Posted on 11/13/2009 8:07:21 AM PST by wysiwyg
During the Constitutional Convention, from May to September 1787, delegates from the colonies were to gather together for the express purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation to form a “more perfect union” (NOT a completely different union!). The men that met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were under direct and limited orders from their states to attend the Federal Convention explicitly to preserve the federation and State rights and to correct the errors of the existing federal government for the limited purposes of handling foreign affairs, commerce among the states and common defense.
Yet, during that private and secret convention, there were men who proposed that a national system be established in place of their current federal system, destroying State sovereignty in direct contradiction to their orders. (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, vol. 1, 2nd ed., [Philadelphia, PA, JB Lippincott, 1891], 121) Of course, the public was not aware of this fact until years after the ratification of the Constitution, when the notes taken in the convention were printed and released to the public.
(Excerpt) Read more at tenthamendmentcenter.com ...
Constitutional Deconstruction:Obama,Pelosi,reid,congress.
The author is loose with facts regarding the Articles of Confederation and the Convention.
However, there is no argument that our federal government is out of control. It is asking for an uprising. I hope a state finally challenges the feds soon in no uncertain terms.
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Folks, another common sense article from which we might be able to extract some pearls for use in discussions with less informed types. As far as I know there's no reason to excerpt articles from The Tenth Amendment Center, so, the whole enchilada...
During the Constitutional Convention, from May to September 1787, delegates from the colonies were to gather together for the express purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation to form a “more perfect union” (NOT a completely different union!). The men that met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were under direct and limited orders from their states to attend the Federal Convention explicitly to preserve the federation and State rights and to correct the errors of the existing federal government for the limited purposes of handling foreign affairs, commerce among the states and common defense.
Yet, during that private and secret convention, there were men who proposed that a national system be established in place of their current federal system, destroying State sovereignty in direct contradiction to their orders. (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, vol. 1, 2nd ed., [Philadelphia, PA, JB Lippincott, 1891], 121) Of course, the public was not aware of this fact until years after the ratification of the Constitution, when the notes taken in the convention were printed and released to the public.
Indeed, those who proposed such a national system of government (e.g., Alexander Hamilton, John Dickinson and James Madison) would not have the people of the states aware of this proposal for fear of outright rejection of the Constitution and for fear that they would remove their delegates from the convention altogether, giving no chance of success for the ratification of a new Constitution. It was hush-hush for good reason. In fact, Alexander Hamilton was so tactful on the subject that he did not even present his nationalistic notions as a constitutional proposal, but only as his ideas of what America should be. (Ibid., 123) Despite these proposals, in the end, it was a federalist system that prevailed–a union of states and not a union of people, whereby the states retained complete and absolute sovereignty over all matters not delegated to the federal government. The states were indeed co-equal with the federal government. So, what was it about the national system that was rejected during the convention?
The most notable proposal reveals the underlying foundation for all national principles: that is, the national government possesses superior sovereignty to force the states to submit to the laws made by the national government and to negate any State law it deems repugnant to the articles of union. This supreme power was proposed (but rejected) as follows during the Federal Convention: the to-be national government should possess the power to “negative all laws passed by the several states contravening, in the opinion of the national legislature, the articles of union, or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the Union.” (Ibid., 207) Hamilton, and his like, would have loved it had this national principle of supreme sovereignty been accepted by the delegates. Thankfully, it was not accepted. In fact, as the convention progressed, what became apparent to those who advocated for this national form of government is that their ideas would never be accepted and ratified.
History proves with absolute certainty that a national government and its assuming principles were rejected, not only by the framers of the US Constitution, but also by those who sent delegates to the Federal Convention and who ratified the US Constitution at their State conventions. More important than the limited powers of the federal government, the people of the states rejected the nationalist doctrine that the federal government had the power to negate State laws that it deemed contrary to the Constitution. (John Taylor, New Views of the Constitution of the United States, [Washington DC, 1823], 15).
