Posted on 07/26/2014 7:34:52 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
We rely on the Supreme Court to defend the Constitution from the endless assaults on it that chip away our liberty. Too bad Supreme Court Justices don’t have a higher opinion of the document. Ruth Bader Ginsberg has denounced it, recommending instead the socialist constitution of South Africa. The odious Stephen Breyer appears to attack it at every opportunity (e.g., here, here, and here). Now we hear this from swing vote Anthony Kennedy:
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, speaking at the annual conference of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Monterey, waxed eloquent on the deficiencies of the Constitution and implied that those who believe in the original intent of the Constitution by swearing fealty to the original, literal meaning are misguided.
Most of Kennedy’s nearly hour-long speech focused on the Magna Carta, originally signed in 1215 and due for its 800th anniversary next year. But he couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the Constitution, noting, “The Constitution of the United States is a flawed document,” its “thinly veiled language… basically reaffirmed the legality of slavery.” Kennedy was referencing the section of the Constitution in which each slave was defined as three-fifths of a person in the estimation of how many congressional delegates each state was allotted. He added that the soldiers who died in the Civil War were “one of the things it cost for having a Constitution that was flawed.”
At the time the Constitution was written, the economy of the southern states was totally reliant on slave labor. A constitution forbidding slavery would never have held the nation together, because no southern state would have agreed to it.
As liberals tend to forget, slavery was a nearly ubiquitous feature of civilization throughout the world until it was largely ended by Anglo-Saxons in the 19th century, the British navy playing a major role.
Presenting a constitution forbidding slavery in 18th century America would have been a waste of everyone’s time.
That doesn’t mean the Constitution is flawed. It means that it sometimes needs to be amended to keep pace with changing times — as it has been. This is a relatively superficial process, very different from proclaiming the whole thing to be flawed and rejecting it in favor of a “living constitution” that says whatever the prevailing majority wants it to say at any given moment.
Unsurprisingly, the main person the Supremes need to defend the Constitution against also regards it as “deeply flawed.”
Don’t count on Kennedy to stop him.
yea I see my error, thanks I have not notice it in the last 4 years, also hanging the traitors..
So was Reagan “flawed” when he nominated this Kennedy?
This Kennedy must be a shrewd politician, an old Ford man who could deceive Ronald W. Reagan.
But the underlying contention -- that the south's economy was reliant on slave labor -- is true.
To that point, the plantation owner could well produce a 1000 (or more) bales of cotton. But twenty of the smallholders were more likely to produce something like 50 bales of cotton, not a comparable 1000. A standard bale is 500 lbs -- and that is a whole lot of cotton to pick.
Per the National Cotton Council...
Cotton bolls range in size from under 3 grams to over 6 grams per boll. Seed accounts for about 60% of this weight; the remainder is lint. This translates into about 200 to 400 bolls to produce a pound of lint, or 100,000 to 200,000 bolls per bale.
Pre-Civil War, figure 3 grams per boll (or less). Thus, the simple logistics of a cotton harvest (not to mention the tending) severely limited a smallholder's productivity.
The fact is that the primary agricultural crops of the early south -- cotton, indigo, tobacco, etc. -- were all extremely labor-intensive, thereby lending themselves to a plantation economy. There was a reason why slaves had been introduced into the south in the first place. Which is the same reason why the south's economy remained shackled to them -- until, finally, machinery changed the equation.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html
All your examples concerning cotton relate to an era several decades after the 1790s. During the 1790s, tobacco was the main southern crop in Virginia and NC and cotton was grown mostly in SC and Georgia. And the territories that became the other southern states hadn't even been opened for very much settlement.
At the time the Constitution was written, the economy of the southern states was totally reliant on slave labor.
The remark relates to the 1790s, not 1850. Much of central Alabama was still inhabited by the Creek Indians until their defeat by Andrew Jackson in 1814. The cotton growing south didn't exist in 1790.
The link above went dead for some reason.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html
Buy that?
At the time, I believe the most important single crop in the south was indigo -- concentrated in South Carolina and grown in the hot, humid coastal plain.
Very labor intensive -- moreso even than cotton.
Frankly, I don't know why we're still quibbling on this topic. On the one hand, it seems obvious that "totally" was an overstatement and thus inaccurate. And, by the same token, it seems obvious that -- even in the 1790's -- the economy of the south (defined as Virginia thru Georgia) was largely (mainly, importantly, strongly) reliant on slave labor.
Indeed, the best proof of that claim may be that the southern states were prepared to depart the Confederation over it. And they were doubtless the best judges of just how reliant their economy was on that "peculiar institution" at the time.
Which was my original point and still is my main point. So there's little point in continuing this.
Of course it’s flawed. It was written by humans.
It’s still orders of magnitude better than any of the alternatives the Left longs for.
The Constitution is not deeply flawed. It has been amended to fit the changing values of the people of this country as they more adhere to morality with regard to slavery. As far as everything else is concerned, the Constitution is more than adequate. Justice Kennedy is trying to make a legacy for himself by trashing the document that has been his bread winner for a lot of years, knowing he is on his way out. You’d think he’d have a lot more decency!
The most important (and first) commercial crop in the south up until the revolution was tobacco, concentrated in Virginia, Maryland and NC. The link in #67 addresses that.
In all fairness to Reagan, he did nominate 2 other people (rejected by the Dems) before nominating Kennedy to the court.
He was dealing with a nasty Dem controlled senate for most of his presidency.
Sorry judge Kennedy, but the Founders were much more intelligent than you.
5.56mm
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