Who wrote the US Constitution and what was their ethical standpoint when writing it?
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Really, I think this is pretty basic stuff that you can find on your own.  You shouldnt trust random people on a question board to help you understand something so basic to what our nation is about.
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From 1777 to 1788 when the Constitution was ratified, the Articles of Confederation was the governing document of the United States. The articles gave the majority of power to the states to establish their own laws. The Constitution was written by the Second Continental Congress in order to give the federal government more authority. The Bill of Rights was written in 1789 in response to concerns that the constitution gave the federal government too much power.
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Lincoln put it best when he said, "Government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth." Also the magnificent words of Thomas Jefferson. "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That amongst these are Life., Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  "  Hard to improve on the words of these two statesmen when speaking of America's values.
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2 words buddy, John Locke. If you talk about Locke, and "The Rights of Man" you should be OK. Use Wikipedia, and look up his Second Treatise on Government.
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It was formally signed on August 2, 1776, with some members adding their names after that date.  \n\nHistoric US document stating the theory of government on which the USA was founded, based on the right ‘to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. The statement was issued by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776, renouncing all allegiance to the British crown and ending the political connection with Britain.\n\nFollowing a resolution moved on 7 June, by Richard Henry Lee, ‘that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States’, a committee including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin was set up to draft a declaration; most of the work was done by Jefferson.\n\nThe resolution, coming almost a year after the outbreak of hostilities, was adopted by the representatives of 12 colonies (New York abstained initially) on 2 July, and the Declaration on 4 July; the latter date has ever since been celebrated as Independence Day in the USA. The representatives of New York announced their adhesion on 15 July, and the Declaration was afterwards signed by the members of Congress on 2 August.\n\nThe declaration enumerated the grievances the colonists harboured against the British crown, which included its use of American Indians to attack colonists, taxation without representation, and denial of civil liberties
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Fortunately, the First Amendment does not say that ignorant White-trash Christians get to make the rules and run the country, and you could not be more correct in your view of them. Conservative Christians want to rewrite the US Constitution and undermine our secular democratic republic (the real America) so they can replace it with a Theocratic government based on the rape-torture-kill morality of their Old Testament-style God. \n\nThey want to be the makers and enforcers of the law of the land, and they will torture and kill all who do not obey. They have always been this way. John Adams noted that only the law stood between them and their desire to, “"whip and crop, and pillory and roast” us.\n\nThe Founding Fathers purposefully created a secular democratic republic to be the government of the United States and the foundation of American society, They intentionally excluded religion, specifically Christianity, form having any part of, or influence on, American government and public life.\n\nThey made certain that not a single reference to God, Jesus, or Christianity would appear anywhere  in the Constitution (which is THE ONLY document defining and establishing the government of the United States).\n\nThis certainly was made clear in 1797 when the young US Congress unanimously passed (beginning while George Washington was president and signed into law by John Adams) \nThe following statement into law:\n\n“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”\n\nhttp://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm\n\n\nIt is, in fact, well established that although the Founding Fathers (they were, after all, politicians and had to play to their audience just as today’s politicians do) publicly said the correct things about Christianity (as ABRAHAM LINCOLN put it, they were, ‘.. as religious as [they] need[ed] to be to get votes”), in their private writings to each other where they were free to express their true feelings, they mostly held Christianity and all organized religion as contemptible superstition.\n\nIn their own words:\n\nJAMES MADISON: \n\n•Christianity neither is, nor ever was apart of the common law. Feb. 10, 1814 \n\n•The establishment of the chaplainship to Cong[res]s is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.\n\n\nJOHN ADAMS:\n\n •“How has it happened that millions of myths, fables, legends and tales have been blended with Jewish and Christian fables and myths and have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed? Filled with the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?” (Letters to F.A. Van Der Kamp 1809-1816) \n\nTHOMAS JEFFERSON: \n\n•“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.” \n\n•“In every country and in every age the priest [any and every clergyman] has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” \n\nABRAHAM LINCOLN:\n\n•“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvationand the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.” (to Judge JS. Wakefield, after Willie Lincoln's death) \n\nMARY TODD LINCOLN: \n\n•“Mr. Lincoln was not a Christian.” \n\n\nJOHN TYLER: \n\n•“The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent -- that of total separation of Church and State. (letter dated July
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try this site\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution
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Are you talking about the English Magna Carta or the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the USA.???\nIt is confusing.
