Jeffrey Rosen Quotes

Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.

The early legal meaning of Civil Rights was very narrow. It referred to rights in normal non-governmental activities---shopping, education, social interaction, etc. However, it was the government who was depended on to enforce these rights. Later activities operated by state and local government were included like public education or the right to use a public bathroom, and for many even includes voting rights. Modern definitions consider civil rights to include all those rights to which an individual is entitled by virtue of his citizenship—including voting rights and others having to do with government—especially those of the 13th and 14th Amendments.

Jefferson and some of the other Founding Fathers saw the American experiment as having implications for the whole world. To Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was not just for Americans but ideally for all mankind.

Hayward claimed that Wilson was the first American President who ever criticized the American Constitution. Many do not agree as Madison and Jefferson in part, along with most other Americans, found the Constitution so wanting that it was ratified only on condition of the passage of the Bill of Rights. Jackson, was distressed by the limitations on the President and many others had their objections, but Wilson, before he became a politician was a prominent academic political scientist and wrote voluminously and had an intellectual following so his criticism was not considered so “political” as others.

Most politicians and philosophers would argue that liberty is both an individual right and a group right. However there are money who do not recognize group rights and feel that they are inimical to individual rights.

This is a remarkable quotation. Because of the issue of plural marriage, many Americans regarded the early Mormons as having no respect for the country or its laws. However, as this quotation shows, the Mormon leader, prophet and founder specifically commanded his people to not only support the United States law but specifically mentions The Constitution. He told his followers that God approves of the United States constitution and states that it is in a sense universal, belonging to all mankind. There is no other religious founder who so thoroughly validated a national constitution and system in the history of the world. Yet he was assassinated and after his death, the United States Government was almost in a full scale war with the Mormons. There is still a vestige of anti-Mormonism in the United States among some Christian Fundamentalists. Yet the Mormon church has been a thoroughly American church, historically, conceptually, and philosophically It has even shared some of the American historical errors such as its sexism and discriminatory rules and view of Blacks. The latter has been remedied {625268} as the rest of America has changed, and the discriminatory role of women is very traditional and is shared with most other Christian fundamentalists and orthodox Jews.

This is a very important political, historical, and philosophical quotation. This is a view that is very common amongst many Americans—especially those who are religious. As a factual matter, it is not clear that ALL the founding fathers personally believed in the creator--God. All the views have never been discerned. However it is almost certain that the majority of the Founders so believed. The complication with taking this viewpoint too literally is that while our rights may have come from God, it is men who determined exactly what rights would be enumerated on our constitution. For example. the original draft of the Constitution did not include, the right to a free press, the right of due process, the right of being free from religious compulsion and others. Yet it passed. Then other men and women wanted more rights added and the Constitution was ratified on condition that the Bill or Rights would be incorporated as the first 10 amendments. There were other rights that were not explicitly mentioned. For example, there is no right to an education mentioned in the Constitution or any of the amendments. Blacks had no rights until additional amendments were passed. And later there was an amendment that denied Americans the right to drink alcohol. Then another that gave the rights back. There are rights that other nations have which we do not—ie the right to medical care. Which if these did God grant and which, not? So even if we assume that every one of the founding fathers not only believed in God, but believed the rights were all God given, we would still be in the practical dilemma of having to specify the language of each right and always to, by amendment, adding additional rights or modifying or even deleting older rights. Many believe that Americans were divinely inspired when we added (or changed) rights. Others, not. However, regardless, we must go through the same procedures of enumerating American rights and amending the constitution. So the process is the same for both those who believe that our rights come from God and those who do not. To change rights, we need the action of Americans divinely inspired or otherwise, but they can and have been changed. For example, before 1963 Americans did not have a right to use birth control devices. After the Supreme Court Griswald v. Conn. We did and now have a right to use birth control devices. The mode that rights are manifested, defined, enumerated and implemented is a political one—one that in our American system allows us all to implement that system whether or not we believe that our rights come from our Creator.

This constitution, 13 years later, became the basis for the national Batavian Constitution.