And blogs, TV, and flag-burning are not mentioned in the First Amendment. Speech and press are.
Yes.
My uncle used to say that the 1st was the most important of all, by far, because the power of speech can be used to gain all the others.
What’s your point?
Back when my kids were in elementary school, their 6th grade class put on a pageant where they dramatized, in about 30 seconds of acting & dialog, the gist of each of the Bill of Rights.
Their dramatization of the 3rd amendment showed soldiers marching into someone’s home, proclaiming that they could stay there because it was wartime.
So they got the point of it completely backwards. :smack: You’d think a teacher might have stepped in and straightened them out…
Shame they didn’t get past the Bill of Rights. Would’ve been a hoot to see them doing the 21st.
The 14th winds up having an oversized impact due to selective incorporation, which was most likely never dreamed of when it was proposed and adopted. Past that, the First, Fourth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Nineteeth are biggies; the Twenty-Sixth is important, but a few notches down from those.
Past that, I’m fond of the Tenth, but it’s been interpreted into a dead letter. (Perhaps for the best; there are practical difficulties in having fifty sovereigns running around and to be sure, most of what “States’ Rights” was used to justify in the past was despicable. But I’d still like to see more “laboratories of democracy.”) The Ninth is handy for giving the right to privacy something else to hang its hat on. While I have personally never had to deal w/ soldiers insisting on sleeping in my bed, I’m rather glad they aren’t allowed to. The Second I approve of, but it could’ve been more artfully drafted, couldn’t it? Eleventh, Twelfth, Seventeenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-Fifth,Twenty-Seventh–all boring inside baseball stuff. The most important of the group is direct election of senators, and it ain’t too exciting.
Actually, that’s exactly what the drafters of the amendment had in mind (though they intended for it to occur via the Privileges & Immunities Clause, not via the goofy substantive due process method we ended up with):
[QUOTE=Rep. John Bingham, R-OH]
The proposition pending before the House is simply a proposition to arm the Congress…with the power to enforce the bill of rights as it stands in the constitution today. It hath that extent—no more….If the State laws do not interfere, those immunities follow under the Constitution.
[/QUOTE]
It’s pretty clear.
That’s an odd mistake to make. Of course, if the homeowner had said “No, get out.” and the soldiers did, that would have been fine.
I’m inclined to agree to BobLib - there’s little point trying to rank them individually - better to group them. Collectively, the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th are important if not crucial to rule-of-law democracy, and if one was dropped, the void it would leave could be relentlessly abused by government.
The 2nd and 3rd have pretty well been made obsolete. The 18th and 21st are best forgotten except as cautionary example.
But the Quartering Amendment only applies in times of peace.
Even in war, though, soldiers can’t just move in on you. Congress has to pass a law saying they can.
I’d order the original Bill of Rights more or less like this:
[ul]
[li] Ninth – The crucial reminder that the BoR does not create rights, that it merely lists specific reservations among all powers not granted to the government.[/li][li] Tenth – Formal statement of the same idea, including the rights of states.[/li][li] First – Freedom of speech is perhaps the most essential liberty, without which no other has any use or meaning.[/li][li] Fourth – There must always be a high bar to meet before violating anyone’s privacy; and yes, this means we have the presumptive right to hide our illegal activities from the authorities.[/li][li] Fifth – Due process and security from self-incrimination.[/li][li] Sixth – Trials must not only be speedy but transparent; secret charges and witnesses are intolerable in any free society.[/li][li] Eighth – No excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment.[/li][li] Second – The right to bear arms is the difference between a citizen and a subject.[/li][li] Seventh – Civil trials are important too.[/li][li] Third – Quite right in principle, but so unlikely to be violated any time soon that it’s not terribly relevant.[/li][/ul]
Those who are familiar with my strong pro-gun stance may be surprised that I rank the second amendment so near the bottom of the list in importance. But if we’re talking only of liberty with respect to limitations on the powers of government, then absent its function as a last (and admittedly thoroughly desperate) bulwark against the destruction of the other liberties, the right to bear arms itself has little intrinsic value. (Self-defense is, of course, a legitimate purpose, but that is simply not implicated here.)