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Thomas Jefferson used the social contract theory to say that since the king was not governing as the people needed, we had the right to form our own government. (Declaration of Independence)\n\nJames Madison wrote the Constitution. His first line was "We the people..."
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Let me offer a different perspective.\n\nThe rights of the people are inherent in the sovereign nature of the people.  This was recognized long before there was a United States Constitution.  All thirteen States (existing when the U.S. Constitution was drafted and proposed to the several States) had Constitutions and many had Bills of Rights listing various individual rights.  Listing of rights was not a new practice as many had occurred in the past such as the Petition of Rights [1628] and the Bill of Rights [1689].  Even Magna Carta [1215] could be consider a form of rights.\n\nThese acts and documents (along with many others) provided the fodder for our ever evolving Common Law which is to a significant degree based on a recognition of individual sovereignty.\n\nThere is a significant difference between those bills of rights and the one attached to the U.S. Constitution as the first 10 articles of amendments and that is due to the nature and intent of the U. S. Constitution.  This constitution was not written to protect our individual rights, such protection already existed in the Common Law and the existing Constitutions of the States and the Founders were very familiar with such a perspective.  This constitution was intended to create a general government to act in for the States in some “limited” functions.  This general government was the creature (that which was created) the contract (the constitution) as ratified by the creators (the States) acting for the people.  By the way in the Treaty of Peace [1783] article one names each State and recognizes them each as free, independent and Sovereign.  As far as I am aware such as never been recanted and only has limed mitigation through the limited delegated powers of the constitution. \n\nBecause of the experience that those of the Founder age had with general governments, there was a desire among many to include a bill of rights (not trusting the general government to adhere to the constitution).  There were others (such as Alexander Hamilton) who strongly disagreed (refer to the Federalist Papers) because they felt there was no need since the general government existed only in the delegated powers of the constitution and could do no more.  However, to get the votes from the various delegates to the constitutional convention for the newly proposed constitution, an agreement was struck to have as one of the very first acts of the new congress the drafting and proposing to the several States a “Bill of Rights.”\n\nThis occurred with James Madison assigned the task and he used the as a guide the list of rights in the then existing Virginia Constitution.  He drafted 12 and they were proposed to the legislatures of the States.  Ten of these were ratified by the States and became the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States.  These are unique in that they are less a listing of rights than they are meant of to be controls on the new general government. That is, the first 8 amendments are exclusionary in nature in they exclude the general government from specific acts.  The last two articles are declaratory statements of basic truths.  None of these ten articles convey any rights but simply recognize the existence of such rights and that the general government cannot abuse them.\n\nClearly though the years the federal general government has step by step pushed aside the meaning of the articles of the bill of rights, some steps slowly and others overtly.  The overt use of the 14th Amendment to apply the articles of the bill of rights to the States when they are singularly intended for the general government is one such use.  The slow misprinting of some amendments (changing them without an amendment) such as the second amendment which today is commonly written with three commas and yet was proposed to the State Legislatures and ratified by them with a single comma after the word State, has changed its meaning extra-constitutionally.  The meanings of the
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The Preamble to the United States Constitution is generally believed to have been written by Gouverneur Morris. Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) was an American political leader and diplomat who led the committee that produced the final draft of the U.S. Constitution (1787).\n\nA superb orator, eloquent writer, and fine literary stylist, Morris was a member (1775–77) of the provincial congress of New York, helped to draft the first state constitution, and served on the Council of Safety. Morris sat (1778–79) in the Continental Congress, where he was prominent in financial, military, and diplomatic affairs. \n\nMorris is widely accredited as the author of the US Constitution's Preamble: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...".\n\nMorris is regarded as a visionary of the idea of being "American". In an era when most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris expounded the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states
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James Madison wrote the Preamble and the rest of the Constitution.
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people\n\n\n\n\nWe the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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James Madison (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was the fourth (1809–1817) President of the United States. He was co-author, with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, of the Federalist Papers, and is traditionally regarded as the Father of the United States Constitution.\nFor more info, go to:
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constitution and Bill of rights
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James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights which was ratified by the First United States Congress.  Madison based his draft on George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights.
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"We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America"\n\nTranslation:  We're making this constitution for us and our children, in order to: \n1. create a new country \n2. figure out how we're going to pass laws \n3. defend ourselves and create a national army \n4. help people live in safety and health \n5. make sure we all keep certain freedoms\n\n"Freedom" is easy to create.  The problem is how to make it last, and the writers of the constitution did a pretty good job, more or less.