Patrick Henry "Ratified": The Treaty Power, It's Perils and Portents

Wildergarten.com ^ | 10-26-09 | Mark Edward Vande Pol

[LomanBill]

>>Yup, a good thing.

Not a bad thing. But sad it’s come to this.

Homer has consumed himself into a corner... primarily because the idiot box told him to.

If only Homer Simpson had learned to shut it off, and instead had followed a moral compass manifested by his mind, created Free by Almighty God to recognize the self-evident truth set down before him - we wouldn’t be where we are. If only.

[LomanBill]

The essence of the 1st amendment is here, carved in stone within the Jefferson Memorial:



Use it or lose it...

Easier to pull a trigger though, than to formulate and articulate a defensible world-view.

Homer Simpson/McVeigh/Klebold/Harris/Atta/Zazi... follows the path of least resistance - mostly just because the Idiot Box tells him to.

Gandhi, OTOH... made salt.

[Carry_Okie]

WRT the expression of religious freedom, does that include Islam? The problem with that is that it crosses the bounds of the individual with its legal mandates. Jefferson knew it.

Gandhi, OTOH... made salt.

Like this?

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest – Mahatma Gandhi,

[bamahead]

Excellent analysis of how treaty power can be used to override and usurp our Constitutionally enshrined liberties. This is rapidly becoming the new M.O. of those who would seek to deprive us.



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[Jim Noble]

I think the Supremacy Clause may very well be the cause of the next civil war. It is poorly written, and there is plenty of room among the words for principled disagreement.

First of all, to state the obvious: If the President and 2/3 of the Senate could amend the Constitution, there would be no need for an arduous amendment process. Second, also obvious: the government erected by the Constitution is not sovereign in the European sense of the word, it exercises certain powers traditional to sovereignty, but only those delegated by the actual sovereign (the People of the United States).

Now, on to the language:

"...any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

I think the proper construction is: "any Thing in [the Constitution or Laws of any State] to the Contrary notwithstanding.", which, expanded to clarity would read "in the Constitution of any State or the Laws of any State". The intent was that individual states could not nullify treaties, either through their state constitutions or their state laws.

But the missing words "of any State" following "the Constitution" allows another construction, i.e., "any Thing [in the Constitution] or [Laws of any State] to the Contrary notwithstanding.", making any Thing refer to BOTH the Federal Constitution and to State laws.

I'm sure Obama and all of his followers prefer #2. And, given the ambiguity of the language, there may be no choice if the thing is pressed than to fight it out.

How bad do you think it's gonna be?

Pretty goddam bad. Probably all the other Families countries will line up against us. That's all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one. You know, you gotta stop them at the beginning. Like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they was just asking for trouble.

[LomanBill]

>>Like this?

 

A wise warrior uses the strengths of its enemy against it; and ours are.

 

Thus it is that the focus of the 2nd amendment's purpose has been obscured and misdirected.  The 2nd has become an obsessive end rather than a means to an end;  the proper end of the 2nd being securing of the 1st amendment. 

 

The 2nd amendment is a failsafe,  intended to be utilized only when free discourse is completely exhausted - or prohibited via tyranny.

 

Homer Simpson's  lack of will or lack of ability to discourse does not equal tyrannical prohibition - yet.    There is no mandate to consume Bread and Circuses.  None is needed when Homer does it so willingly.   Homer having unwittingly become a slave to the tyranny of his own, manufactured, appetites.

"COMMERCE BETWEEN THE MASTER AND SLAVE IS DESPOTISM"

--Thomas Jefferson

 

But what about that "2nd amendment obsession"?  

 

Well, observe that Timothy McVeigh and his Michigan Militia band of loony toons did nothing but prop up the facade of justification for further weakening our rights.

 

Come listen in outside the Federal Farm House:

"Hah! See comrades, they're too stupid to really govern themselves after all, just as we planned!  We'll just continue to build the wall around the farm-house/temple a little higher...  and make them glad we let them carry the bricks!  {laughter}

 

Now, let's have some more milk and apples..."

 

Gandhi was able to free India even without a 2nd amendment.  How?  By making salt.

 

Unlike some, he wasn't interested in scurrying off into the hills and becoming a tribal war-lord, and in so doing further prop up justification for the police-state {with its predicatable response}.

[Carry_Okie]

I think the Supremacy Clause may very well be the cause of the next civil war. It is poorly written, and there is plenty of room among the words for principled disagreement.

Indeed there is. Considering the waffling and bombast cited in the article, one wonders if it was deliberate.

I think the proper construction is: "any Thing in [the Constitution or Laws of any State] to the Contrary notwithstanding.", which, expanded to clarity would read "in the Constitution of any State or the Laws of any State".

I had thought to remove the comma that makes the clause so ambiguous, but your version of it is more explicit.

We need to put together a list of these.

The intent was that individual states could not nullify treaties, either through their state constitutions or their state laws.

