http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-right-wing-obsessed-brainwashing-your-kid-stealing-your-social-security?akid=12825.294211.qLpD7F&rd=1&src=newsletter1032384&t=3
Thomas Jefferson, however, foreseeing a time when the concepts
fundamental to the founding of America were forgotten, strongly argued
that the Constitution must contain at least a rudimentary statement of
rights, laying out those main areas where government could, at the
minimum, never intrude into our lives.
Jefferson's insistence on a
bill of rights exemplifies the progressive thoughts and actions that
fill our rich history, and provide a perfect example of why education is
vital to our democratic republic.
Jefferson
was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new
Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, “I will now
tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the
omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of
sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection
against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and
unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all
matters of fact triable by the laws of the land....”
There had
already been discussion among the delegates to the constitutional
convention about whether they should go to the trouble of enumerating
the human rights they had held up to the world with the Declaration of
Independence, but the consensus had been that it was unnecessary.
The
Declaration, the writings of many of the Founders and Framers, and no
shortage of other documents made amply clear the Founders’ and the
Framers’ sentiments that human rights were solely the province of
humans, and that governments don’t grant rights but, rather, that in a
constitutionally limited democratic republic We, The People—the holders
of the rights—grant to our governments whatever privileges our
government may need to function (while keeping the rights for
ourselves).
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