Page 18 - IAV Digital Magazine #559

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UNDERSTANDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS
UNDERSTANDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS
Since 1791, the Constitution has been amended an additional 17 times. But did you know that there have been over 11,000 proposed amendments to the Constitution through- out American history?
Some today may inter- pret those proposals as evidence of flaws of the Constitution. Yet when we dig deeper into the original Bill of Rights and the other 17 amendments, we realize how these failed proposals point to the resiliency of the Constitution.
The delegates at the Constitutional Convention were gravely concerned that a new governing document might create a federal gov- ernment that would deprive citizens of their rights. The early opponents of the Constitution, the “Antifederalists,” demanded that the
Constitution contain a Bill of Rights that explicitly guaranteed that individual rights were protected and liberty remained with the people.
The pro-Constitution “Federalists” like James Madison and George Washington viewed such a Bill of Rights as unnecessary and feared that any rights neglected might permanently deprive people of those rights.
James Madison soon realized that a Bill of Rights enshrined in the Constitution would help educate ordinary Americans about their government and pre- vent the same abuses of power his generation faced under British rule.
George Washington made the Bill of Rights the subject of his first address to Congress, stating that “public harmony” could only be achieved by rever-
ing the “characteristic rights of freeman,” in other words, a Bill of Rights that promoted, rather than surren- dered, America’s founding principles.
The Bill of Rights protects Americans from the federal gov- ernment, protections that few could con- ceive of living without: the freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their own government – and that’s just the First Amendment! Showing their humility and trust in the American people, the founders acknowl- edged that the original Constitution’s imper- fections could be remedied by the new amendments.
Rather than malign the Constitution as inherently flawed, it might be helpful for Americans today to consider how each
amendment acts as an additional layer of protection for the peo- ple and how those protections lay the best path toward achieving the promises of human equality and individual liberty set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
As proof of our progress toward those founding ideals, we find among the 17 other amendments to the Constitution the abolition of slavery (13th), “equal protec- tion of the laws” for citizens (14th), and the women’s right to vote (19th). When considering the failures in our history, our young people need to be taught that no other nation in the history of the world accomplished these visionary feats within the first 130-years of its existence.
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