May 26, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
The Anti-Federalists and the Bill of Rights 1791
The Anti-Federalists opposed handing over
too much power to the President through the Constitution as that would make him
no different from a Monarch of the kind James VI and James I proudly proclaimed
of.
It was thanks to this opposition of theirs that
the first ten amendments were made to the United States Constitution that today
goes by the name of Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights over and above the
Constitution adds to it specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights,
clear limitations of government’s power with respect to the judiciary and
declarations that any power that is not vested upon the Congress by the
Constitution should be reserved for the states or the people.
The United States Bills Of Rights are
nothing but the first ten amendments made to the United States Constitution
under the pressures and objections raised to by the Anti-Federalists.
To some the anti-Federalists were
unpatriotic but they themselves did not agree with this opinion calling
themselves the true Federalists.
They feared that the Constitution and the
Union thus being created was so highly centralized that it threatened the
sovereignty of not just the individuals or localities but even the states.
In fact the greatest danger they saw in the
form of government being proposed was the installation of new, centralized “monarchy”
or “monarchic power” not very different from the recently fought and discarded tyranny
of the Great Britain.
The Anti-Federalists also believed that the
republics that were the size of the individual states (of the United States)
could survive, but that a republic that would be as large as that of the
considered Union would collapse.
“Whoever seriously considers the immense
extent of territory comprehended within the limits of United States, with the
variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent
and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interests, morals,
policies, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a
consolidated republican form of government therein can never form a perfect
union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity, for to
these objects it must be directed: this unkindred legislature therefore,
composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their nature, will in its
exercise, emphatically be, like a house divided against itself.”
Men like James Madison and Hamilton opposed
the Bill of Rights on the ground that they considered the original un-amended Constitution
sufficient and complete to guarantee sufficient freedom and rights to the
citizens.
As time went by and as the idea of the Bill
of rights was hotly debated with weaknesses or rather the overpowering
strengths of the Constitution being pointed out Madison began to see the need
for the Bill of Rights though he still considered it to be more useful rather
than essential.
Finally he gave in and in a letter to
Jefferson he wrote:
“The friends of the Constitution, some from
an approbation of particular amendments, others from a spirit of…”
Stay tuned to the voice of an
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Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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