The Bill of Rights: Take time to contemplate its value

The Bill of Rights: Take time to contemplate its value

TODAY is Bill of Rights Day, which Franklin Roosevelt made into an official observance on Dec. 15, 1941, just a week after Pearl Harbor. Those first amendments to the U.S. Constitution have protected Americans from a number of ill-conceived or malicious government acts too numerous to tally. For every known misuse of government authority they prevented, there must have been myriad additional abuses that never came to be as politicians gradually learned how severely those 10 amendments restricted their actions.

Today we fondly remember James Madison as the genius from whose pen flowed these important guarantors of liberty. It is not often recalled that Madison wrote the Bill of Rights reluctantly. The great irony of their creation is that these words of absolutism, these stones that make up the wall separating liberty from tyranny, were borne of political expediency.

In 1788, nine states had ratified the Constitution, but New York, Virginia, North Carolina and Rhode Island held out for a bill of rights. Though they all signed on before a bill of rights was created, their reluctance set in motion Madison"

The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News