“The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.”

— Henry Steele Commager

Letter to the Editor, in The New York Times (1971)

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Henry Steele Commager 27

American historian 1902–1998

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Toward an International Bill of Rights Union," http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?p=36 31 August 2007.

“Wherever the government goes, the Constitution goes, and wherever the Constitution goes, the protections that it guarantees restrain the government and requires it to protect those rights.”

Andrew P. Napolitano (1950) American judge and syndicated columnist

Judge Napolitano on Hannity and Colmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bejmEG_t9mI, discussing the Supreme Court rulings on the scope of the protections in the Constitution.
Context: The Constitution applies to persons, not just citizens. If you read the Constitution, its protections are not limited to Americans. And that was written intentionally, because at the time it was written, they didn't know what Native Americans would be. When the post civil war amendments were added, they didn't know how blacks would be considered, because they had a decision of the Supreme Court called Dred Scott, that said blacks are not persons. So in order to make sure the Constitution protected every human being: American, alien; citizen, non-citizen; lawful combatant, enemy combatant; innocent, guilty; those who wish us well, those who wish us ill... they use the broadest possible language, to make it clear: Wherever the government goes, the Constitution goes, and wherever the Constitution goes, the protections that it guarantees restrain the government and requires it to protect those rights.

“Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust "Mothers of Borogravia!" and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust?
Very nearly everyone, come to think of it…”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“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 (1946) American writer

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

“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?"

“For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

On due process, dissenting in In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

“The United States Constitution has proven itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address (March 2, 1930); reported in Public Papers of Governor Roosevelt (1930), p. 710.
1930s

“This lesson was firmly in the minds of those who made the American Constitution. They proposed to adopt institutions under which the people should be supreme, and the government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. They were determined to be a sovereign people under a government having such powers as they from time to time should confer upon it by a written constitution. They did not propose to be under the tyranny of either the executive or the legislature.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

“Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Yeah, trouble is, the three classes of people aren’t the same.”

Poul Anderson book The Boat of a Million Years

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 18 “Judgment Day”, Section 3 (p. 336)

“When it comes right down to physical war and bloodshed, governments don’t protect people; people protect governments.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 180

“The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.”

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Henry Steele Commager 27

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