We Are Revolutionaries by Charley Reese

[Demeter]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese223.html


Some people seem to be under the erroneous belief that the Constitution grants us our rights. It does no such thing. To understand the Constitution, you have to remember the Declaration of Independence, which preceded it by several years. It is the Declaration that contains the philosophy of the American Revolution. The Constitution merely implements that philosophy.

The philosophy of the American Revolution contains three basic premises. One is that rights come from God and are unalienable. Two is that men create governments to protect those rights. Three is that when government fails to protect those rights and becomes abusive of those rights, men have a right and even a duty to overthrow that government and create a new one.

Some Americans have so neglected their study of American history that the idea of violently overthrowing a government strikes them as, well, communist or some such. Of course, if the Founding Fathers had not violently overthrown the colonial government of Great Britain in North America, we would not be an independent nation.

If you read the Constitution with those three premises in mind (and both documents were written to be read by ordinary folks, not legal scholars), it makes perfect sense. The main part of the Constitution simply establishes the framework for the federal government and its three parts, defines their respective duties and establishes what the federal government can do and what the states can do. None of that has anything at all to do with individual rights or with social issues.

The Bill of Rights, which is a set of amendments added after ratification to reassure opponents of the Constitution that the new government would not usurp their rights, simply forbids the new federal government from abusing or abridging already-existing rights. The right to free speech and all the others existed prior to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The language of the First Amendment tells what the intent was: "Congress shall pass no law." Only the new federal government had a Congress.


MORE....

[whistle]

1. I am afraid that Charlie Reese is also an assholiopath

[tom_paine]

2. From Thos. Jefferson, one of the main architechts of said Constitution

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment? laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind? as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times? We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
-- Thomas Jefferson, on reform of the Virginia Constitution

" monarchs instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself and of ordering its own affairs. Let us... avail ourselves of our reason and experience to correct the crude essays of our first and unexperienced although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:41

Seems like at least one of the Founding Dads thought the opposite of Charlie. Jefferson foresaw a "Living Constitution" it seems.

However, I do see that our nation is so polarized now (thanks, Bush-Limbaughians) that our main hope is keeping the current Constitution as strong as possible (it is on life-support right now...thanks Busheviks).

But Charley Reese is wrong about this and I think Jefferson would have agreed.