Ratify Quotes - page 2
The Bill of Rights was, unfortunately misnamed. It was not a list of things Americans were allowed too do, under the Constitution. It was and remains a list of things government is absolutely forbidden to do - like set up a state religion, or steal your house - under any circumstances.
The Bill of Rights was the make-or-break condition that allowed the Constitution to be ratified. No Bill of Rights, no Constitution. And since all political authority in America "trickles down" from the Constitution, no Constitution no government. And, since the Bill of Rights was passed as a unit, a single breach, in any one of the ten articles, breaches them all and with them, the entire Constitution. Every last bit of the authority that derives from it becomes null and void.
Let's review:
No Second Amendment, no Bill of Rights.
No Bill of Rights, no Constitution.
No Constitution, no government.
L. Neil Smith
For many years we have had a long-standing friendship with France. I remember well the feeling in the House and my own feeling-for I spoke on the subject, I think, when the late Government made their agreement with France-the warm and cordial feeling resulting from the fact that these two nations, who had had perpetual differences in the past, had cleared these differences away; I remember saying, I think, that it seemed to me that some benign influence had been at work to produce the cordial atmosphere that had made that possible. But how far that friendship entails obligation-it has been a friendship between the nations and ratified by the nations-how far that entails an obligation, let every man look into his own heart, and his own feelings, and construe the extent of the obligation for himself.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon