I was feeling sick. This was not what I'd learned or believed about my country. I put my hand up.
"Yes, Marcus?"
"I don't get it. You're making it sound like the Bill of Rights is optional. It's the Constitution. We're supposed to follow it absolutely."
"That's a common oversimplification," she said, giving me a fake smile. "But the fact of the matter is that the framers of the Constitution intended it to be a living document that was revised over time. They understood that the Republic wouldn't be able to last forever if the government of the day couldn't govern according to the needs of the day. They never intended the Constitution to be looked on like religious doctrine. After all, they came here fleeing religious doctrine."
I shook my head. "What? No. They were merchants and artisans who were loyal to the King until he instituted policies that were against their interests and enforced them brutally. The religious refugees were way earlier."
"Some of the Framers were descended from religious refugees," she said.
"And the Bill of Rights isn't supposed to be something you pick and choose from. What the Framers hated was tyranny. That's what the Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent. They were a revolutionary army and they wanted a set of principles that everyone could agree to. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The right of people to throw off their oppressors."
"Yes, yes," she said, waving at me. "They believed in the right of people to get rid of their Kings, but --" Charles was grinning and when she said that, he smiled even wider.
"They set out the Bill of Rights because they thought that having absolute rights was better than the risk that someone would take them away. Like the First Amendment: it's supposed to protect us by preventing the government from creating two kinds of speech, allowed speech and criminal speech. They didn't want to face the risk that some jerk would decide that the things that he found unpleasant were illegal."
She turned and wrote, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" on it.