, but in order to do this, you have to have this. But just because it is, and the Supreme Court has actually done a really good job at defining this and defending this, just because the main purpose of the amendment is stating that it's a well-regulated militia and that the right to bear arms is kind of secondary,

[00:45:06] it doesn't mean that we eliminate the right to bear arms as individuals. The secondary doesn't disappear. Even if we got rid of the militia, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden we get rid of. So, for example, if we were to pass a law that says that in order to obtain bread from the grocery store, the right to drive in a car shall not be infringed. Well, if we eliminate bread,

[00:45:36] we don't automatically eliminate your right to drive in your car. Right. Right. Does that make sense? Yes. And so that's really what the court is saying here is even if we get rid of the militia, it doesn't mean that we automatically get rid of the individual right to bear arms because that right existed before the militia existed. And so... And also we wouldn't even, we wouldn't think, oh, we need to amend the constitution

[00:46:01] to put the right to drive a car in here because it's such a given right now in our society. Exactly. Which is what you're saying was going on with firearms and arms in general. That's right. Yeah. It's so second nature that it just didn't need to be there. So that's really what the Second Amendment is about, is about protecting our free state. The best way to protect a free state is by having a good, well-trained militia. And the best way to make sure that the militia is well-trained is to make sure that the right to bear arms shall never be infringed.

[00:46:30] And it's very clear, it shall not be infringed. That's right. These are pretty clear words even 250 years later. That's right. Even though people have misinterpreted it. But like I said, the Supreme Court, there was a case, was it 2010, in which the Supreme Court finally just really spelled out the Second Amendment. And they did an excellent, excellent job in doing so. They went right back through the history. They made it really clear.

[00:46:58] They really picked apart the amendment itself, every word, the order of every word. And they just did a great job. It was the Heller, yeah, the Heller case. Right. And so I would strongly encourage people to go read it because the other unique thing about that particular ruling is it's easy to read. And it's like the court really wanted the people to have a clear understanding of this.

[00:47:28] And so they put it to a large degree in layman's terms, which is excellent. So the Second Amendment, so all of you folks out there who are strong individual right-to-bear-arms proponents, it's still there. It still exists. We're not disagreeing. Totally agree with that. I'm just glad that the founders clarified how to make the militia better,

[00:47:56] and they included that so that by default we would end up having that. So that's fantastic. But let's get right down to what that amendment, what the fundamental underlying natural law principle is that the Second Amendment is actually covering. It's not necessarily covering just our right to bear arms or our ability to defend ourselves or rise up against government or whatever. It is very, very simple.

[00:48:25] It's simply we have the right of self-preservation. Because we have the right to life, we have the right of self-preservation, and that just how happens to include the right to bear arms. But it also includes the right to plant a garden, the right to go to the grocery store, the right to take medicine, all those rights. And so because we have, which is why like Arizona and other states have passed laws like with medication, the right to try. Yes.

[00:48:54] Because we have the right to self-preservation. Yes. And if we want to try medication, you know, it might be a bad idea. Yeah. But if you're about to die anyway, you have the right to try it. Exactly. And that's all part of that same right of the right of self-preservation. And so that's the one thing that we need to realize, that this isn't an argument about whether I can own a gun or not. This is an argument of whether I can preserve my own life or not. And that's pretty hard to argue against.

[00:49:24] I'm not sure that it's an argument would win if somebody was saying, well, yeah, no, you don't have a right to preserve your own life. Okay. So let's get into the Third Amendment. So one of the things when we were writing the Third Amendment, so the co-author of Behind the Bill of Rights is Jeremy Nelson. He's with the National Center for Constitutional Studies. And he was the one, we kind of assigned out these amendments to each other.

