Aug 14, 2026

The Bill of Rights does not grant you a single right. Constitutional scholar Bill Norton walks Jenny Beth Martin through all ten amendments in the concluding lesson of the founding principles series, and the through-line is a distinction most Americans were never taught: those ten amendments protect rights you already had. They do not hand them to you. Read them the other way, Norton says, and whatever government gave, government can regulate or take back. The history is the argument. George Mason refused to sign the Constitution in Philadelphia because it carried no bill of rights. James Madison told him the government had not been given enough power to abuse anyone. Mason answered that they will, because they always do. Alexander Hamilton and Madison had a fear of their own, that listing rights would hand the federal government the authority to define them, and Norton argues both sides were proven right. From there it is amendment by amendment: freedom of conscience as the original name for freedom of religion, the 1735 acquittal of publisher Peter Zenger, the Alien and Sedition Acts and their convenient expiration date, the Second Amendment read militia first, the Third Amendment's principle of pre-consent, writs of assistance and the Internal Revenue Service, the takings clause, and the Ninth Amendment misreading Norton says he made for years. Bill Norton is a constitutional scholar and author of Speaking the Language of Liberty and coauthor of Behind the Bill of Rights. More at jennybethshow.com and teapartypatriots.org.

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