[You, replying] Absolutely not --whetever the Constitution says.
You disagree that rights, and the determination of the Abolitionists and freesoilers not to respect them, were not the crux of the War Between the States?
Notice what you are actually saying. I get it that you disagree with me -- but you might at least pay attention to what it is that I said, that you are disagreeing about.
The Declaration of Independence is our founding document and as sure as it declares the existence of our Nation it declares Americans are endowed by their Creator with the right to live our own lives.
Wrong in the first place. The United States is a compacted society, and the compact is the Constitution, not the Declaration nor the Articles of Confederation.
I see we are in the presence of a Declarationist. Well, here's news for you: Declarationism is a pile of humbug, the purpose of which is, as Bill Clinton once put it so brilliantly, to "find me a way around the Fourth Amendment". (He really said that.)
And no human, not even ourselves, "owns" our lives, unlike the Libertarian credo; we merely "are" our lives.
Says who? Thank you for your opinion.
Any idea that humans are property is without base in the America of the Declaration, no matter where anyone writes it.
Bzzzzzzttt!!! Sorry, you're incorrect. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence owned slaves; they ought to have known what they were talking about -- whereas you, on the other hand, seem to be falling out with them.
There is law for America that is even higher than the Constitution. I have just referred to it.
Well, you are sort-of right. There is authority higher than the Constitution. Here is the pecking order:
1. God, the Logos, the Tetragrammaton, Providence.
2. The People = The States.
3. The Constitution created by the People in convention assembled (in their States, acting as the States).
4. The United States Government, its laws and decisions.
4a. The States of the Union, their laws, constitutions, and governments.
5. Everything else.
Defending the South about slavery is harldy a winning prospect. Not in the 19th Century. Not in the 20th Century. Not in the 21th Century.
The thing about rights is, respecting them when they belong to someone else, respecting them when you don't like them and they're inconvenient to your purposes, and respecting them when they belong to someone you don't like.
That isn't an epaulet on your shoulders. Knock it off, yourselves.
Your effort at snideness falls flat in this forum, where people have PhD's in snideness.
Who was disrespecting the South's rights?
Did Lincoln threaten them?
He went out of his way in his Inaugural address to tell the South they had nothing to fear from his administration.
All laws would be upheld.
So by what right did the South, having lost an election, think it could just disband the Union?
I am saying that it is a Universal Right in a free nation, that innocent people have Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This supercedes whatever otherwise complex and well-supported edifice of competing rights may be built --below, upon, and above the 10th Amendment, etc.
Pretty basic stuff, basic rights. And the United States Constitution was built squarely upon the UNQUESTIONED FACT of that our Declaration of Independence, provided its own basis.
You are free to call that "Declarationism." It is historical, ontological fact.
A: Whaddya do, when the Constitution contradicts itself?
jsuati: Some cannot see that the Slavers were the ultimate contradiction to the Constitution which could not even bring itself to mention the abomination by name. But their fantasies are apparently genetic.
A: Whaddya do, when the Constitution contradicts itself?
Q: Why, refer to higher authority of course. That is the only thing one can do.