Tag: freedom

#OnThisDay: Bill of Rights ratified in 1791

Today is Bill of Rights Day in the United States. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. Those amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791, when nine of the 13 states in the union at that time voted for their adoption.

The U.S. Constitution is a living, breathing document. Even when it was written, many people knew it was inadequate for the new nation because it gave the national government too much power and gave individual citizens and states too little power.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution itself was not ratified (adopted by three-fourths of the states) until there were assurances that amendments were going to follow. The process, though, was not as simple as one might imagine.

For Americans in 2025, the first ten amendments to the Constitution are taken for granted. They make sense to us. They appear to us as a neat little package we easily call the Bill of Rights; however, did you know that when the first Congress of the United States convened on March 4, 1789, they considered 145 proposed amendments?

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in their meetings in New York City over the next six and a half months to hear the debates! Can you imagine?

On September 25, 1789, the Congress submitted 12 of those 145 amendments to the states for consideration. Ten of the 12 were approved by the required nine states over the next 27 months and the Bill of Rights became the law of the land on December 15, 1791.

I tried in vain to find a list of those 145 proposed amendments online this weekend. It would be interesting to know what they were about and why only 12 of them were submitted to the states for consideration.

Even without knowing what the other 133 proposed amendments addresses, I can safely say that our lives have been much simpler since 1791 with a ten-amendment Bill of Rights instead of a 145-amendment Bill of Rights!

The Bill of Rights, condensed version

The First Amendment guarantees us freedom of religion, speech, and the press.

The Second Amendment guarantees us the right to bear arms.

The Third Amendment guarantees that in a time of peace, no citizen will be required to house a soldier without their consent, nor during a time of war except as prescribed by the law.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees us to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. (Unfortunately, I do not believe ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol are currently being held to that.)

The Fifth Amendment is more complex than the first four. It addresses the protection of our rights to life, liberty, and property. It talks about indictments, military actions, double jeopardy, not having to testify against yourself, due process of law, and the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. (The “due process of law” clause has been ignored in some cases this year by the Trump Administration. We have not heard the last of this.)

The Sixth Amendment guarantees us a speedy public trial by an impartial jury in the jurisdiction in which the alleged crime was committed when we are accused of a crime. It also addresses the right to obtain witnesses and assistance of legal counsel for our defense.

The Seventh Amendment addresses our rights in civil cases.

The Eighth Amendment protects us from excessive bail, fines, and “cruel and unusual” punishment.

The Ninth Amendment protects us from being denied our rights or disparaged by the rights that other people have. Just because a right is not listed in the U.S. Constitution, it does not mean that we do not have that right or those rights. Just because a right is not mentioned in the Constitution, the government cannot infringe upon it.

The Tenth Amendment states that powers that are not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are, therefore, rights of the states or of the people.  

Just for fun, when did the Eleventh Amendment come along?

Thinking about the Bill of Rights today, I was curious to find out how long after December 15, 1791, was the Eleventh Amendment ratified and what is it about? We never hear anything about it.

In 1793, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Chisholm v. Georgia that individuals from one state could sue the government of another state. The Eleventh Amendment was ratified in 1795. It protects states from being sued by individuals from another state or country. It established the principle of state sovereign immunity.

How many amendments have been proposed since 1787?

Since the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, approximately 11,985 amendments have been introduced in Congress. Most of them never made it off the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives or the floor of the Senate. Twenty-seven amendments to the Constitution have been ratified.

Janet

P.S.    On Friday, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to try to stop the construction of President Antionette’s 90,000-square-foot dance hall at the White House. The suit argues that President Antionette did not go through the legal review process for the project.

The courts have not been able to stop him on anything else, so it will be interesting to see where this case goes. I suppose if it goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court his buddies who form the majority of the court will vote for Trump to proceed with his little dance hall. Or, if they vote to stop him, he will just ignore their ruling. After all, he has already demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for it.

 “Let them eat cake.” Or, as he proclaimed last week with the Christmas season fast approaching, a child only needs one pencil.

J.

Going forward as Americans

In yesterday’s blog post, A 4th of July like no other, I lamented the fact that I do not feel celebratory on this United States Independence Day.

Here are my thoughts on this 4th of July – the 249th birthday of America.