[00:49:54] And he's the one that took on the assignment of the Third Amendment. And he's like, what am I going to do with the Third Amendment? I mean, it's the least controversial amendment out there because it's about the quartering of troops. And not only is it not controversial because we all agree that we shouldn't be forced to quarter troops without our consent, but there has only been one court case

[00:50:24] in the history of the United States that's actually even had to bring this up. Wow. And it was an apartment owner. I think he owned an apartment complex. And the National Guard came in and demanded to use his apartment as some kind of headquarters or something. And so he refused and he ended up winning because of the Third Amendment. But that's it. So it's very,

[00:50:52] so when Jeremy started writing this, he discovered something interesting. He discovered, wow, there actually is some really cool natural law principles, principles of liberty in this. So the amendment says, no soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner. That's awesome. So that brings in consent, right? Remember in the declaration, we read that governments derive their just authority by the consent of the governed.

[00:51:21] And so this is just holding true to that. So if you want to consent to a soldier coming into your home and staying there, then you can. Absolutely. But if you don't consent, then you can refuse. But that's in time of peace. Now, what about in time of war? So then it says, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. So in time of war,

[00:51:51] you can kind of force it because now you're in an emergency situation, right? Right. And you may not have time to get the permission from the owner. And so you can force a courting of truth, but it has to be in the manner as prescribed by law. So what does that really mean? It means that we've already passed a law to state what the conditions are, what the circumstances are, you know, how long they can stay. Maybe, you know,

[00:52:21] do they have a right to eat your food or not? Whatever. You know, maybe, you know, one of the problems with quartering troops is that some of these soldiers were not very kind to the women in the home. Yes. And so maybe as long as there's women in the home, you can't quarter a soldier, whatever. So whatever kind of law we want to pass. Now, in passing that law, that law is passed by our representatives who are elected by the people. And so therefore, that law is passed by our consent.

[00:52:51] And so it's still requiring consent. It's just that because it's an emergency, we're pre-consenting to these conditions, right? We're pre-consenting to this quartering of these troops. And so it made us realize how important this concept of consent is. That even in times of emergency, the way that you handle that is you establish a system of pre-consent. And that's really critical.

[00:53:20] And we sure experienced that when it came to the pandemic, right? Yes. What was crazy about the pandemic is that... Well, a lot. Most... That's right. There was a lot. I know it was crazy about COVID. Yes. And... But what was crazy about it is that so many states, including our federal government, already have laws on how to handle a pandemic. And do you know what most states did with those laws? They threw them out the window. They just threw them out the window. Yeah. They took all that

[00:53:49] pre-consent and they tossed it. And if you go back to most of those laws, you'll find that had they followed those laws that COVID would have been handled a lot better. And we probably would have had fewer deaths because some of the major mistakes that had happened. And do you know how we came up with some of those laws? It's because of previous pandemics. Right. So we took all that wisdom.

[00:54:19] We threw out all the wisdom in your knee-jerk, emotional reacting rather than proper planning ahead of time. Exactly. So we have had a big lesson to learn from that. Now, Samuel Adams, I wish I had that quote, the quote with me right here, but I don't. But Samuel Adams said something to the effect of how in times of emergency, we should not abandon the wisdom

[00:54:48] that took place in establishing the laws before the emergency. He said, that's why write these laws in times of peace and calm when we can have level heads so that when the question comes up, when the argument comes up, when the emergency comes up, we already have the solution based on that wisdom and not the emotion knee-jerk reaction like you just mentioned. So that's what we learn from the Third Amendment.

[00:55:17] That's actually pretty significant, isn't it? Yes, it is. And so it's a great lesson that goes far beyond just the quartering of troops. So I'm sure glad we ended up with that. The other thing that I think that we learn from that is quartering of troops was a problem back then and it's not a problem today. And my argument would be that perhaps it's not a problem today because the Third Amendment exists.

[00:55:46] If the Third Amendment didn't exist then the likelihood of it being a problem today is pretty high because it's been a problem in the history of the world and continues to be a problem in some other countries. And so thank goodness for the Third Amendment because it's a great example of consent, pre-consent, and what happens when we have these things written down and makes it so that hopefully the problem ends up disappearing over the years. Okay, so now let's get into the Fourth Amendment.

