Balko points out that it’s the 215th birthday of the Bill of Rights, a set of ten original amendments to the original U.S. Constitution. "Celebrate its birth, or weep for its death."

How about neither? How on Earth could I, and why would anyone celebrate an act of such presumption as to wrest authority in an area where no human being or institution comprised of them can morally have any such authority? It’s a very simple principle, folks: to grant implies ownership or authority, which necessarily comes with the authority to take away or withhold. Assuming the authority to create a Constitution and grant certain "enumerated rights" means they can be taken away, so no one really has any cause to complain, on that score alone. It’s the wrong argument. It’s all baked in the cake.

No one is alive today to accept responsibility for such a travesty, but the least one can do is to recognize that the new government of America had no more authority to establish a constitution and set of rights than it had, concurrently, to enslave Africans as a matter of law and later set them free as a matter of law. It is principally and precisely the very same thing.

Do you get it? "Freeing the slaves" means: the authority to enslave them was presumed to exist as a prerequisite. What you can properly weep for, slaves, is that the wondrous American experiment started downhill the moment that constitution was ratified.