Purple letters spelling out freedom on a black background
Photo by Kristina V on Unsplash

Never take your freedom to read whatever you want to read for granted. People have died to protect that freedom, and there are people and organizations that think they have the right to take that freedom away from you.

Never take your freedom to practice the religion of your choice – or to practice no religion at all – for granted. People have died to protect that freedom, but there are some people who think they can force their warped brand of Christianity on all our citizens.

Never take your freedom of assembly for granted. People have died to protect that freedom, but there are people who want to limit our access to gathering if our ideas don’t align with theirs.

Never take your freedom to complain, grumble, criticize, question, and protest against your elected officials for granted. People have died while protesting and people have died to protect that freedom. If we lose that freedom, we have lost our democracy.

Never take your freedom to vote for granted. People have died to protect that freedom, but there are loud voices in our country today who want to put many hoops for us to jump through in order to vote. They want to make it such a cumbersome process that we will miss a step or just give up. They try to convince us that voter fraud is rampant, but investigations have proven it rarely happens.

Never take the freedom of the press for granted. People have died to protect that freedom. The freedom of the press is under attack by the President Donald J. Trump, by his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But they are wrong. The press is not “the enemy of the people!” It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to defend and protect the press. If we lose that precious freedom in the United States, we will most assuredly lose all our other freedoms.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Keeping silent is being complicit

Resist!

Rise up!

Speak up!

Speak out!

Get into good trouble!

That’s how Independence Day 2025 needs to be celebrated… while we still can.

Janet

#OnThisDay: Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 1775

I have blogged about today’s topic before. I try to always mention it near the anniversary date of the event because it is a little-known fact in US history. Indeed, it rarely gets mentioned even by the local journalists and reporters in the Mecklenburg County, North Carolina area today. (Of course, most of them moved here from other parts of the country and they are not aware of our local history.)

I don’t know that I can improve upon my Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence blog from 2022, so I am taking the liberty to quote from it today.

From my May 23, 2022 blog post, “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 1775”:

Today, my blog is about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in 1775 while present-day Cabarrus County was part of Mecklenburg County and its citizens played just as important a role in the declaration as anyone living in what is present-day Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Friday, May 20, 2022 was the 247th anniversary of the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

A recreation of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence

But what about the 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence?

I blogged about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on May 21, 2018. To refresh your memory, or to introduce you to the topic if you aren’t aware of it, the following nine paragraphs are reblogged from that post:

My immigrant ancestors were among the Scottish Presbyterian pioneers who settled old Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Years of discontent in the American colonies were piled on top of the anti-British Crown feelings they brought with them across the Atlantic.

Weary of unfair taxes imposed by the Crown and the discrimination they were subjected to as Presbyterians slowly brought the settlers to the boiling point. An example of the persecution these Presbyterians felt were the Vestry and Marriage Acts of 1769. Those acts fined Presbyterian ministers who dared to conduct marriage ceremonies. Only Anglican marriages were recognized by the government.

In May of 1771 a group of young men from the Rocky River Presbyterian Church congregation in the part of Mecklenburg County that later became Cabarrus County, disguised themselves by blackening their faces and under the cover of darkness ambushed a shipment of Royal munitions traveling north on the Great Wagon Road. The supplies were destined for Rowan County to put down the Regulator Movement.

Blowing up three wagons loaded with gunpowder and other supplies, the teens and young men who perpetrated the deed were declared outlaws by the Royal Governor and had to go into hiding until May 20, 1775 when all the citizens of Mecklenburg County were declared to be rebels against the British Crown.

On May 20, 1775, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina declared themselves to be free and independent of the rule of Great Britain. It was a sober and sobering declaration not entered into lightly. Those American patriots meant business, and they knew the risks they were taking.

Archibald McCurdy, an Elder in Rocky River Presbyterian Church, heard the document read from the steps of the log courthouse in Charlotte. When he got home, he and his wife, Maggie, listed everyone they knew of who could be trusted in the coming fight for American independence.

No original copies of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence survive today. The local copy was lost in a house fire at the home of one of the signers. The copy taken to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by Captain James Jack on horseback was also lost. Later, signers of the document recreated it from memory.

Nevertheless, those of us who were raised on stories of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the brave souls who risked their lives to sign it know that the document was real. The blood of the American patriots still flows in our veins and their spirit of freedom still beats in our hearts.

Don’t mess with our freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or our freedom of assembly!