So, how is it that while the people of the states expressly forbade the federal government from interfering with the internal affairs of the states the federal government can now control nearly every facet of life within the states and the states supposedly can do absolutely nothing about it? Most attorneys who think they know so much about America’s history and the US Constitution would say, “The United States Supreme Court is given the power to say what the Constitution means and that over the years, they have interpreted Congress’ power to reach the internal affairs of a State.” It is the “living Constitution” idea, simultaneously coupled with nationalistic doctrine, which proclaims that the actual meaning of the Constitution can change over time, and that such change is constitutional and does not deny the people their freedom protected under the compact of the Constitution.
Interestingly, the “living Constitution” idea is only used when it promotes a constitutional “construction” that expands and empowers the federal government and neuters the State governments. The “living Constitution” idea (advanced by the British Parliament) in fact is the very notion that caused America’s War for Independence. (Claude Halstead Van Tyne, The Causes of the War of Independence, Volume 1, [Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922], 235, 237)
The ludicrous proposition of a “living Constitution” begs numerous critical questions involving the very foundation of a free society, not the least of which is this: If the meaning of the Constitution can change over time, why did the Constitution’s framers spend nearly five months debating which words should be placed in the Constitution? More than that, why would the framers be so emotionally, mentally, intellectually and intensely involved in the question of what form of government we will have: national or federal?
How can it be that the judiciary branch of the federal government, which is not even politically responsible to the people or the states whatsoever (and only ever so slightly to the other federal branches), has the sole and complete power to say that the states have no power to interpret and comport to the US Constitution as they deem constitutional, when that same power was expressly rejected to the national government during the convention? After all, Hamilton and Madison both admit throughout the federalist papers that the states have complete and absolute sovereignty regarding the powers retained by them and granted to them by the people of each State, just as any foreign nation would. Both Hamilton and Madison admit that the only check on power is another independent power and thus, the only real power that could check federal power was State power. They even expected that the states would use their sovereign and independent power to the point of being the voice and, if necessary, the “ARM” of the people to implement a common defense against the federal government.
Both Hamilton and Madison admit that the federal government can never force the states out of existence and can never strip them of their rights and powers possessed prior to the ratification of the US Constitution, except as delegated to the federal government. They even refer to the states’ right of self-defense in this regard to resist federal tyranny. Was this mere “bait and switch” rhetoric to get the people of the states to ratify what they thought was a pure federal system? How can the states possess the absolute sovereign power to check federal tyranny when they are bound to submit to the federal government’s interpretation of the Constitution? The two positions are necessarily incompatible with each other. To say that you have power, so long as I say you have power is to deny your power altogether.
Quite obviously, in no place does the Constitution grant to the federal government (in any branch) superior sovereignty over the states. Instead, the Constitution requires ALL parties to it (State and federal) to comply with the Constitution, as it is the supreme law of the land. All the framers agreed that federal government and federal law do not equal the “supreme law of the land.” Both the federal government and the federal laws are bound by the terms to which all must comply. Thus, all parties must be watching each other to ensure each is complying with the compact. And as was admitted by even the most ardent nationalist (i.e., Daniel Webster) of America’s earlier history, each party to a COMPACT has the sole right to determine whether the other party has complied with the compact.
But over the years, a political idea contrary to our original federal system was adopted–not through open discussion and consent, but by fraud and force. This position states that whatever the federal judiciary rules equates to the “supreme law of the land” and the states must comply therewith, regardless of whether the federal law usurps the power the states retained under the Constitution. What the nationalists were unable to obtain through honest and open debate during the conventions they have obtained through the erroneously construed “supremacy” clause of the Constitution.
What the federal government was denied through constitutional debate and ratification the nationalists have procured through masquerade, subterfuge and trickery. America has been duped into accepting a national government, not by interpolation, but by deceptive “construction.” If the federal government has the power to usurp its powers without a countermanding power checking its encroachments, where is the genius in our framers’ form of government?
