“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

"The Deal," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2013/tle747-20131201-02.html 1 December 2013.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The Bill of Rights was, unfortunately misnamed. It was not a list of things Americans were allowed too do, under the Co…" by L. Neil Smith?

L. Neil Smith 99

American writer 1946

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"To Hell With Public Schools," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2012/tle670-20120513-02.html 13 May 2012.

“Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?"

“According to many of our political and intellectual elites, both liberal and conservative, the minority in a democracy enjoys only such rights as the majority chooses to bestow upon them. The Bill of Rights in the American Constitution—and similar bills in state Constitutions—are regarded as gifts from the majority to the minority. But the American Constitution, and the state constitutions subordinate to it have, at one time or another, sanctioned both slavery and Jim Crow, by which the bills of rights applied to white Americans were denied to black Americans. But according to the elites, it is not undemocratic for the minority to lose. From this perspective, both slavery and Jim Crow were exercises of democratic majority rule. This is precisely the view of democracy by the Sunnis in Iraq, and is the reason they are fighting the United States.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

“We, as a Congress, have to stand up to a president who acts like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on September 11.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

On the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance under President George W. Bush, in [O'Keefe, Ed, Feingold Calls for Bush's Censure, https://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/Politics/story?id=1715495&page=1, 20 August 2018, ABC News, March 12, 2006]
2006