[00:56:16] Now some people are, somewhat familiar with this because this starts getting into our rights when it comes to search. Yeah, search and seizure and criminal actions and things like that. If we've done something wrong or not wrong, whatever, this protects us. So, the Fourth Amendment, the right of the people to be secured, to be secure in their persons. So right here. Right. Our houses, our papers, and effects against unreasonable

[00:56:46] searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause. And I love how they just keep adding to it. The burden of these government officials just keeps adding. So first of all, they need a warrant. It has to be based on probable cause and it has to be supported by oath or affirmation, which means the police officer or the government official who is presenting

[00:57:15] the probable cause has to basically go under oath saying that, I guarantee that this probable cause exists. And then, in particular, describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. So it has to be very specific. There's no fishing expeditions that can happen here. You can't just get a general warrant. In fact, if you go back in history, these used to be called

[00:57:44] writs of assistance. So what would happen under British rule is there would be a writ of assistance, which is basically an open-ended warrant that pretty much said, we suspect this person of doing something wrong. Now go and find out what they did wrong. And so, so of course they're going to find something. Right. I show you the person or, yeah, and the crime, I've forgotten the exact quote, but that's what we saw

[00:58:13] happening in the Soviet Union. Yeah. They just, they would go ahead and accuse people and make up a crime that they had done. That's exactly right. And so that's exactly what this prevents. Now here's what's interesting is we should be looking to some of these amendments when we're passing laws. Kaiser, section 702, the House Freedom Caucus has tried to, to protect the,

[00:58:42] the warrant process. Exactly right. And now I understand, I understand the need from time to time to get secretive warrants, but, but we need a really good tight process that still follows this. I would, I would argue, but I don't think the courts see it this way, that when you say person, houses, papers, and effects, that the data that we are storing on computer systems that we have created because it's our thoughts

[00:59:11] and property, our ideas, is, should also not happen without a warrant. Absolutely. And I don't understand, that is one of those things that really bothers me, the way they, the government can go in and take things off of cloud services that Google or Amazon or others may have and use it. That's our property. It is our property and it should not be able to be used, certainly not without a warrant. Absolutely. Completely agree with that.

[00:59:41] Now here's what's interesting, is if we start looking at some of the laws that exist and some we don't pay too much attention to because we've had them for so long, but let's just look at income tax and IRS and the way that the IRS operates. Yes. So, and even if they're not operating nefariously and even if they're being super polite and kind and all that, the only way that they can actually do their job

[01:00:11] is to violate the Fourth Amendment because they have to look at our papers and our personal effects in order to determine what our income level is and to determine what our tax burden should be. And so, the IRS does all these things without a warrant and it's unfortunate that as the American people, we don't stop and say, wait a minute,

[01:00:41] this whole process of collecting taxes and income tax and stuff might sound like it's an efficient method of doing things, but it's violating our rights. It's making it so that no matter what, you are going, we are not going to be secure in our papers and our effects. I mean, it's to the point to where the county looks at my home and says, I think your home is worth this value, so I'm going to tax your home this amount. Well, that is my personal effect, my home,

[01:01:12] and it even specifically lists houses here, and they're coming into that house and they're using it, in my opinion, in violation of this. So I think when it comes to the method of taxation and how the IRS handles things, we should reflect on that more and perhaps make some changes there. but all those things should be secure, which is basically listing all of our property and everything

[01:01:41] that we talked about what is your property in the second lesson, that even our relationships, our reputations, our education, all that, it's kind of listed in all these things. And so that our property is really what needs to be secure there. And remember, we talked about if we really want to secure our rights, securing property is the key thing to try to make sure that we're always securing. So now we get

