Representative Brown heads bill for Confederate flag license plates

The Walton Sun ^ | 02/28/08 | Sean Boone

[cowboyway]

The Confederate States Constitution was an attempt to forge for the newly seceded states a loose association by federalism, while states rights held the trump cards.

I totally agree.

The United States was founded by rebels. The Confederate States was founded by rebels.

If Osama Obama is elected and the libs carry the House and Senate, conservatives will find themselves facing a very hostile environment and we'll need a lot of rebel spirit.

The past has shown us that once a government policy and the agency that it spawns is in place it never goes away and like a cancer it just keeps growing until it becomes almost a government within the government. If Hussein gets the White House and has a cooperative Congress the country will go hard left and socialist, irreversibly so.

If Osama Obama is elected we'll have an open border with Mexico, which means all of South America and the middle east. The US as we know it will be no more (this is easy enough to demonstrate now by visiting border states and south Florida) and I hope there will be enough rebels left to carve out a section and start afresh.

[rustbucket]

Off topic.

Happy Texas Independence Day, non. March 2, 1836, and March 2, 1861.

[Non-Sequitur]

The Confederate States Constitution was an attempt to forge for the newly seceded states a loose association by federalism, while states rights held the trump cards.

And what rights did the confederate constitution grant the states that they didn't also have under the real Constitution?

[smug]

And what rights did the confederate constitution grant the states that they didn't also have under the real Constitution?

Both were real constitutions, except the USC now failed to have any real constraints. Neither one of them had the power to grant the states rights the rights were the states. The constitutions granted/seceded certain powers to the fed. all others were retained by the states. Davis wished he had had some of the powers that Lincoln had taken, but was constantly thwarted by the governors. see governors, Zebulon Baird Vance and Joseph E. Brown both asserted their states rights over the head of Davis

[Non-Sequitur]

You didn’t answer the question. What state powers did the confederate constitution reserve to the states that were not also reserved to the state under the federal Constitution? And considering the areas where Davis ignored his constitutional limitations - supreme court, tariffs, slavery - why should you believe that he wouldn’t have ignored those reservations of power had it become convenient for him?

[smug]

Article I granted the Confederate Congress the legislative powers "delegated" in the Constitution. This was a major limitation on the power of the Confederate government. The enumerated powers clauses (Art. I, Sec. 8) limited taxes to those providing revenue necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States." This clause specifically forbade any "bounties" or taxes "to promote or foster any branch of industry." Section 8 absolutely prohibited the Congress from appropriating money for "internal improvements intended to facilitate commerce" except for those directly connected to navigation, harbors, and rivers. Under this Constitution there would be no support for national roads, railroads, or other such improvements. It also provided that the executive branch could propose appropriations and needed only a simple majority in Congress to have them adopted, whereas appropriations originating with Congress needed a two-thirds majority to pass. This particular provision strengthened the president vis-�-vis Congress but generally it made the national government less flexible than that of the United States. The Constitution also required that all appropriations be for exact amounts and declared that there could not be "extra compensation to any public contractor, officer, agent or servant." The absolute prohibition on "impa[i]ring the right of property in negro slaves" limited the use of slaves for war activities. These provisions, combined with the lack of a common defense clause in the preamble, were significant departures from the U.S. Constitution and at least potentially hampered the operations of a government that was about to fight a major war with a far richer and more powerful adversary. Finally, in a move to eliminate patronage (which could have undermined the presidents power to run the government), the Constitution prohibited the president from removing civil servants except for "dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency, misconduct, or neglect of duty." The president, however, retained the explicit power to fire cabinet members and diplomats without cause.....
State rights. Directly tied to the limitations on the national government was a respect for state rights. Some scholars have argued that the Confederate Constitution was so extreme on this issue that the Confederacy was doomed to lose the war Others dispute this point. In any event, even a cursory glance at the document shows that in respecting stare rights-- and simultaneously limiting the power of the central government--the Confederate Constitution created a government that was quite different from that in place in the Union. The state rights tone was set in the preamble, which added to "We, the people of the Confederate States," the significant phrase "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character." Article I allowed the states to impeach "any judicial or other Federal officer, resident and acting solely within the limits of any state." Such an officer would then be tried by the Confederate Senate. This provision was never implemented during the life of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, the threat of impeachment may have undermined the ability of Confederate officials to enforce unpopular laws and policies in their state. Article I, Section 10, also allowed states to impose their own import and export duties, something prohibited to the states remaining in the Union. Southern distrust for the national judiciary was apparent in the drafting of Article III of the Confederate document. A key provision of the U.S. Constitution is the clause creating diversity jurisdiction by giving the federal courts the power to hear cases "between Citizens of different States." The Confederate Constitution lacked such a provision, which in practice meant that civil suits between citizens of different states would have to be litigated in state courts. This undermined the nationalization of law and jurisprudence, and had the Confederacy survived, it probably would have led to unnecessary complications in litigation and complaints about the failure of litigants to get a fair trial in a neutral forum. Moreover, in a nation that was predicated on state rights and local interests, the abolition of diversity jurisdiction could have led to a judicial and business climate that would have hampered economic development. The Confederate Constitution also failed to include the phrase "law and equity" in granting jurisdiction to the national courts. This is generally seen as a concession to the civil law system in Louisiana and its vestiges in Texas. A final bow to state rights, and one that could have led to enormous instability, was a provision allowing a constitutional convention to be called on the demand of just three states. During the war, state judges issued writs of habeas corpus directed against military officers trying to impose Confederate conscription. Without a functioning court system, which the Constitution would have allowed but did not mandate, the Davis administration and the Confederate military could only respond to these manifestations of state rights with suspensions of martial law.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/csaconstitutionbackground.htm

