How evil was Richard Nixon? He resigned in disgrace. But he left us with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Oh yeah, he also initiated diplomatic relations with China.
The Confederated Congress dissolved itself on March 4, 1789 and immediately met as the first session of the United States Congress. Eleven of thirteen states had approved the new Constitution – the other two would the following year – to replace the Articles of Confederation. The new constitution was ratified with ten amendments, largely the work of James Madison. The amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added partly from political expediency and compromise to ensure ratification of the Constitution. Madison wrote, “Bill of Rights—useful—not essential.” A couple of the more famous Founding Fathers are on record about the amendments to the new Constitution.
“…whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience; a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen, and a regard for public harmony, will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question, how far the former can be impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted.” – George Washington
“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” – Thomas Jefferson
You can draw your own conclusion about what they would think of “A well regulated Militia” in the twenty-first century.
I’m so glad to live in an affluent country where we can have controversy and outrage about who is using which public rest room. And where state legislatures controlled by purported small-government politicians can pass laws prohibiting local governments from legislating certain things. Poorer countries have concerns about toilets more basic than the gender of the person using one.
Language is a living, ever-evolving organism. The meanings and uses of words change over time. If a word is misused enough over a long-enough period of time, it becomes part of the accepted language.
The announcement that Harriet Tubman’s image will replace that of Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill has outraged the racists and the Jackson defenders. (No link. It’s easy enough to find.)