Posted on 02/11/2009 4:23:28 PM PST by ADReditor
Well it means that a government can not stand without the consent of the governed. Removal of that consent can take many forms. Rebellion, cabinet change, voting out incumbents, beheading kings.
Acceptance is consent even if it comes from tyranny.
Now it means the government has won a majority in the electoral college and the Houses of Congress. In 1788 in normal elections maybe 15% of the population was eligible to vote (the ratification conventions had higher sufferage).
That percentage has increases so that the leeches have a majority.
Just curious, but does that dance have a name???
What you're saying is the Constitution can only be interpreted by the SCOTUS, an agency of the feral government??? That the other parties to the agreement, the states and/or the people don't have that luxury? This just gets better and better.
Anyway, since you were either unable or unwilling to answer my earlier questions regarding remedies, let's take your scenario a step further: The SCOTUS, not without precedent, rules in favor of the feral government on a patently unconstitutional action. Sound familiar? Or even this: The SCOTUS, in one of its more lucid moments rules against the feral government on, say, a 10th Amendment issue but the executive and legislative branches being separate-but-equal branches of government say, bite me.
I gather your remedy is that once again the states and the people sit down and shut up? I think Jefferson was right, that the tree of liberty needs watering from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots. That WILL be the final remedy unless patriots are able SOMEHOW to put the beast back in its cage -- before the shooting starts.
Being that 4 folk’s in Black robes could not find the 2nd Amendment
Or Some place in our “Bill of Rights” people have the “Right”
to Kill the unborn
Or Some folk’s in Black robes think YOUR private property is your Governments {Waly Worlds parking lot}
Who am I to think that you could understand the 10th Amendment?
arrogantsob,
It must be that I’m a “RAT” as you call it
Y’all can beg at the door of the High Court to “protect” your rights if one thinks he must
The only way to stop a bully is loosen a few teeth
Very well stated indeed sir,
and may I quote you in my future meeting with my state senator as we explore Mississippi laying down of it’s own rites of sovereignty.
I could be wrong but here goes: I just see what is about to happen, you can call me stupid now, just wait and see.The 40 year project by the socialist elitist who live in the NE US & California(Yankees for lack of a better word) to Balkanise the country is about to come to full fruition......
In 1861 not all southerners were secessionists, not all northerners wanted to invade the south and enforce Federalism however - all that matters once IT STARTS and the lines are drawn, geography is everything. The only important thing is which side of the fence you are on my FRiend. Northern Conservatives and Southern Liberals will be a thing of the past.
I don't want this either, just the way it is playng out, clear as a bell.
The fuze will be lit by this, when people in flyover country start to realize,collectivley, that they don't have to go along with the socialists, and that there is another way.
Airwinger,
Thank you for your service!!
You can use whatever is needed~ I can’t help but remind myself that it’s “those” 60’s Hippies now running our Armed forces.
I ALSO can’t help but ask those on this thread that oppose any effort from “the people” and or STATE claiming our GOD given rights.. Why?
Calling Southrons as you call them Southerners “Rats” only PROVES that they serve worse food than cornbread & Catfish in them Blue States
central_va
We have some liberals that moved down the Street from New York....
Last Elk season we shot a rather large Bull Elk~They must have called every State agency to turn us in for the “sight” of blood & guts
They take pictures of us “Rednecks” trucks and Guns to send back home..Maybe to see what real men look like or to Obamy and his Gun banners
They don’t like my Bluetick hound neither..GOOD
How is Elk, tasty?
I wish there was a way to keep Yankees out. They leave to escape taxes then F up the place they move to by voting LIbtards in. It is UFB.
There will be no new civil war. Only one side is armed and that one is composed of the law abiding.
The RAT Rebellion of 1861 was that of a small ruling class in complete control of the Slave states and had nothing to do with anything but its fear of slavery’s suppression. NOthing to do with “states’ rights” or “federal tyranny” or “big government” just “Lincoln is going to take my darkies”.
