Sonny Tufts
Member

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections... If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house." Robert A. Heinlein

The Constitution states that one of its purposes was "to form a more perfect union". It's a question of degree, not of kind. The status of the States under the Articles of Confederation was that of "a federation of self-governing republics which delegated a few powers" to the central government. But this model didn't work, primarily because the States wouldn't pony up their share of expenses. So they delegated more powers to the central government under the Constitution, especially the power to tax. True.

In the 1961 Billy Wilder classic One, Two, Three, East German secret police torture Horst Buchholz's character by repeatedly playing an insipid hit from 1961, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini. At one point they even play the record off-center to add to the character's misery.