Until my next blog post

Just for the pleasure of it, read a good book.

Take time for friends and family.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine.

Janet

Some March Reading

I usually wait until the first Monday of the next month to blog about books I read this month, but I’ve read so many good books in March I decided to split them up between today’s blog and my April 2, 2018 blog post.

The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah

After reading Kristin Hannah’s best-selling novel, The Nightingale, last year, I eagerly awaited the release of The Great Alone. What a masterpiece! I don’t want to spoil the story for you if you haven’t read it.

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The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah

I’ll just state the basic description – that it is the story of a troubled Vietnam War veteran and POW survivor who took his wife and daughter to Alaska to escape the craziness he saw in life in the lower 48 states.

Ill-prepared for life in the wilds of Alaska, things went from bad to worse for the family. Domestic abuse is a thread that weaves throughout the novel. Can love outlast the horrors this family lives with?

The Tuscan Child, by Rhys Bowen

This historical novel alternated between World War II and 1973. After the death of her father, 25-year-old Joanna travels from London to a remote village in Tuscany where her father’s fighter plane was shot down in 1944.

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The Tuscan Child, by Rhys Bowen

Since her father’s death, Joanna has found an undeliverable and returned-to-send letter he wrote to an Italian woman named Sofia. In the letter, he references “our beautiful baby boy” who is hidden away where no one but he and Sofia can find him.

Joanna had no knowledge of this woman named Sofia until discovering the letter in her father’s belongings after his death. Who was Sofia, and is “our beautiful baby boy” a half-brother Joanna knows nothing about?

White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Bracht

This historical novel was a difficult read for me because the subject matter was so bleak, violent, and sad; however, I’m glad I read it. I learned a great deal of history.

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White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Bracht

White Chrysanthemum is about man’s inhumanity to man – or more specifically, man’s inhumanity to woman. The novel was inspired by the plight of Korean girls and young women who were abducted by the occupying Japanese soldiers during World War II. The girls and young women were physically- and sexually-abused and were forced to be “comfort women” for the Japanese soldiers.

This is also a story of the human spirit and what it is able to endure due to the innate will to live. It is also about the love two sisters share for each other and how they long to be reunited.

It is not for the faint of heart, but I recommend it to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the early- to mid-20th century history of Korean-Japanese relations. As recently as 2015, the treatment of Korean girls and women by Japanese soldiers from the late 1930s through the Second World War was being swept under the rug.

In 2015, the governments of Japan and South Korea agreed “to remove the Statue of Peace [in Seoul] and never speak of the ‘comfort women’ again” according to the timeline in the back of Mary Lynn Bracht’s book. Thanks to her novel, a whole new generation will learn about his piece of history.

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, by Anu Partanen

I checked this book out because the title intrigued me. The author grew up in Finland but moved to the USA as a young adult. This book is her perspective on the social and governmental differences between the two countries.

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The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, by Anu Partanen

The prologue was interesting in that Ms. Partanen expressed her surprise in finding that Americans are less free and independent than the people of her home country. Her opinion is that

  1. the fact that most Americans’ health care is dependent upon their employer, we in the USA are tied to our jobs;
  2. Americans are sometimes forced to stay in unhappy marriages because the income tax laws are written to reward couples filing jointly;
  3. the tax laws in America encourage young adults to depend upon their parents for paying for college and supporting them financially in other ways past the age of 18; and
  4. the policies of the US government saddle parents with too much expense in the raising of children and saddle too many middle-age adults with the financial burden of caring for their elderly parents.

 

Ms. Partanen boiled all this down to what she calls The Nordic Theory of Love.

My brief summary doesn’t do justice to this 450-page book, but maybe I have piqued your interest. I enjoyed a couple of days’ break from reading depressing World War II novels, but about halfway through Ms. Partanen’s book I decided I’d rather read fiction. Some short stories and novels were vying for my attention.

Since my last blog post

I’ve worked on letters to send to 40 bookstores to encourage them to place spring orders for my 2014 vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I’ve done a lot of reading, and I’ve studied book marketing and writing in deep point-of-view.

Until my next blog post

If you haven’t already signed up for my sometime-in-the-future newsletters, please fill out the form below.

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading A Piece of the World, by Christina Baker Kline. Perhaps you’ll want to read one of the books I wrote about today.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time.

Janet

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