[01:02:11] into the Fifth Amendment. Now, people will be familiar with this usually based on just one thing. I plead the Fifth. Right. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say could and will be used against you in a court of law. That's right. And that's about what they remember. But there's a lot more meat in this than just you have the right to remain silent and you're pleading the Fifth. So no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment

[01:02:40] or indictment of a grand jury. Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb. There's double jeopardy. A lot of people are familiar with that. They usually don't know where it's found, though. And what a great thing because so often, especially when juries started being so good in defending the people and their rights in England when juries were doing this,

[01:03:10] then the government would just come in and just retry people. And then they would try to handpick a better jury and try to get the jury to be corrupt. And eventually they would get a conviction. And so this is a great protection. If you can't convince a jury of our guilt the first time, then you can't ever do it again with that particular crime. I also think that when we stack crimes, like if you commit,

[01:03:39] so say you rob a bank and then they decide, okay, we're going to get you for robbing a bank, theft, we're also going to get you for transporting stolen goods, we're also going to get and all of a sudden you have 20, you know, different crimes or 20 different indictments against you or charges. I think that's a, in my view, I think that's a form of double jeopardy. Yeah. Because they're kind of doing it all at once. It's like, okay,

[01:04:09] if we can't get them for just robbing the bank, then we're going to stack all these other things and we'll eventually get them at least on one of these things. Well, we have way too many laws, just way too many. Absolutely. And that is a way for it to be abused. That's right. And so I, yeah, so I think that's a form of double jeopardy. But then it goes on, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. So that's why you can have the right to remain silent. Now,

[01:04:39] the courts have also extended that particular item to spouses. So you as a spouse cannot be compelled to basically, well, to be a witness against your spouse. And so the same thing, which is a great thing. I think that's, because that's almost kind of cruel and unusual punishment, right? Is to force a spouse to be a witness against their spouse.

[01:05:10] So they shall not be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. So I love that, life, liberty, and property. So it's not life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It's really getting specific property, life, liberty, and property. You have to be given due process of law if you're deprived of any of those things. And we have a lot of laws out there today that deprive us of those things, and we never receive due process, especially

[01:05:40] when it comes to, like, and some of this is being corrected in a lot of states. If you are arrested and accused of committing a crime, and the officers confiscate your property, say you've got a bunch of cash on you or whatever, and they're claiming that you're a drug dealer, well, they confiscate that property, and if you are proven innocent of dealing drugs, and it's proven that you are not a drug dealer, and that that cash came from your grandmother

[01:06:10] or something, they still keep it. That's so wrong. Yeah. And a lot of times, if they confiscated a car and pounded a car or whatever, they've long sold it, like, before you're even proven innocent. And so a lot of states are correcting that, where they can't do anything with the property until your case is done and it has to be returned to you and all those things. And so, anyway, that was definitely a violation of that, where you would lose your property without due

[01:06:39] process of law. nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. Eminent domain. Eminent domain. And it has to be for public use. Now, some states have still, are still interpreting this very incorrectly, but other states have done a really good job. My own state of Arizona has done an excellent job at reining in the practice of eminent domain. So, just for viewers' sake,

[01:07:09] eminent domain is when government comes in and basically takes possession of your property in the name of public use. So, if they want to build a road, then they can come in and take your property. Now, they have to give you just compensation. And sometimes governments are pretty fair about it, and other times they are not. And so, sometimes people have to go to court and say, hey, you gave me $100 for my home? Yeah, that's not right. This home is worth far more than that.

