George Mason would not sign the Constitution because it had no bill of rights. James Madison told him the government had not been given enough power to abuse anyone, and Mason answered that they will, because they always do. Two hundred and thirty seven years later, Bill Norton walks Jenny Beth Martin through all ten amendments, where each one came from, and what each one was built to stop. This is the fourth and final lesson in the founding-principles training series, following two lessons on the Declaration of Independence and one on the U.S. Constitution.
Guest: Bill Norton, constitutional scholar and author of Speaking the Language of Liberty and coauthor of Behind the Bill of Rights, with companion volumes on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in progress.
Today's topics:
• The preamble to the Bill of Rights almost nobody has read, and Congress stating in writing that its purpose was to prevent misconstruction and abuse of the government's powers
• Why Alexander Hamilton and James Madison argued against listing rights at all, and why Bill Norton says both of their fears came true
• Madison collecting more than 200 suggestions from the states, cutting them to 17, and Congress sending 12 to the states before only 10 were ratified
• Why the two that failed were numbered one and two, and how that shifts every amendment number you read in the founders' letters
• The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, sitting unratified for two centuries until a law student picked it up and finished the job
• Why the Bill of Rights protects rights instead of granting them, and why it was written as a restraint on Congress alone
• Freedom of conscience as the founders' original name for freedom of religion, and Thomas Paine calling toleration the counterfeit of intolerance
• The 1735 trial of publisher Peter Zenger, the jury that acquitted him, and Gouverneur Morris calling it the germ of American freedom
• The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, John Adams signing them, the expiration date set for the next election, and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions written in response
• Why the First Amendment rights build on one another rather than sitting in a list: conscience, then speech, then press, then assembly, then petition
• The Second Amendment as Bill Norton reads it, with the militia clause first and the individual right second, and why the individual right survives either way
• The Third Amendment, the single court case in American history that ever turned on it, and the principle of pre-consent it left behind
• Writs of assistance, the open-ended warrant the colonists lived under, and how Bill Norton applies the Fourth Amendment to the Internal Revenue Service
• The Fifth Amendment past pleading the fifth: charge stacking, spousal testimony, civil asset forfeiture, and the takings clause
• The Ninth Amendment misreading Bill Norton says he made for years, and Madison telling George Washington that protecting a right is the same as listing it
The Jenny Beth Show airs live Monday through Friday at 1:00 PM ET. Hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. Subscribe for daily analysis of politics, policy, and the fight for constitutionally limited government. teapartypatriots.org
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