[smug]

why should you believe that he wouldn’t have ignored those reservations of power had it become convenient for him?

He would have if he could have, I am sure he wanted to lead the country as a one man government and have the people trust him to get the south through the war, and after winning their freedom return the country to representative constitutional gov't. But every time he ventured out of bounds he was thwarted by people like Brown, Vance, Foote, and the Vice President, Alexander Hamilton Stephens and was scourged by editorials in the Richmond Wig. Some going as far as to say they would rather live under the despotism of Lincoln than lose a single right under the Confederacy.

[usmcobra]

[Non-Sequitur]

Registered Democrat with confederate tags? Appropriate, given the poltics of those who formed the confederacy to begin with. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

[lentulusgracchus]

The Confederate flag is offensive to those who loathe state sovereignty the American idea and the values of the Framers.

There, fixed it.

[lentulusgracchus]

We have allowed the Left to brand the War for Southern Independence as a type of race war for slavery.

That is precisely what they have been doing, and Bill Clinton had the markers at Gettysburg changed by a pair of Columbia Reds to reflect this propaganda message, which he wanted inculcated on visitors to Gettysburg, abolishing the even-handed retelling of events which had been the National Park Service's mission for four generations.

The message is a political one aimed at moderate conservatives in "battleground" States, to encourage them to separate from the Southern conservatives and vote Democratic, by perpetually demonizing Southerners.

It's an attempt to break the Finkelstein Box -- the "red States" -- and every liberal teaching history and/or politics freely concedes the importance to the Left cause of doing this.

Divide et impera. America's motto since 1860.

And people on this board are propagating it.

[lentulusgracchus]

North Carolina and Rhode Island dragged their feet for over a year after the Constitution had been adopted and I'm not aware of any military threats that were made against them.

You ought to be, because you have been specifically informed of the threat uttered against the Rhode Islanders by people in Connecticut, about what would happen if Rhode Island Plantation didn't stop dragging its feet and ratify.

That has been discussed on these boards and original documents quoted. You're responsible for the material now. Don't pretend you never heard of it.

[usmcobra]

You would think that anyone that was proud of rebelling against the US constitution and forcing a war upon this country within it’s borders would be equally proud of which party caused the whole thing and created the symbols they hold so dear.

Sadly most are afraid to make the connection.

[lentulusgracchus]

Shouldn't leaving have the same requirements as entering?

No, and you know why, because the subject has been beaten to death on other threads (and you lost).

Once a State, a State is a State is a State. Nihil Obstat if a State wishes to assume full sovereignty.

Some States, it has also been pointed out to you, were States before they were members of the Union, and that includes States that were not members of the original Thirteen Colonies. I refer to, and we have discussed at length, the cases of Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii.

