The Bill of Rights: Gift or curse?

While the Founding Fathers were discussing the addition of a list of human rights to the U.S. Constitution, Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 84) objected with the motive that such protections were not only unnecessary but dangerous: "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations." Bills of rights, argued Hamilton "would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?"

In hindsight, we may have been better off had Hamilton's view prevailed. How did we make the transition from the explicit ban on government interference with our "free exercise of religion" to persecuting students for praying in school, the legal battles over Christmas trees and Nativity scenes, or the objections to the mentioning of God in the Pledge of Allegiance and on our money? Were politicians and judges blind for nearly two centuries to the fact that such common practices violate the Bill of Rights? Or is today's government the perpetrator of a crime---taking money out of your pocket to pay public school teachers to harass your children for their religious beliefs?

What should the government do to protect the rest of our rights as listed in the First Amendment? Is it enough to threaten with violence those who contemplate stealing from us so that we may use our private resources to advocate our ideas? Is it necessary to force the citizens to pay for maintaining public TV programs and radio stations or for subsidizing newspapers and books? If you believe that such interference is justified on the grounds that it produces more equitable conditions for the exercise of such rights, you should also support government subsidies for churches with poor congregations. And while we are at it, looking down the list of rights, why don't we tax ourselves to provide free guns to all the homeless?