Roy Moore once proposed eliminating all constitutional amendments except for the Bill of Rights

Roy Moore.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore in 2011 gave an interview to a radio show called Aroostock Watchmen during which he agreed with the host's suggestion that it "would eliminate many problems" to void all the constitutional amendments passed after the first 10, aka the Bill of Rights. A clip of the conversation was uncovered and reported by CNN on Sunday.

"You know people don't understand how some of these amendments have completely tried to wreck the form of government that our forefathers intended," Moore said after his initial assent, specifically citing his objection to the 17th Amendment, which instituted the direct election of senators, who were originally chosen by state legislatures.

"People also don't understand, and being from the South I bet you get it, the 14th Amendment was only approved at the point of the gun," the radio host said next. "Yeah, it had very serious problems with its approval by the states," Moore again agreed, going on to explain that the "danger in the 14th Amendment" is that it was used to restrict "the states from doing something that the federal government was restricted from doing and allowing the federal government to do something which the first 10 amendments prevented them from doing."

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The 14th Amendment prohibits slavery and eliminates the Three-Fifths Compromise; it is also the basis for the doctrine of incorporation, which applies the restrictions of the Bill of Rights to state governments and which is central to Moore's argument here.

Moore does not specify in the audio provided by CNN whether he would exclude any post-Bill of Rights amendments, which include suffrage guarantees to women and minorities, from his condemnation. Listen to Moore's remarks in context here.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.