@Always
Please don’t give up your day job, you’ll not make it in my profession
“>> Amendments 1-10 were added soon after adoption of the Constitution
There would not be enough states to sign constitution without bill of rights, so they should be considered part of the main body.”
WRONG!!!!!!
The Constitution went into effect on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the 9th of the 13 States to ratify it (until then the US operated under the Articles of Confederation<wonder where the South took their name?>),
There were actually 12 original Amendments passed by the First Congress sent for ratification to the States. Only #s 3-12 were ratified as of December 15th, 1791 and became known as the Bill of Rights and numbered as Amendments 1-10.
The Constitution was ratified by the States and took effect 3 years before the Bill of Rights. Your assertion is incorrect.
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” if you have a general statement that anything not in constitution is reserved to states and people, this is enough to protect personal liberties.”
No such statement exists, The correct statement is that ‘all powers not assigned to the Federal Government is reserved to the States.’ This is where we get the concept of States Rights, Nothing is reserved to the people. The Preamble puts it bluntly: We the People in order to….” The people have ceded their power to a representative form of government and retain rights only through the ballot box that can elect representatives.
Over the years, the Federal Government has usurped powers by claiming things fall under their jurisdiction by using things such as the Interstate Commerce Clause, etc. The SCOTUS has been complicit in this power grab.
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As for your remark about the First Amendment originally meaning Congress, this has been expanded to all levels of Government as all levels accept and operate with Federal funds comingled with state and local funds.
Here in CT, all houses of worship had to be chartered by the State until the late 1800s. Our family belonged to three shuls in New Haven (yes out of town it is common to belong to multiple shuls in town, especially business owners do this to this day) all of whom were chartered by the State of Connecticut.
Towns and villages got their names from the Congregational Church Parish (Puritans) whose pastor or Parish Council acted as local government and levied local taxes for the Constable, jail and school. This ended about 1840. The town I live in is made up of three of those Parishes and they are used as the names of the three main neighborhoods in town.