"George Mason said that the proposed constitution should contain “general principles” about rights."
I happen to agree with Mr. Mason, but we don't typically think meta as a general rule. That requires a commitment to evaluate and refine and agree to common core and absolute principles in a continuous process.
Whether the order as we view it today is indicative of anything I cannot say. If I think in a religious -- specifically Biblical -- context, I see the Ten Commandments later mapped to the Eleventh... you know, the one where Jesus says "That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”, I can say that the 11th is a summation of the other 10 that guides us in how we live to the others. Order becomes less important when we have an understanding of absolutes and non-negotiables that come from common sense... would we like to be treated this way or that? If not, then it is wrong.
As far as the court ruling because of unconstitutionality, I would say the lower court ignores the context all together, seeking instead to cross the artificial boundary of age appropriateness that obscures the more important problem... that we abuse the freedom of speech to call anything that we wish to say as our right by the 1st amendment. Once you acquiesce to this, you enter a space of "eyes wide shut" defense of overloaded meaning to appease and compromise, goals that perhaps seem to gain a little ground but, in effect, only ensure the erosion of the very morality that the Constitution and Bill of Rights seek to protect. These documents were formed with a specific and Scripture-based definition of right and wrong. No, there is no attribution to the Bible in them, really, but people form their thinking and write those thoughts down in a context shaped by those shaping principles. Misappropriating those principles, e.g., as with the overloading of the 1st amendment, shows flagrant disregard of context, and an intellectual sloppiness that does not recognize the damage of compromise in critical areas... to the detriment of all.