[01:07:38] And so, that has to be just compensation. But in years past, there's been a number of states and or municipalities that have decided, you know, that particular property, you're not doing as much with that property as this other guy could. We could get more tax revenue if that was a hotel versus a restaurant. Awful. So, we're going to take your restaurant and we're going to sell the property to this guy

[01:08:08] for $10 so that he is going to increase the tax revenue and so that's for public use. Well, in some states, the courts have upheld that, but for the most part, the state courts have said, no, no, no, no. Again, in my own state, they said, yeah, that's not going to happen. Right. In fact, there's the exact situation. There was the Bailey Brake Shop in Mesa, Arizona, and it was an old, dilapidated mechanic

[01:08:37] shop. It was very unsightly on the corner of a main street, and the city came in and took the property and gave it to somebody else that was going to expand their business. And so Bailey brought it to court, and the Arizona Supreme Court said, yeah, that's not going to fly. Because it has to be for public use, meaning the general public is going to use it. So roads,

[01:09:07] utilities, things like that are pretty much the only thing that you can do that for. But I love, again, because property is one of my favorite principles there. I love that they're really specifying the protection of private property in this Fifth Amendment. So basically, that last one with the eminent domain is called the takings clause. So you can't just take. Now what's

[01:09:37] also cool is some people have ended up bringing to the courts and have won the fact that if government comes in and does something that dramatically reduces the value of your property, like if they take some little piece of property right next to you and they build some massive power plant or something that makes it so you can never resell your property, then you can go and demand just compensation because they reduced the value of your property

[01:10:07] significantly. And so again, that's a takings argument. I personally think that during the pandemic, when states shut businesses down, I think those businesses should be able to go to the courts and demand compensation because that was a taking. And it was done in the name of public use, right?

[01:10:37] It was done in the name of public protection or public health. And so I think that those businesses should have been able to go in, and I think even still they could go in. Well, I think that's why they passed the PPP. Absolutely. And why they forgave it. Yeah. Because first they passed where you get a loan for the payroll protection, but then shortly after they're like, you know, if you show that you actually used it for that purpose,

[01:11:07] then we're going to forgive that loan. And I think that was just, I think that was correct. I'm a business owner myself, and under those circumstances, the government absolutely caused my business harm. Well, they never should have shut the business down in the first place. Especially a lot of, well, any business. Most states, they didn't even have the right to do that. Right. And luckily, I was in construction. Construction was considered an essential business,

[01:11:37] and so it still caused me harm, but I wasn't shut down completely. Yeah. So, but anyway, I think that's an example of takings. All right, so Sixth Amendment. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and the district wherein the crime shall have been committed, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him,

[01:12:06] to have compulsory process for obtaining witness in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. So, this is also part of Miranda, right? You have the right to remain silent, you have right to an attorney, so this is, you have the right for the assistance of counsel. So, let's talk about the jury real fast. So, the jury is a right that is man-made because the jury itself is man-made. Yes. And Jefferson said that

[01:12:36] the jury is one of the most impressive and amazing inventions of mankind. And so, he really praised the jury. So, the way that the jury started was in England, it was when somebody was, so, say, two farmers were arguing about the location of a property line. And they had this dispute.

[01:13:05] And what the judge would do is the judge would gather together a group of people from the area that knows those farmers and knows the property lines and all that, and would send them out to investigate. And the jury would come back with the results of their investigation and then would recommend to the judge what their recommended verdict would be. And so the jury originally was this investigative body.

[01:13:35] Well, people couldn't just take time off work all the time to serve on a jury if it meant that they were actually going to have to take all time to investigate something. So the investigation ended up being left up to the law enforcement and then the jury was still there to then look at the results of the investigation and come to a conclusion. And so this is what ended up evolving into our juries today.

[01:14:05] And the way that we became convinced that juries could be great at protecting our rights was when William Penn, William Penn of Pennsylvania, he was preaching in England at one time and he was arrested because you couldn't just openly preach unless you preached only with the Church of England. And so he was arrested

[01:14:31] and it was very clear that he was guilty of it and he never even denied the fact that he was preaching. But the jury came back with a not guilty verdict. And the court continued to send them back. You need to go back and rethink this. And finally the judge sent them back with no food, wouldn't let them leave, wouldn't let them use the bathroom, wouldn't let them, just took away all their comforts.

