Tomorrow is Bill of Rights Day, and in honor of that anniversary I want to quote from the speech that President Bush 41 gave to mark the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights in 1991. This speech captures the essence of the late President:
“The genius of the Bill of Rights is that it limits its attention to truly important things and to things over which a must and limited government can exercise some actual control. Two centuries ago, just as now, politics tempted some to take flight from moderation and realism. Edmund Burke complained at the time of those who ‘are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature’
“The framers, however, were practical men. They gave us not a declaration of rights but a Bill of Rights, not a piece of propaganda but a set of legally enforceable constraints on government. Most important, they drafted a Bill of Rights that reflected the higher nature and the aspirations of the American people, a bill that grew out of the American character . . .”