I’m not sure I can coherently rank the non-BoR amendments in the same list, but of course there are several of those which are just as important:
[ul]
[li] Thirteenth – It goes without saying that this was the first step in undoing the greatest hypocrisy of a nation ostensibly founded on the principle of freedom.[/li][li] Fourteenth – This (and ultimately incorporation doctrine) patched a serious vulnerability implicit in the Tenth Amendment.[/li][li] Nineteenth and Fifteenth – Universal suffrage is again necessary for the whole system not to collapse under the weight of hypocrisy and injustice.[/li][/ul]
I’m not sure I’m able to make a list. I believe that the most important is the 1st. After that the OP seems to be close to the mark with the 4th, 5th, 14th, and 2nd near the top, but I’m hard pressed to determine a clear order. It’s a strange exercise.
I’ve seen this sentiment before and find it entertaining. Recreational alcohol is an addictive poison with no legitimate purpose that takes many, many more lives than are lost in firearm-related incidents. Firearms have a multitude of legitimate uses, yet many wish to heavily restrict or even ban them.
Pretty simple, actually. The purpose of alcohol isn’t to kill people, indeed a good many people have been conceived because of it. The purpose of guns (other than hunting) is to kill people. Alcohol has been part of mankind’s social fabric for centuries. Jesus himself made wine, abeit in an unorthodox manner. Guns, on the other hand, exist solely to take lives. Some guns exist to take them in bunches.
Ugh, I guess I should’ve anticipated that response.
Who determines “the purpose of alcohol?” Even if we could do so, why would it matter? I am concerned with its actual effects, not some philosophical purpose of indeterminate origin. Appeals to a religious figure making wine are equally uncompelling and I don’t understand why you thought that would be relevant. That people have been drinking poison for a long time is no reason to defend the practice.
Similarly, who determines that firearms “exist solely to take lives?” I’ve never taken a life with any of mine in years of target shooting. Am I doing it wrong? Or is it possible that your claim is nonsense? Some firearms were explicitly developed to be effective in combat, but unless you embrace some system of total pacifism wherein any death is immoral even that is not necessarily reason to condemn them. It is my belief that there are cases wherein deadly force is justified. If you disagree you have every right to your opinion, but I’m awfully glad that the 2nd Amendment exists to prevent you and your ilk from preventing me from taking basic measures to protect my family and myself against risk.
edit: The 1st Amendment is still the most important one. By far.
double secret edit: Is the Jesus bit an attempt to engage my presumed religious beliefs on the basis that people who support the 2nd are necessarily ultrareligious right wingers? If so you’re sorely mistaken. I wager I’m to the left of most on this forum wrt nearly everything but firearms and have no religion at all.
Perhaps. But to be clear, nobody is claiming that anyone has a constitutional right to alcohol.
No, I didn’t bring Jesus in to try to bring in the religious right, I did so merely to illustrate the length of time that alcohol has been an important part of human social activity. Whether or not you follow the Christian faith is irrelevant to the discussion- it just was thrown in to illustrate how deeply alcohol is entwined in the social fabric.
You can’t deny that some people cannot handle alcohol and that it has damaged and ended many lives. But except for cases like drunk driving, which has been singnificantly reduced over the years, any damage is self-inflicted. You don’t say “I want to get drunk so I can get in a car and kill somebody”.
People do indeed buy firearms for the purpose of killing people. Their presence in public makes all of us less safe. If gun use were limited to suicides, I’d be all for it. Knock yourself out. Or off.
And here’s the opposite take:
Pretty simple, actually. The purpose of guns isn’t to kill people unless their own lives are threatened, indeed a good many people’s lives have been saved by them. The purpose of alcohol is to get drunk. Hunting, war and self-defense have been part of mankind’s social fabric for centuries. The Old Testament required Jews to be members of a militia. Alcohol, on the other hand, exists solely to intoxicate, just like most drugs that we have banned. Some drinks exist to get us drunk to the point of passing out, and it has caused millions of deaths.
Just as easy.
Most state Constitutional liberties were patterned after the federal, the only thing the federal did was provide uniformity when scotus ruled.
In “most” respects, the Ohio Constitution’s search and seizure clause is “co-extensive” with the 4th AM, so at least here, whether the 4th was incorporated or not, it matters little.
Right, but state and federal constitutional protections had diverged quite significantly by the time the 14th Amendment was ratified. I don’t care what the various amendments did for people in 1900 (or whenever); I care about what they do now.