That certainly was the pitch, if not the intent. At this point, one has to wonder. Of course there's the maxim, "Never attribute to guile what can be explained by stupidity."

How bad do you think it's gonna be?

Ask Squantos or hiredhand about Chapter 4 in Shemitta. Bad, but using this plan laid out 3,000 years ago, we can do a lot to mitigate and control the outcome. I know this may look like spamming my book, but the system is simply amazing.

[Carry_Okie]

Unlike some, he wasn't interested in scurrying off into the hills and becoming a tribal war-lord, and in so doing further prop up justification for the police-state {with its predicatable response}.

I think you need both. Some folks aren't quite so tame as the British.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

This following Bama-waffling is probably a pressure relieving misdirection that will make it even more difficult (for you and me) to build a resistive bloc because so many simply do not wish to be roused from their comfort zone.

Obama Likely to Skip Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

[devistate one four]

Excellent!

It does show our lack of attention to the fed is costing us every day.

[Carry_Okie]

All he has to do is to assign an agent to sign it and it is binding.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Right, didn’t you make a point about that? It might be worthwhile to highlight it — especially if that story is already posted here at FR. (I haven’t found it yet.)

[Carry_Okie]

Right, didn’t you make a point about that?

Yes, but it probably belonged on top.

[antisocial]

BTTT

[LomanBill]

>>I think you need both. Some folks aren't quite so tame as the British.

 

Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Muslim Sharia Law... nothing but Tribal tumors in various stages of growth.

 

"I SWEAR UPON THE ALTER OF ALMIGHTY GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN"

--Thomas Jefferson

It is this cornerstone, this American ideal, which props up and protects the INDIVIDUAL from the collective will of Tribal tyranny.   Yet how many American individuals are able to articulate it?

 

Easy to get lost when following the Tribal Warlord into the wilderness...  easy to forget the American purpose for governance - "TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS".

 

What happens when the tribal warlord in the wilderness, and his loyal militia, decide they like milk and apples more than they appreciate the inalienable rights of others?

 

 

When Warlord militia wanabees (Tom Metzger and Co. for example) are devising to burn down the village.... better to pee on the matches than strike them.

 

[Avoiding_Sulla]

"Hah! See comrades, they're too stupid to really govern themselves after all, just as we planned! We'll just continue to build the wall around the farm-house/temple a little higher... and make them glad we let them carry the bricks! {laughter}

Your Animal Farm rendition is also reflected by this blogpost that appeared a couple of hours ago.

Here's the pertinent two paragraphs (and I've added emphasis to what matches your comment):

A distant harbinger should make it inescapably clear what our lot would be: the upcoming Copenhagen conference on climate change, which, until recently, Barack Hussein Obama planned to attend [link in original]. That conference is being convened to ponder a 181-page treaty that would erect a supra-national government with the power to tax, to redistribute national incomes, and to impose regulations with the force of law on individuals and businesses anywhere on Earth. Britain's leading spokesman against "climate change" lunacy, Lord Christopher Monckton, has been much in the news for publicizing the details of this treaty [link in original], under which the signatories would essentially yield their claims to national sovereignty, and the super-state would acquire worldwide control of all economic activity.

Saddam Hussein, Ferdinand Marcos, and Anastasio Somoza used the control of a nation's economy to make themselves very rich. Recall what their subjects suffered under their hands. Imagine what the control of the world economy would bring its rulers...and what the rest of us would suffer as the price of their haciendas and the guards around them. (extracted last paragraphs from Hacienda On The Hill: A Post-American Future)

[Carry_Okie]

nothing but Tribal tumors in various stages of growth.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days will be long in the land that the Lord thy G-d giveth thee

Looks to me like tribalism sir.

Tribes are making things a might difficult for the American Army in Afghanistan, and without their cooperation, we'd still be losing in Iraq. The reality is, extended family and religion are the only mitigating social forces besides government. G-d gave us religion and told us to bind as family. The reason Islam is so backward is not its "tribalism" but its religion.

I'd bet you've never looked at the Fifth Commandment that way, but it fits the text and particularly the Hebrew better than the usual "take care of your parents" explanation.

[Carry_Okie]

BTW, in my opinion, you might wish to learn more about the origins of Jefferson's philosophy

[Avoiding_Sulla]

This flow chart suggests how very many may decide on what religion to choose.

Here's the link just in case FR software won't allow the embedding of a jpeg that resides at a blogger address. [WUWT?]

[Avoiding_Sulla]

I’m convinced that many people believe that because we have seemed to ignore treaties in the past (typically noted are ones with Indian tribes) that the Copenhagen treaty would be no different.

It all depends upon the agenda of those sitting in DC unfortunately since they are the ones who will use or not use the power any treaty might provide.

The selectivity needs to be pointed out explicitly. The downside is that DC would make use of powers "granted" by a treaty signed with no oversight by the sovereign (that is US) and then turn around and use said "acquired" power to treat US like DC has treated Indians whose property it coveted.