Was this form of government the form that best secured our happiness and freedom? And if our framers in fact bequeathed to us a federal system, whereby the states were co-equal with the federal government in sovereignty and power regarding their powers, then where comes the notion that we now have a national system, whereby the states are mere corporate branches of the federal government? Where were the constitutional debates on that subject? Where was the surrendering of sovereignty by the states, which can only be done through expressed and voluntary consent? Where was the right of the people to establish the form of government most likely to effect their safety and happiness? Do we just accept the fact that our form of government can change over time without express and legal action being taken to effect that change? God forbid!
In 1776, the colonies rejected the European (nationalist) form of government. In the UNITED STATES, the people of the states ardently believed that their freedoms would be best protected if each of their agents (State and federal) possessed equal power to check the other against encroachments of power and freedom. This was the “more perfect union” of the US Constitution. How could the founders have suggested that the US Constitution was a “more perfect union” as a nationalist system, when the nationalist system was the very system they seceded from and rejected? That is nonsense!
Ironically, the very document that was designed to perpetuate these principles of federalism has in fact been de-constructed to destroy those same principles, leaving us with the very form of government that our framers and the Constitution’s ratifiers rejected. In the end, if the people of the states do not once again reject this national form of government and assert and defend the principles of federalism–the principles upon which America was founded–then this supposed federal power of constitutional “construction” will in fact be our freedom’s destruction.
BTTT
Thank you ForGod’sSake.
Allowing the marxist federal government a “living constitution” is like playing poker with someone who can change the rules, but you can’t. His deuces beat your kings every time.
AWESOME Post! Thank you for pinging me to it!~
Thanks! I found it might be useful when trying to explain our Constitutional system to “swing” voters or even those that vote infrequently or rarely. We somehow need to light a fire under the non political folks in and around us. Fugitabout the far left. I have spent years trying to convert hard core leftists and have come to the conclusion their minds are made up and will NOT be confused with facts. IOW, they could care less if they’re led off to the plantations. Useful idiots one and all!
Brainwashing is almost impossible to defeat. Too bad the marxists have infiltrated the heights of our society and now control the minds of 30% of us. Another 20-30% they win over with specious, pernicious lies to a dumbed-down population, people who know “what” to think instead of how to think. In 2010, get ready for the propaganda onslaught; it’s going to get muddy.
Heh, I'm not so sure it can get any worse than what Bernie Goldberg has described as a "Slobbering Love Affair" with odinga but the dinomedia, that is what's left of it, will no doubt try to outdo themselves in 2010. We can hope that by 2012 the NYT, LaLa Times, WaPost, etc will be pushing up daisies in the dinomedia boneyard which would give some relief.
A problem you point out that's every bit as large, maybe larger, are the indoctrination centers that once upon a time were actually centers of education and learning. Places where kids were encouraged to think for themselves, pursue excellence, and yes, even COMPETE with others. Unbridled competition is a threat to marxists of course and must be crushed every time it rears its enlightened head. Fascism, marxism, whatever cannot withstand the rigors of scrutiny or competition so dissent must be eliminated.
This problem can only get worse unless conservative, traditional values folks like ourselves can figure out a way to stop this nonsense in its tracks.
I HAVE A PRESENT FOR ALL OF YOU... I HAVE GAINED ACCESS TO THE ENEMY’S LITTLE SECRET WEAPON TO PUSH HEALTH CARE DOWN OUR THROATS... AND WE CAN NOW USE IT AGAINST THEM!
Obama provides his people a link to contact media to support health care bill! Spread the word!
we can use this same link to OPPOSE it. Dick Morris says we have to get 8% points in disapproval ratings to defeat it! Please follow this link, send your letter of opposition. (and continue to fax)
Thanks Sandra for providing me this info:
Barack Obamas “ Organizing for America “ has put the call out for people to Email their local papers and write a letter to the editor. They have created a VERY easy and fast way to write all your local papers with just a few key strokes. PLEASE take a minute to do this today and jump behind enemy lines to help kill the bill.
Here’s what we need to do:
Go to : http://my.democrats.org/page/speakout/posthouseLTE
1. Put in your Zip code. You will be redirected to a page where you enter all your address information.
2. Check all the boxes for all of your local papers.
3. NOW CAREFUL THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART ! DO NOT CLICK NEXT. Instead Click “ 2. Compose Letter “ this is in the top middle of the page. This will allow you to compose your own letter to the editor against the health care bill.
