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Your Favorite Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Favorite Amendment

  • One from the Bill of Rights

    Votes: 18 81.8%
  • One between 11th and 15th

    Votes: 3 13.6%
  • 17th

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 19th, 24th, 26th

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 25th

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 21st (Alcoholics please choose this option)

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • 27th (Congressional representatives pick this option)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    22
They were listed because the anti-federalists demanded it. No Bill of Rights, no Constitution. It was that simple.

Yes, but you're missing the point. The 9th Amendment was put in place to please Federalists, not anti-Federalists. Even the anti-Federalists didn't want all conceivable rights to be protected by the Constitution, just the ones they wanted to explicitly put there. The Federalists feared that the Bill of Rights might be perceived as stating every right one can have, so they added the 9th Amendment to ensure that even if some rights are protected by the Constitution, other rights can exist outside of the Constitution.
 
Yes, but you're missing the point. The 9th Amendment was put in place to please Federalists, not anti-Federalists. Even the anti-Federalists didn't want all conceivable rights to be protected by the Constitution, just the ones they wanted to explicitly put there. The Federalists feared that the Bill of Rights might be perceived as stating every right one can have, so they added the 9th Amendment to ensure that even if some rights are protected by the Constitution, other rights can exist outside of the Constitution.

How can a right exist outside the Constitution and be secure?
 
How can a right exist outside the Constitution and be secure?

Depends on the right. State laws/constitutions and local laws, mostly. The same way anything else in legal matters can exist outside of the Constitution.
 
1st Amendment then perhaps the 5th Amendment...

Freedoms of:

Speech
Religion
Press
Assebly
Petition

Can't beat those IMO...
 
You know what I've noticed? In a thread about the constitution, I don't see very many Democrats. I wonder why.

In terms of the goodness of the constitution, the 13th amendment was the most necessary by far. In terms of limiting government, the 10th amendment is the one we need to refocus on.
 
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1st, 2nd, 10th, and 13th are my favorites.

The 1st amendment is very important indeed. freedom of speech is vital to our form of government.

The 2nd amendment is necessary to maintain our right to self defense and to protect against governmental tyranny.

The 10th amendment is necessary to limit the scope of power of the federal government. Unfortunately the 10th has been rendered meaningless by the SCOTUS.

The 13th amendment ended slavery which contradicted the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 In which was written the following words.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 
Yes, but you're missing the point. The 9th Amendment was put in place to please Federalists, not anti-Federalists. Even the anti-Federalists didn't want all conceivable rights to be protected by the Constitution, just the ones they wanted to explicitly put there. The Federalists feared that the Bill of Rights might be perceived as stating every right one can have, so they added the 9th Amendment to ensure that even if some rights are protected by the Constitution, other rights can exist outside of the Constitution.

This doesn't mean there aren't unenumerated Constitutional rights. The Ninth Amendment was simply meant to stop the following kind of argument:

Government official: Wearing brown shoes is against the law.

Individual: It's my right to wear brown shoes.

Government official: The Bill of Rights does not specifiy such a thing, therefore, wearing brown shoes is not protected by the Constitution.
 
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This doesn't mean there aren't unenumerated Constitutional rights. The Ninth Amendment was simply meant to stop the following kind of argument:

Government official: Wearing brown shoes is against the law.

Individual: It's my right to wear brown shoes.

Government official: The Bill of Rights does not specifiy such a thing, therefore, wearing brown shoes is not protected by the Constitution.

That may or may not be true about unenumerated rights which can't be broken by the federal government; I'm not sure (though it probably shouldn't matter, since nowhere in the Constitution is the power of the federal government to do things like ban brown shoes stated; and we already have the 10th Amendment to address that issue). But it does not allow the federal government to protect "unenumerated rights" from others breaking it.

Incidentally, there are plenty of state and local laws banning things as silly as brown shoes, but nobody is arguing that they are unconstitutional; they are just silly.
 
The NEXT one, the one that says that politicians gets no benefits that are not affordable to the general public, that indexes their pay to minimum wage, and that holds them criminally responsible for misuse of their authority in a way that betrays the public trust.

Shame this is completely invalid these days.
 
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