Remember back in the day when some people used the term “Polak” to imply someone that is dim witted?

Well the Poles just kicked our butts in programming!

I wonder if soon the term “American” will become synonymous with laziness and ignorance? Wait, are we too late?

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

or

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity

The Bill of Rights was ratified 216 years ago today.

But did you know…

The idea of adding a bill of rights to the Constitution was originally controversial. The argument was that the Constitution, as written, did not explicitly enumerate or guarantee the rights of the people, and as such needed an addition to ensure such protection. However, many Americans at the time were opposed to the idea of a bill of rights: If such a bill were created, they feared that it would eventually come to be interpreted as a list of the only rights Americans had. In other words, if interpreted narrowly, the existence of such a bill of rights could effectively be used to constrain the liberty of the American people instead of ensuring it. For example, Alexander Hamilton opposed any such bill of rights, writing:

It has been several times truly remarked, that bills of rights are in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was Magna Charta, obtained by the Barons, sword in hand, from king John….It is evident, therefore, that according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations. “We the people of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.” Here is a better recognition of popular rights than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our state bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government….
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power. (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, 575-581, 28 May 1788)

Excerpt from the all knowing Wikipedia