I received a half dozen emails over the past week from various sources inviting me to think about what Independence Day, and correlatively, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, mean to me? What does the Bill of Rights mean to a progressive, feminist, environmentalist (contrasted, for example, with someone whose life passion is to prove that true freedom is the right to carry a gun)?
When was the last time you thought about the Bill of Rights? What does it mean to you? Does it have a different meaning for you as an individual and you than as part of a collective?
I think about the Bill of Rights all the time. It is mostly about what the state can’t do to you. It leaves out whole categories of rights, including basic economic justice. Thus we have no Constitutional right to subsistence, shelter, education, health care.