Thomas Jefferson Quotes
I was in Europe when the Constitution was planned, and never saw it till after it was established. On receiving it, I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of provision for... an express reservation to the States of all rights not specifically granted to the Union
The 10th Amendment was created to take care of this objection which Jefferson and many others had.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA), Letter to Joseph Priestley, 1802
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Most of the states would not ratify the proposed 1787 constitution as it was. Congress then added a version of what became known as the Bill of Rights in order to obtain the required concurrence of the people. Most scholars look at the 1787 Constitution and observe how little trust it had in the men who would rule and implement it. However, the people in general were even more skeptical than the intellectual leaders who drafted the Constitution and wanted even more assurances. Many people believed that most of the issues in the Bill of Rights were either implicit in the original 1787 draft or were unnecessary to spell out, but Congress had to sell the Constitution to the people as a whole and it took some very specific text to get people to believe that their rights would be protected.
A Bill of Rights was needed Left before it ended.
Conason was refuting the argument of Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer {618120} who had used the secrecy of the Constitutional Convention in 1789 to justify the Vice President’s secret meetings with energy businessman to make government energy policy.
Most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were aristocrats, and all were elites of different types. However, they wanted and knew that they would have to submit their work product to the people for ratification. So while each had their own views, most were heavily influenced by their perception of public opinion reaction to their draft. Even with that, in order to get the ratification votes, they had to add the first 10 amendments—the Bill of Rights in order to get the votes of the men who were NOT at the convention.
George W. Bush. See {618119} for the rejoinder to the defense.
There are many Americans who resent the fact that states and localities publish official documents in Spanish and other foreign languages as well as English. They often argue that the Founders wanted English to be the only language of the American government. It comes as a shock and surprise that the Constitution was published in English AND German to reach the many German immigrants who were a part of early America.
The political battles over the ratification of the Constitution were vicious and brutal even by modern standards.
This is a classic type of fallacious political logic. The author claims that there are no powers in the constitution to make laws in a number of important areas of our society. What is true, is that there is no explicitly and uniquely specified statements in the Constitution regarding the areas he specified (and some he didn’t like education). However the power to make laws in these areas comes from the “Commerce Clause” where the Federal Government was given the power to regulate Interstate Commerce. And that is what the Federal Government does make laws about. Food that is sold in the state where it is grown is regulated by the states. But interstate agriculture is. Medicines and weapons are also sold and transported in interstate commerce. Even housing is in part covered as financing and mortgages, building materials, working conditions of the building companies are part of Interstate Commerce. A succession of Congresses have recognized this and so has every Supreme Court in our history. McManus however believes that all these legislators and judges have been wrong and worse, part of a conspiracy to subvert the Constitution. See {630683} for his tendency to see conspiracies in politics.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
