January 16

If drunkards wrote the Bill of Rights, we're lucky

Letter to the Editor

I have some comments about Robert W. Vitolo's letter published Jan. 8. Our nation has persevered for some 236-plus years. The framers of the Constitution, deep in their cups according to Vitolo, demanding of innkeepers "another gill of hot buttered rum 'round the table," still managed to be sufficiently coherent as to create a most perfect blueprint for the people to control their government.

The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments) is a prioritized list of divine rights and vehicles to so protect and extend those rights.

The freedom of speech enjoyed by Vitolo is one of the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment, along with freedoms of religion and press, peaceable assembly and to petition government for redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment was added next, so the citizenry could protect the First Amendment, as well as all other amendments, from their government becoming tyrannical.

So if the Founding Fathers were the sots Vitolo believes, perhaps we could look to Abraham Lincoln for advice. When officials confronted Lincoln with rumors about Gen. Ulysses Grant's drunkenness, the president is reported to have said, "If [drink] makes fighting men like Grant, then find out what he drinks, and send my other commanders a case!"

Bad guys do bad things, and it is my right to do whatever I can, legally, to defend against those bad guys.

Vitolo bid the founding fathers to sleep well. I suggest Vitolo may sleep well, thanks to the founding fathers.

Michael A. Cameron

Winthrop

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