by Donald Jeffries, “I Protest”:

Does anyone believe in it?

The Founding Fathers made the Constitution palatable by including a Bill of Rights. Without the First 10 Amendments, the Constitution is just what its early critics, including Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, said it was; a dangerous consolidation of power far less representative of liberty than the Articles of Confederation.

The First Amendment was always a huge concern with statists of every era. Those who thirst for power, and will compromise themselves in order to attain it, have never looked favorably upon those critical of them. John Adams, the second president of the United States, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts for just this reason. He bristled at criticism. Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson succeeded him in office and scrapped this tyrannical concept. But the notion reared itself again in 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Adams was a civil libertarian compared to Lincoln. “Honest” Abe didn’t pass any new Alien and Sedition Acts; he just shut down over two hundred newspapers that opposed any of his unconstitutional actions.