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The preamble says practically nothing about individual people. It's all about group behavior. The Bill of Rights does say more, but it has large gaps. For comp

The preamble says practically nothing about individual people. It's all about group behavior. The Bill of Rights does say more, but it has large gaps. For comparison, have a look at the German Basic Law: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany_(1991) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Rep... Some choice bits: * Men and women have equal rights. * Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code. * The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority. These are vague, but no vaguer than the US First Amendment, which is rife with all kinds of unspoken limitations. One interesting one: * With regard to open-air meetings [the right to assemble] may be restricted by or pursuant to a law. The US Supreme Court decided that our right to assemble means that the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to be really horrific shitweeds, at funerals. Being abominable is their purpose. They want to make people feel shitty. The German constitution considered those possibilities and decided that the freedom of association could be limited. These are the kinds of things that we didn't consider in the Constitution. We've patched around it -- like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. The German one goes on and on with details. They were written based on their experiences in the 20th century. We find it very hard to fix that.

Turing_Machine 2y ago
> like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. Libel and slander are civil torts. The First Amendment only applies to the government. You cannot, in general, be sued for libel or slander if the quasi-victim is the government, or a government official. You're free to call politicians every nasty name in the book and they can't do much about it. That's what the First Amendment is about.

Turing_Machine 2y ago

> like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. Libel and slander are civil torts. The First Amendment only applies to the government. You cannot, in general, be sued for libel or slander if the quasi-victim is the government, or a government official. You're free to call politicians every nasty name in the book and they can't do much about it. That's what the First Amendment is about.