[01:15:02] And the jury kept coming back time and time again with not guilty. And they stood up to that judge until finally the judge just had to relent. And so that's when the people realized, hey, this jury thing is pretty cool. We can really protect our rights with it. And so that's why the founders put it right in here, talking about grand juries and talking about impartial juries. But what's important, and this is one thing that I think we

[01:15:33] don't adhere to as often as we should, the jury needs to be of the state and district where the crime was committed. And oftentimes we don't do that. Sometimes we bring them to different districts or we bring them to different areas. And sometimes we do it to protect the perpetrator because sometimes the people in the area might be pretty harsh if it was a pretty heinous crime. But

[01:16:04] if you were charged of something and you were innocent, wouldn't you like your friends and neighbors to be the ones who know you and know your innocence or even know the circumstance? Maybe you're not even innocent, but they know the circumstance and so they may even decide to come back with a not guilty verdict because they know that the reason why you stole the loaf of bread is because your child was starving. So yeah, I would want a jury of my peers for sure. Now if I

[01:16:34] was guilty, maybe I would not want a jury of my peers. But we really want to make sure that we're protecting the innocent and so that's where the jury of your peers is great. We need to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation so we can't just be thrown in jail. We have to be given the opportunity to know why we're there and to be able to defend ourselves and to be confronted with the witnesses against us.

[01:17:04] This is so important. Right. You get to see who's accusing. That's right. Face your accuser. Right. And that's not just so that we have the right to defend ourselves against that accuser, but because that makes it so that things have to go to a pretty high level before the accuser is willing to actually accuse. Because some people may be hesitant to accuse if they know they have to face who they're accusing. And especially

[01:17:34] if they're bearing a false accusation, they may be more hesitant if they know they have to face that person. And then I love this next one. To have a compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. So I have the right to subpoena, not just the government. The government's not the only ones that have the right to compel somebody to come be a witness. I also have the subpoena authority. Whether somebody wants to come

[01:18:03] and witness for me or not, I can force them to. And so that's a really good protection that we have there. And then to have the assistance of counsel, which we already kind of talked about. So Sixth Amendment, really good protections in there. So basically what that protected us from is the Fifth Amendment protects our rights when we're being

[01:18:33] charged of a crime, and then Sixth Amendment protects our rights when we're being tried of that crime. And then we get into the Seventh Amendment. In all suits at common law where the value and controversy shall exceed $20, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved. And no fact tried by jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law. So again, this is kind of a double

[01:19:02] jeopardy thing there at the end, but then also it's just securing trial by jury in civil cases. again, it's utilizing that, but a lot of people will waive that right in civil cases. Sometimes people are willing to go to arbitration or they're willing to have just a judge rule on that, but we always have to have the right to demand a jury if we want to.

[01:19:33] And then we get to the Eighth Amendment. So the question is cruel and unusual, well, any of these, excessive bail and fines. the founders put this in because the fundamental principle here is an eye for an eye. Now, this concept of an

[01:20:03] eye for an eye is not that if you poke somebody's eye out, then you have to get your eye poked out, right? Because that does no good. We just end up with two half-blind people walking around town. What it basically means is that you have to lose what you are willing to have the other person lose. The punishment has to fit the crime. It shouldn't be less and it shouldn't be more. That's really what

[01:20:33] this is protecting. Cruel and unusual punishment would be to punish you much greater than the crime. In some cases, that punishment, like if you stole the loaf of bread, it would be cruel and unusual to exercise capital punishment. Yes. Because that just doesn't fit the crime. But if you killed somebody in cold blood, then maybe capital

[01:21:02] punishment is now an appropriate crime. And so it's got to fit that. And so cruel and unusual, the reason why I think the founders didn't specify what that really meant, like giving examples, is because that changes based on the crime. The crime. Yeah. And so that's important. Okay, now let's get to my favorites. Of course, First Amendment, Second Amendment are some good favorites too. But the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are great. The Ninth