California "could" be thrown into the mix, but their "Bear Flag Republic" was a put-up job, like the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas (I'm sure you will agree about that last). So arguendo I leave them out.

[usmcobra]

The whole State needing their full sovereignty once they have entered into a contract to give up the independence as a separate nation to a central federal government reeks of a child taking his ball and going home once the game doesn’t go his way.

Most Confederate wannabees understand that, but cannot admit to it, so I’ll say it for them.

I for one am glad the south lost, because if it had won, I’d be some peon of a cotton farm in a country very similar to Mexico today where only the privileged upper class ruled and no better off then the slaves of olden days.

[lentulusgracchus]

The whole State needing their full sovereignty once they have entered into a contract to give up the independence as a separate nation to a central federal government reeks of a child taking his ball and going home once the game doesn’t go his way.

I can see your point, and yes, they'd have to be pretty peeved for that to happen. But "they had the right", and besides that Jefferson had been pretty explicit in saying that he preferred, if the Union had to become two countries for its citizens to be happy, he would prefer that to the use of military force against a State. That's where he parted company with Jackson, who was a Democrat like himself, but fixated on the vision of Manifest Destiny.

Madison, too, and I think Hamilton (but I'll take advice and correction on that) abhorred the idea of using military force against the States by other States or the federal government to obtain political compliance on policy. "Publius" said in The Federalist that it would nullify the Constitution and the Union, and make the latter into something else (he meant, Empire).

The Civil War was basically fought to impose Henry Clay's American System on an agrarian nation that didn't want it, because it was Good for Business (if you were a manufacture or a railroad man).

Remember, Abraham Lincoln wasn't a "rail splitter". He was a railroad, shipping, and patent attorney. He practiced business law.

So did Alexander Hamilton.

Penny drop yet?

[lentulusgracchus]

I for one am glad the south lost, because if it had won, I’d be some peon of a cotton farm in a country very similar to Mexico today where only the privileged upper class ruled and no better off then the slaves of olden days.

Well, since we're into wild speculation, let's just suppose you were born on a cotton farm.

Why do you think you'd be a rightless peon?

You would be a whole hell of a lot less likely to get a visit from an IRS, FBI, or ATF agent, now wouldn't you? How unfree is that?

Visits from OSHA and EPA and ACLU lawyers? Drop-by's from GLAAD and GLSEN and other golems of the HRC at your local schools? How about NOW and NARAL -- do you think the divorce rate would be higher, or lower? Lots of things would be different, not just a few, and not all of them bad.

Since we're speculating and all.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You called me a liar.

No, I said that, since you claimed to have been unable to locate any SUVCW chapters in the south, that you either didn't try very hard or that you're merely incompetent at conducting a web search. I lean toward the former.

[Non-Sequitur]

No, and you know why, because the subject has been beaten to death on other threads (and you lost).

In your dreams.

Once a State, a State is a State is a State. Nihil Obstat if a State wishes to assume full sovereignty.

Once a state. And it becomes a state, is created in effect, by the act of being admitted to the Union. It is admitted by the other states. Once in, it is forbidden to take actions which impact the interests of the other states without the approval of the other states as expressed through a vote in Congress. Yet you would have us believe that they can suddenly do what they want, take what they want, repudiate any obligations that they want by assuming a level of sovereignty that they didn't have before or while a part of the Union. And nothing at all hinders that? The other states have no say in the matter, and therefore have choice but to accept being screwed by the departing states? Absolute nonsense.

Some States, it has also been pointed out to you, were States before they were members of the Union, and that includes States that were not members of the original Thirteen Colonies. I refer to, and we have discussed at length, the cases of Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii.

The fact of which is irrelevant to these discussions. Texas and Hawaii and Vermont still had to be allowed to join the Union. Once in their status was no different that that of the other states, and they enjoyed no special rights that the other states didn't. That includes walking out unilaterally.

California "could" be thrown into the mix, but their "Bear Flag Republic" was a put-up job, like the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas (I'm sure you will agree about that last).

No more put up than Hawaii, but do what you want.

[Non-Sequitur]

You ought to be, because you have been specifically informed of the threat uttered against the Rhode Islanders by people in Connecticut, about what would happen if Rhode Island Plantation didn't stop dragging its feet and ratify.

And was said threat uttered by the government of Connecticut? Or Congress?