4. Write your letter to the editor against the health care bill.
5. Now click Next
6. Preview your letter to the editor and click Send Email
HERE IS MY OWN JEWEL TO A DOZEN NEWSPAPERS (LOL)...
So... senator, you say you are from the government, and you are here to “help” me? Read my lips, sir: I am an AMERICAN. I am not a slave. I do NOT need nor want your help. I do not need nor want your determination of “What is best for me.” That proscription includes my choices of where I live, what I eat or drink, how I travel, what physician I select, and the methods I determine best effect my personal defense. You see, senator, I too am “pro-choice” — and I choose to keep my freedoms. Kindly keep your hands off.
I have come to understand a paramount axiom about the largess of centralized power: At each instance the government, or one of its agents, enacts a “plan to help,” two results occur simultaneously without exception — my wallet and my freedoms both shrink.
It is in the eternal nature of things that governments do not exist to help individuals, without first exponentially enlarging themselves ... thus further growing their appetite for power at the expense of personal liberty.
Exactly where within our Constitution do the 18 powers delegated to Congress confer the authority to determine my health care? You will not find any such power. Moreover, the Tenth Amendment is quite explicit in further defining the line of demarcation:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Tenth Amendment states a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.
What is the root of all this government desire to control every aspect of American life? Two words: general welfare. A phrase that appears only twice in the Constitution — the Preamble and Section 8 of Article I.
What of the Preamble of the Constitution? A preamble is used to state the principles and the purpose of the document. The Preamble of the Constitution reads:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The preamble of the Constitution establishes no powers or rights. No further development of what “general welfare” means can be made based on the preamble. So let us next examine Article 1, Section 8:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
Congress would have us convinced that this ‘General Welfare’ clause grants them the power to provide health care; but a cursory reading of the Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 absolutely refutes such a claim. The General Welfare clause was not an independent grant of power. What did “welfare” mean in the age of the Founders?
In the 1828 edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, here is how the word “welfare” was defined 40 years after it was written in the Constitution:
WEL´FARE, n. [well and fare, a good going; G. wohlfahrt; D. welvaard; Sw. valfart; Dan. velfærd.]
1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.
2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applies to states.
A distinction is made with respect to welfare, as applied to persons and states. In the Constitution, welfare is used in the context of states and not persons. The “welfare of the United States” is not congruous with the welfare of individuals, people, or citizens.
The heading statement of Article 1, Section 8, confers on Congress powers to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. It then states the purpose of this in broad terms, to be expressed in detail in the list of 18 powers that follows. This purpose is that the funding placed at Congress’ disposition is to be used for federal and state debts due to the Revolutionary War, for future defense, and for the “general welfare of the United States.” It concludes with limiting the duties, imposts and excises to amounts that would be uniform among the states. No more is stated here than a basic power to tax and spend. All other details, as to what, specifically, the tax revenue may be spent on, follows in the list of 18 specific powers.
“General welfare” was a term transferred from the Articles of Confederation. However, its meaning at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was plain: no local interests could be provided aid from the federal government. The General Welfare clause entailed the good of the Union, the binding of states together for their mutual benefit, the health of the separated powers, and the federalist structure — not the health and well-being of groups or individuals. The benefit of this “general welfare” had to be a benefit for all rather than some people, without it being a direct benefit to every individual. It had to be limited to “public use.”
During the Convention, Alexander Hamilton, John Dickinson and James Madison advocated a strong central “nationalist” government, supreme in all, and that could provide all manner of public goods. Jefferson advocated a federal government of limited powers.
What was it about the national system that was rejected during the convention?