[01:21:32] Amendment though has been misinterpreted for years, even by myself and other constitutional scholars and many people in the liberty movement. We totally misinterpret this. So the Ninth Amendment says, the enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. So basically it's saying the listing or the enumeration, the numbering of rights in the constitution

[01:22:01] shall not be construed to say that the others, the other rights that we didn't list don't exist. Right? Government can't say, hey, you didn't list them and so therefore they don't really exist. And so the first area that we misinterpret this is we think that this is just talking about the Bill of Rights because the Bill of Rights is that clean listing of rights. And so

[01:22:31] we automatically assume, but we have to stop for a minute and realize wait a minute, the Bill of Rights didn't exist when the Ninth Amendment was written and it specifies the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights. So it's in the Constitution. So now we turn to the Constitution and say, okay, well, where are there a listing of rights in the Constitution? And there really aren't any. I mean, there's a few here and there, but it's not real clear.

[01:23:01] And so Madison and Washington had this conversation and Madison told Washington, he said, the protection of rights is the same as listing the rights. So all the provisions in the Constitution that are designed for protecting rights is listing those rights. And so the whole Constitution is the enumeration of rights. Because when we express

[01:23:31] those protections, when we put in mechanisms, he said it's two sides of the same coin. When we put in mechanisms to protect those rights, it's the same as listing those rights. And so this amendment is talking about the entire Constitution, and it's also then saying that they shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. So you cannot misinterpret the Constitution in a way that abuses our other rights. Right.

[01:24:01] So for example, you can't say that the necessary and proper clause says that you can do anything necessary and proper, including taking away our rights. No, you cannot do that. You cannot interpret the Constitution in any way that makes it so that we lose rights, whether we've listed them or not. So that's this great amendment that just really makes it clear that you cannot mess with this. So Madison called the Ninth and Tenth Amendments the explanatory Amendments.

[01:24:31] He said the Ninth guards against a latitude of interpretation. He said it guards us against the government reading its own powers more broadly than the document permits. And the Tenth, which we'll get to in just a moment, Madison said, is every source of power not within the Constitution itself. So the Tenth Amendment sometimes is referred to as the catch-all amendment

[01:25:01] because it says, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. So anything we missed, anything that's not in here, and what he's actually even saying is that there are some things that we purposely missed. Yeah. And that's the point. And they had to address the Bill of Rights in order to get the

[01:25:30] Constitution passed. So he's like, okay, and if we missed anything, this covers this, this should make everyone happy. That's right. Ratify it. We'll get these passed, and this is a blanket that is taking care of everything else. Exactly. I remember when Bill Clinton was being impeached and Sheila Jackson Lee, I think that's who it was. I might be wrong on who it was, but anyway, there's a congresswoman who stood up and she was saying

[01:26:00] that Congress should censure the president and not impeach him. And other congressmen were saying there's no authority in the Constitution that gives us the power to censure the president. We only have the power to impeach the president. And so she held up a pocket constitution and she said, I find nowhere in here where it says that we cannot censure the president. And I don't remember who the other congressman was, but he stood up and he

[01:26:29] read the 10th Amendment. He said, the 10th Amendment says that if it's not in here, then we cannot do it. And so therefore, that's where it says that we cannot do it. Right. Right. And that was such a great point. But that's the whole reason for the 10th Amendment is it's to clarify not just that if we left something out that you can't touch it, but it's to really clarify what type of document it is. It is a delegatory document. It is not, it is a document that tells the government what it can and

[01:26:59] can't do. It is not a document that the government is telling us what we can and can't do. We are delegating through our consent. So that you can secure our rights. That's exactly right. But we're keeping them. They're our rights. We just want you to secure them. Yeah. Precisely. To keep them, we know we've got to give some things to you. Yeah. So that's what the Bill of Rights covers, or the Tenth Amendment covers, is just everything. And so that's the Bill of Rights. These ten

