George Mason, father of the Bill of Rights (via tony-es)

SugaShane: Typically, when I talk to ignorant folk, most of which who haven’t read the Constitution, about the Constitution, the responses I get vary from “the Constitution is broad” to “it’s a living document” to “we don’t really know what the framers meant”.

I find these arguments to only accentuate their ignorance. 

Most of the framers spent their entire lives explaining in detail what the Constitution, Liberty, Freedom and the “American Way” meant. They wrote endless strings of words and filled countless libraries with their explanations of how this country, and more importantly how the people, needed to behave in order to sustain liberty and fight off tyranny. 

There’s almost an over-abundance of quotes, letters, essays, books, documents. Most of the framers went on to hold high political office in this country and they spent their careers guiding and mapping out where the country needed to head and how and more importantly why it had to get there. 

This George Mason quote is just one example. For those that don’t know, George Mason is more than a college who plays basketball. Mason, a delegate from Virginia to the Constitutional Convention, wrote the Virginia Deceleration of Rights which ended up being the foundation for the United States Bill of Rights. 

It’s easy for people today to throw out naive, disingenuous or even intellectually dishonest commentary, especially since the actual US Constitution is very short, very simple and sometimes can seem very broad. This works to the advantage of those that want to down play or even morph the actual meaning of the words within the document. One can glance at the Constitution and be persuaded to believe the fabrications of some. It takes a little more effort to actually discover that, no, the Constitution isn’t a living document. It’s simple for a reason. It protects human rights and limits government. All else is left, as the 10th amendment says, “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

A lack of language doesn’t mean it’s up for interpretation or even for future legislation.  lack of specific language means that we should either look to the explanations by the framers, which there’s plenty of, or leave it to the states or the free will of the people. 

- Sha. 

(via anarchovelocirachel)