The Bill Of Alleged Rights: Alleged Right Number One

      The above sentence is your first "right" courteously granted to you by the roomful of wig wearers with pot bellies and ugly wives 250 years ago before anyone told them what a "right" actually is. Since they didn't know, they declared various things "rights" and then proclaimed these "rights" inviolate. Like all proclamations by bureaucrats, the sea just continues to advance and recede depending on where the moon is, rather than what a potbellied man might say after a few drinks. Reality doesn't change, in other words, just because a lawyer writes a law. Only liberty changes. It becomes smaller.
   Notice in the above sentence you are not informed of any actual "rights." What you are informed of is what the newly created entity called "congress" will not be allowed to do regarding this narrow confinement of action. The implication is that it can do anything else;  just not these things listed here in this short sentence. It can't start a religion. Even though it is itself a religion. Why would it support a religion other than itself? So everyone is all excited that Congress is forbidden by - I guess Congress - to start its own counter religion or to establish some already existing religion as the State Religion. Why would it do that, the constitution is already the State Religion.
   Congress shall make no law -  in addition to the above law it wont be making - it wont be making any laws preventing you from talking: from writing: from meeting another person: or from complaining to a bureaucrat's PO Box via a curt missive with a stamp affixed.
   Congress shall make no law abridging these things. That still does not mean you won't be arrested or beaten by cops if you do them. It also doesn't mean that the States or counties or cities cant abridge your alleged rights to do these meaningless things.
   Thank you Congress, you are allowing me perpetually to talk, to compose mail, to meet my friends and to write angry letters to my congressman. How very gracious of you. You will tax me - in a manner laboriously iterated in another part of the constitution, and you will take all my property if you think you need to do that, - in a manner laboriously iterated in another part of the constitution -  but I can call my friend and complain about it afterwards AND I can write you an angry letter.  "You mayest gather, citizen! Yes! Gather you shall do! Assemble! Assemble as is your right as we take all your property. And you too if we like.  And then complain! Complain freely! And write to us about it!! We are anxious to hear from you!!" 
   As all Americans have learned, just because Congress shall make no law  against doing something very normal and insignificant - like preventing you from talking or writing letters or meeting your friends or "gathering" -  that doesnt mean you wont be arrested for it anyway. It all depends on the cop what happens to you. Something that the constitution - that created the cops - neglects to warn you about.