{"id":2344,"date":"2010-12-14T12:19:16","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T17:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=2344"},"modified":"2010-12-14T12:19:16","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T17:19:16","slug":"make-bill-of-rights-day-americas-anti-politician-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/14\/make-bill-of-rights-day-americas-anti-politician-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Make Bill of Rights Day America’s Anti-Politician Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an op-ed being distributed today by the good folks at the Future of Freedom Foundation <\/strong><\/a>– <\/p>\n

Make Bill of Rights Day America’s Anti-Politician Day<\/strong>
\nby James Bovard<\/p>\n

Wednesday, December 15, is the 219th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights \u2014 the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day should be the preeminent Anti-Politician Day on the American calendar. Instead, it has become simply another pretext for rulers to delude the ruled. <\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787, \u201cA Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth … and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.\u201d Yet, some of the Founding Fathers \u2014 such as Alexander Hamilton \u2014 fought tooth-and-nail against codifying any limit on politicians\u2019 power. And the second president \u2014 John Adams \u2014 did all that he could to destroy any restraints on the feds\u2019 power to suppress criticism of the government. <\/p>\n

President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the first Bill of Rights Day, which occurred on December 15, 1941 \u2014 a few days after FDR\u2019s dream came true and the United States was simultaneously at war with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. FDR called the Bill of Rights \u201cthe great American charter of personal liberty and human dignity,\u201d but proceeded to label the rights \u201cprivileges\u201d and then listed only \u201cprivileges\u201d contained in the First Amendment. FDR then asserted that \u201cfree schools\u201d could not exist without the Bill of Rights, though there was nothing about education in the first 10 amendments. The Second World War provided a blank check for FDR to seize almost boundless power at home and abroad, and he never let the Constitution stand in his way. <\/p>\n

Subsequent politicians have done their best to make Americans view the Bill of Rights as simply another government handout. President Bill Clinton, in an April 19, 1994, television interview, declared, \u201cWhen we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly…. When personal freedom\u2019s being abused, you have to move to limit it.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Bill of Rights did not give freedom to Americans; instead, the Bill of Rights expressly prohibited the government from violating pre-existing rights of the people. The Bill of Rights was not \u201cradical\u201d according to the beliefs of Americans of that era; instead, it codified rights both long recognized in English common law or that had been carved out over centuries of resistance to English tyranny. The Founding Fathers had difficulty getting the Constitution approved in many states not because it was \u201cradical\u201d in protecting people\u2019s rights from the government \u2014 but because it was perceived as concentrating too much power within the federal government to violate the rights of the people. <\/p>\n

President Obama is upholding the tradition of invoking the Bill of Rights to muddle Americans\u2019 political thinking. When he formally proclaimed Bill of Rights Day last December, he declared that \u201cfidelity to our fundamental values is one of America\u2019s greatest strengths…. As Americans, we must keep striving to live up to our founding ideals.\u201d Obama made this declaration after signaling that all the high-ranking Bush administration officials who authorized torture and other war crimes would face no federal prosecution. <\/p>\n

In his Bill of Rights Day proclamation this year, Obama declared: \u201cThe United States will always speak for those who are voiceless, defend those who are oppressed, and bear witness to those who want nothing more than to exercise their universal human rights. Our Bill of Rights protects these fundamental values at home, and guides our actions\u201d abroad. <\/p>\n

In the same season that Obama is making such declarations, his administration is also insisting that it is entitled to kill Americans without any due process, without any judicial proceedings, simply because some government officials suspect those Americans are \u201cinvolved\u201d with terrorist groups. <\/p>\n

Presidents and members of Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution \u2014 and thus to respect the rights recognized and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Insofar as the feds trample the Bill of Rights, the government is illegitimate. Insofar as the government perennially violates the Bill of Rights, it becomes an aggressor against the American people. <\/p>\n

At this point, what we really need is a constitutional amendment to require the federal government obey the Constitution. As long as the rulers are permitted to scorn the rightful limits on their power, our political system consists of little more than elective dictatorship. <\/p>\n

Americans need to remember Bill of Rights Day but for the proper reason. Americans must recognize that the government poses the greatest peril to their liberties. December 15 is the day to stop and count the ways that politicians are ravaging your rights \u2014 and to take action to turn the tide against Leviathan. <\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an op-ed being distributed today by the good folks at the Future of Freedom Foundation – Make Bill of Rights Day America’s Anti-Politician Day by James Bovard Wednesday, December 15, is the 219th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights \u2014 the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,659,10,677,656,7,17,669,38,657,41,655],"class_list":{"0":"post-2344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","8":"tag-bush","9":"tag-democracy","10":"tag-dictatorship","12":"tag-elective-dictatorship","13":"tag-obama","15":"tag-rule-of-law","16":"tag-war-crimes","17":"tag-wiretapping"},"yoast_head":"\nMake Bill of Rights Day America's Anti-Politician Day - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/14\/make-bill-of-rights-day-americas-anti-politician-day\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Make Bill of Rights Day America's Anti-Politician Day - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here’s an op-ed being distributed today by the good folks at the Future of Freedom Foundation – Make Bill of Rights Day America’s Anti-Politician Day by James Bovard Wednesday, December 15, is the 219th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights \u2014 the first ten amendments to the Constitution. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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