The most notable proposal reveals the underlying foundation for all national principles: that is, the national government possesses superior sovereignty to force the states to submit to the laws made by the national government and to negate any State law it deems repugnant to the articles of union. This supreme power was proposed (BUT REJECTED) as follows during the Federal Convention: the to-be national government should possess the power to “negative all laws passed by the several states contravening, in the opinion of the national legislature, the articles of union, or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the Union.— (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, vol. 1, 2nd ed., [Philadelphia, PA, JB Lippincott, 1891], 207)
Hamilton’s principle of supreme sovereignty WAS NOT ACCEPTED by the convention delegates. What became apparent to those who advocated a national form of government is that their ideas would never be accepted and ratified. History proves that a national government and its assuming principles were rejected, not only by the framers of the Constitution, but also by those who sent delegates to the Federal Convention and who ratified the US Constitution at their State conventions. More important than the limited powers of the federal government, the people of the states rejected the nationalist doctrine that the federal government had the power to negate State laws that it deemed contrary to the Constitution. (John Taylor, New Views of the Constitution of the United States, [Washington DC, 1823], 15)
In 1776, the colonies rejected the European (nationalist) form of government. In the UNITED STATES, the people of the states believed that their freedoms would be best protected if each of their agents (State and federal) possessed equal power to check the other against encroachments of power and freedom. This was the “more perfect union” of the US Constitution. How could the founders have suggested that the US Constitution was a “more perfect union” as a nationalist system, when the nationalist system was the very system they seceded from and rejected? If the federal government may usurp its powers without a countermanding power checking its encroachments, then where is the genius in our form of government?
What the federal government was denied through constitutional debate and ratification the nationalists have procured through masquerade, subterfuge and trickery. The very document designed to perpetuate principles of federalism has been de-constructed to destroy those principles, leaving us with the very form of government that those who framed and ratified our Constitution rejected.
What we presently have is not a limited central power, counterbalanced in federal union with independent sovereign states, but rather we are savaged through the repugnant perversion of power called totalitarianism.
By deceptive “construction,” America has been duped into accepting a nationalist government, and by guided global “consensus” we will be conned to accept an internationalist government. The American concept of ordered liberty, threatened by an arrogant and increasingly bellicose dogma, will be forever changed into something wholly alien to our founding principles. We will be coerced by powers which demand we surrender every vestige of our hard-fought liberty to a “We know best” international socialist authority that demands every aspect of our lives fall in line with its freedom eradicating formula of “sustainability” and “smart growth.” What is sustainable? Nothing that is American... including our health care system, which is why the elites are so desperate to “reform” it out of existence.
The reason we must surrender that which works? Global control. Pseudo science has given us all manner of convenient crises so to achieve that most coveted objective: the population explosion hoax, the climate change hoax, the pandemic hoax, and a host of other globalist groupie gibberish that the “We know best” tyrants are manipulating to steal our wealth, our land, our health, and whatever else they deem “unsustainable” in their brave new world — Soon they will steal our very lives.
Americans do not need health care reform as much as we need government reform — and fast. Because if we cannot obtain it through the ballot box, then it must surely come by way of the ammo box.
Thanks! We all know this stuff. But this choir has an obligation and a duty as American Citizens to re-educate the public-at-large about Constitutional rule of law.
These people who blatantly manipulate the people into supporting their own enslavement choose their words very carefully in order to distract people away from their goals.
We see how blatantly ignorant Congress is on Constitutional law when asked simple questions. Their answers are deflection and attempted humiliation of those who ask LEGITIMATE QUESTIONS.
But we HAVE to ask those questions and demand real answers.
And when that congressperson deflects the question, we have to step up to the challenge. Especially when there are news cameras recording the questions.
The last thing someone from congress can handle is a peon citizen challenging their “authority” and knowledge.
We can’t melt under the attack. We have to be stronger and more defiant. And especially be better informed. We have to KNOW the answers to our questions and be prepared to share the answers even if the Polly’s don’t want to know.
How can people challenge the lawlessness of congress if they don’t know what questions to ask?
Heartily agree BUT, I believe fully a third of the electorate, maybe more, have signed on as one of the various groups of victims cultivated by our Dim congresscritters spreading of manure. They are convinced the plantation is nirvana. They will NOT be persuaded. Their only motivation is their desire to secure handouts from DC and it obviously puts them in direct opposition to our original form of governance. They haven't a clue where it all leads. No accident that, eh?
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