Mr. Dickson said that the Constitution worked just fine because it preserved his First Amendment rights. He should have asked the question: Why? The reason is that the Founding Fathers had newspapers and books.
They knew what they wanted to protect. But they did not have electricity, cars, GPS units and thousands of things we take for granted. Consider a recent case. Without a warrant and the citizen”s knowledge, the police put a GPS unit on his car. Is this an invasion of privacy under the Fourth Amendment?
The point is the Founding Fathers created a document that was to regulate government in a civilization that they knew and understood. They could no more create a comprehensive document that would regulate the modern world than we could pass laws relating to time travel. To compensate, government has been forced to resort to judicial interpretation, implied powers, and Constitutional intent. Ironically, even the power of the Supreme Court to decide on the Constitutionality of law is not in the Constitution.
Every American reveres the Constitution, but the Constitution is not the Bible. It is a working document for government that has to change with the times.
Charles Moton
Lucerne
