How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from unlawful entry or search); privacy of all correspondence (including phone conversations); right to challenge actions of government officials and bodies in court; right to a job; work week limited to 40 hours; free medical care; welfare payments in old age, sickness, or disability; free housing; free education; academic freedom for scientists.

It's a very good list, and what I listed above isn't even half of it [1]. Precisely none of those were actually respected by the government. Having a Bill of Rights is great, but having a tradition of limited government, checks and balances, and rule of law is what gives those guarantees any weight.

[1] https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....

And that's a good reason to be skeptical of worries about "fetshising" it and dreams of how you could "remake the legal and political world". Big changes happened after the Revolution and the Civil War, how could they not? But evolution has happened at at all other times.

And I'm beginning to seriously doubt my time commitment to this article.

The actual history of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is quite interesting and involved. It covers everything from classical literature and history to The Enlightenment and the Thirty Years' War. Just talking about how some folks revere the docs so much now and didn't in the past is breathtakingly shallow. As an example of how short-sighted this is, note that the BoR wasn't supposed to say anything that needed saying. Some questioned the need for them at all. The government wasn't constructed to get that overpowering and intrusive into all of our lives. It's made not to do that. Why should we start making lists of things it can't do? It obviously can't do anything we didn't tell it to do.

The founders in the U.S. dispassionately threw together a huge chunk of natural science, philosophy, and history, made a ton of compromises, and did the best they could. You don't have to worship or deify the folks or the documents they made. Just understand what was done and why. That's much more useful than going on at length about how unhealthy some segments of the population are being.

This article is a political polemic, not a history lesson (unless you consider it a lesson on how things get more and less popular over time, which says absolutely nothing about the BoR) I love political essays that show how public thought changes over time. These kinds of essays tend to be difficult to discuss in large diverse online groups -- and many times, sadly, their purpose is to create false, simplistic narratives that can take the place of understanding. Best consumed in small doses and with lots of context.

It's not the constitution that makes a country free, but the people fighting for their rights. New Zealand gave women the vote before any other country in the world, and we didn't need a constitution to do it, but rather the willpower of the people.

Constitutions and laws are mere pieces of paper until the society within which they live endow them with sacred status. Without the "cult" and the moral indignation at violations surely civil liberties would erode at a much faster rate. As another comment says "Unfortunately, pretty much all of the BoR is regularly under attack." If the BoR didn't have the same nearly religious status one of those attacks would have succeeded by now.

Look, here is the thing that people have forgotten, or were never taught (due to a failing civics education system):

People have natural rights, independent of any government, and governments are formed among the people in order to protect those rights. The government does not grant rights! It can not take them without due process!

This is the fundamental principle of what I consider real American exceptionalism, and why American government at least in principle is the most free system of government in existence. (despite it's failings to live up those principles often) It's why Christopher Hitchens became an American and called it "the last revolution that stands a chance".

This was the original debate about the Bill of Rights in the first place. That by listing a few important rights the government would then think anything not listed would be allowed for the government to violate. Hence the "right to wear a hat" argument. That's not how things work though, and that's not what our government was founded on.

I'll give you a good example. Locke calls the right to self defense the first natural right. I agree. The second amendment is about defense against a tyrannic government. You could take it away and I would still have a right to bear arms independent of the (theoretically) absent second amendment.

Both parties hate stating this sort of thing out loud though because what they both are is authoritarian. For the conservatives, it would undermine all kinds of their moves like the drug war (unconstitutional abuse of commerce clause, states rights), and the same can be said of the left. This is why I get tired of all the cries anytime someone sees through the bullshit and calls them both equally corrupt, which they are, and are immediately hit with logically fallacious half-retorts of "whataboutism" and other rebuttle du jours.

I swore an oath to the Constitution, and I stand on those principles even when they make me uncomfortable. I'll give you another example. I always thought FDR's New Deal was one of the best things ever, a brilliant move we should seek to emulate in the modern day. When I dug into it though, I have to admit I have seen enough evidence that many of the New Deal policies were unconstitutional that I have an entire reading list prepped just to dig into the matter. So you can see how for someone who really wants more wealth equality how difficult it is to potentially admit minimum wage just might be unconstiutional. At least I am meeting those hard questions head on though, instead of burying my head in the sand.

This is the actual headline of the article, not just the HN headline.