There I was, in a rocking chair at the nursing home, where one of my grandsons had come to visit me. The discussion turned nostalgic, as we discussed those years, long past, when I had taught college students about the Bill of Rights.
There I was, in a rocking chair at the nursing home, where one of my grandsons had come to visit me. The discussion turned nostalgic, as we discussed those years, long past, when I had taught college students about the Bill of Rights.
“Remember the Bill of Rights?” I asked. He looked puzzled, so I told him the story.
“The Bill of Rights protected citizens against the tyranny of the majority,” I explained. “It was intended to protect those who were different—especially people who disagreed with the passions of the moment. But of course, we lost it.
“It began with the drug war. Little by little, the courts eroded the requirement that police have probable cause to search you or arrest you. People were so frightened of drugs they encouraged government to ignore the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment. But we didn’t actually repeal it; we just let it slip away.
“It was pretty much the same thing with property rights. You are too young to remember, but the Fifth Amendment used to prevent the government from taking your property without paying for it. Between civil forfeiture and excessive regulations, that part of the Fifth Amendment sort of faded out too.
“Of course, the Courts had pretty much ignored the Ninth and Tenth amendments for years. Those were the ones that reserved power to the states and to the people. And there had always been folks who were dead-set against the religion clauses—especially separation of church and state. They wanted to be able to use government to impose their own beliefs on everybody else, so they sort of “re-wrote” history and encouraged public schools and elected officials to ignore the part of the First Amendment we called the Establishment Clause.
“But the real assault, the frontal assault, began when Congress repealed the free speech provisions of the First Amendment. Of course, that isn’t what they said they were doing. They said we needed to amend the First Amendment to protect the American flag. There had been 48 instances during the prior half-century when some damn fool had burned the flag to show how much he hated America. Well, that’s a political opinion, and back then, the constitution protected the expression of political opinions.
“You may think that a few isolated expressions of unpopular opinion was a pretty stupid reason to throw out a principle that had served us so well for so long, but that’s just what Congress did. Not that they didn’t know better, but there weren’t very many people willing to stand up for principle at the time. Pretty soon, no “offensive” opinions were protected.
“After that, it got easy. If 48 flag burnings were enough to throw out the First Amendment, a rash of shootings in high schools was more than enough to repeal the Second. People didn’t agree on its meaning anyway. And now…”
“Shhh, grandma,” whispered my grandson, looking nervously down the corridor. “You know you can get arrested, talking like that.”