[01:27:29] beautiful amendments that just really solidified it. Now, Madison, originally his point of view and Hamilton's view that there's a danger in putting the Bill of Rights in place has been, I mean, it's been validated because government many times, the federal government and others, have tried to say, hey, it's not in here, and so therefore we can trample on this right or whatever. And they have also

[01:27:58] misinterpreted some of these amendments to abuse our rights in the process of that misinterpretation. So their views were validated on the dangers of it. But I also think that those who wanted a Bill of Rights, their views have been validated as well, that we have protected our rights to a large degree. I think we would have seen many, many more abuses without it than we have with it. And so I am super grateful that Madison came

[01:28:28] back around and that he put these things together and helped push through their ratification. And that Mason stood up and said that it needed to be there to begin with. That's right. So it's great that we have it. It's such a powerful document and it's just a reminder of how the Constitution is there to protect rights. It's not there just for government to do whatever it wants. Very good. So we've gone through it. That's it.

[01:28:57] We covered a lot of information in these four lessons. These documents are really meaty. And this was a condensed version. It was. We did this several years ago and it was 10 or 20 hours worth of material. That's right. And that was just to cover the Constitution. Yeah, we didn't even cover the declaration there. Exactly. And so we went through a lot of material, but I think we touched on some of the most important things for

[01:29:26] citizens and especially citizens that are active in engaging their government. We covered the important things that they need to remember and think about as they're engaging. And showed how to understand it and then go read the documents. You have to keep reading the documents. Yeah. Absorb them, read them, study them, and keep doing it over and over. That's right. To keep the republic, it is going to take work. And this is part of the work it takes, understanding what the rights are,

[01:29:56] what is protected, what the documents say. Exactly. And get some supporting stuff. These lessons are supporting. You know, there's some great books out there. Some of the books that I've written and co-authored are designed specifically for this to help you interpret it and understand how to recognize when they're being abused. And so, so those books, again, will be made available, especially as they come out.

[01:30:26] But we've got the Speaking the Language of Liberty, which this is what we call our Liberty Self-Help book. Yes. this really helps you get in the right mind frame of wanting liberty for others as much as for yourself. And then Behind the Bill of Rights really dives into all these amendments. It also has the first section is General Principles, which gets into some of the fundamental principles to help you understand the Bill of Rights even better. And then those companion books that are coming

[01:30:55] behind the Declaration of Independence and behind the Constitution of the United States. So with just those handful of books, like I said, these are specifically designed to make it so that you can quickly understand the concepts behind these. So with just reading a few books, you can become a great scholar in these principles. That is what we are trying to do here and make sure people understand these are the rights, these are the, it's not even

[01:31:25] just the rights, these are the founding documents and the founding first principles. And you have to build the government on top of it. And so it's good to come back to it from time to time. That's right. And these documents have helped us last for 250 years and I hope that if we continue to maintain them, they will help us last another 250 multiple times. Yes. I have a lot of faith in these principles and these

[01:31:54] documents that these, that our country is not going to be measured in centuries like countries are, but measured in millennia as far as our existence. As long as we keep doing all we can to keep the republic, it is possible. But each generation has to hold it and pass it to the next. It doesn't pass in our bloodstream, as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying. Yes, correct. Well, Bill Norton, you are helping us train people and pass it from

[01:32:24] our generation to the next generation and from us to others in our generation. So thank you very much for doing this series. We've got a bunch of bonus episodes. If you haven't checked those out, be sure to check those out. And I really appreciate you taking the time to do this training with me. Yeah, it's my pleasure and it's also my duty. That's why I'm driven to do this. Not only do I love these principles, but I feel like it's my duty to help others understand it and stuff as well.

[01:32:54] Bill Norton, thank you so much. I am Jenny Beth Martin and this is the Jenny Beth Show. We'll see you next time. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin.

[01:33:23] The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.