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To: Amendment10

yeah, anything to help my essay, if you want to red-ink it please do


19 posted on 01/07/2008 12:43:35 PM PST by FREEDOM11 (Let Freedom Ring!)
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To: FREEDOM11
Please feel free to red-ink my red-ink if you don't agree with the points that I bring up.

From your essay:

The first amendment of the constitution, the first Right guaranteed the American people in the Bill of Rights, guarantees all Americans the right to Freedom of Press, Speech and Expression.
Are you aware that the idea that the 1st A. of the federal Constitution guaranteed such freedoms is politically correct hogwash? In fact, James Madison had formerly proposed that the states be required to respect at least some of the privileges and immunities contained in the BoR when the BoR was being drafted. Interestingly the constitutional lawmakers didn't agree to this. So while the states forbade the federal government from infringing on these personal freedoms, the states actually reserved this right for themselves. But I also believe that most of the states had good intentions for our freedoms but wanted to reserve the right to be benevolent dictators in our lives if the need arose.

And if you want more evidence concerning this perspective, Jefferson acknowledged that the states had the power to limit the freedoms protected by the 1st A. of the federal Constitution even if the federal government couldn't do so.

"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed; and thus also they guarded against all abridgement by the US. of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, & retained to themselves the right of protecting the same, as this state, by a law passed on the general demand of it’s citizens, had already protected them, from all human restraint or interference: ..." --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. http://tinyurl.com/oozoo
It wasn't until the post Civil War 14th A. was made that the states were required to respect privileges and immunities protected by the federal Constitution.
20 posted on 01/07/2008 7:58:52 PM PST by Amendment10
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