Liberalism’s power is concentrated in a few large cities and they ain’t invading anything. Other than the standard looting forey’s into the burbs.
The Supreme Court is not an “agency” of the federal government but with the rest of the judiciary a co-equal branch charged with interpreting the law.
Of course, since it has the final say on what is or is not constitutional the opinions of others are just part of the process of determining constitutionality. The People have no say as to what a law means but has the ultimate say in making it say what they want it to say. This is why the Constitution has an amendment process.
If the Constitution cannot be amended to change it in the direction you wish then it stays the same.
You have to get out of the idea that YOU have the ultimate say on what is constitutional or not. You liking a decision does not make it valid nor disliking it invalid.
It appears to me that the states have abdicated their say about anything and only a minority of the People have a clue. Don’t expect much out of that situation.
The Founders established a representative republic based on an enlighted electorate which made up only about 15% of the population. Even Jefferson made noises about the dangers of democracy and the others staunchly opposed it.
There has been controversey about the meaning of the Bill of Rights from the beginning and the Marshall Court ruled that states were not meant to be prohibited by them.
Nor did the USSC find a right to abortion within the BoR. It merely extended the meaning of privacy to a medical decision made by a woman and her doctor. Roe was and is bad law, IMO, and should not have infringed upon state laws regarding abortion.
Your interpretation of the meaning of Kelo is almost incorrect.
The 10th amendment has had virtually no impact on the development of constitutional law. It looks like it was thrown in as a sop to the anti-federalists and is nothing more than a rhetorical device with little use. Since the Constitution does not impower the gov. to impinge on those rights in any case it was unnecessary. But it is a great stick for an ideolog to whack with.
RAT is DemocRAT which it does not sound like you are.
Actually one of the chief impetus to the continued growth of government power is the protection of individual rights.
Since it is a vague term some people have tried to stuff all manner of things into it. Obammie is about to tell us about a “right” to health care. Then we have Human Rights, Animal Rights, all manner of rights guaranteed to multiply the fedgov.
I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but are smoking something? No offense really, but you’re not making any sense. At least TRY to compose some coherent answers to my questions or take your marbles and go play somewhere else.
Of course, I give you a brief, and badly needed, lesson on what the Constitution means and I am “smoking something”. Since you don’t understand the document stop embarassing yourself.
Well, the prospect of embarrassing myself has never been much of a deterrent. It's altogether possible I should consider a higher level of introspection, but be that as it may. After spending several hours reviewing writings, musings, and observations of something I had only a vague notion of brings me back to your post. That is, Article VI, more commonly known as the "Supremacy Clause". I'm sure you're familiar with it; I wasn't.
Your post #70 oddly enough came into better focus. In any case I feel I owe you an apology, so please accept mine.
Now, I had posted a piece HERE that I felt pretty good about because it tended to support my notion of powers vested in the states; in particular as they relate to the 10th Amendment. Would you be kind enough to take a look at it and share any observations you have?
Since posting that article I discovered the Supremacy Clause(save the commerce clause for another day) which led me to the conclusion that SOMEBODY had to be the more or less final arbiter of our Constitution, and that it was left in the more or less capable hands of the USSC. I suppose because there was just nowhere else to place that function. AND as near as I could determine Chief Justice John Marshall, a dreaded Federalist, probably did more via the Supremacy Clause to diminish the powers of the states than any man living or dead. So again, if you wouldn't mind, your thoughts on the Supremacy Clause.
BTW, I'm not an attorney so the king's English works best for me...
I obviously did not quote a section referencing conventions to argue against conventions, though I am perhaps being generous in my assumptions of what is obvious. That you would resort to such misdirection is telling of your character. It is not the mechanism of the convention which is in dispute, it is the issue of state sovereignty.
There is nothing about the convention process which witnesses against the sovereignty of the state. That the ratification proceeded along state lines evidences their political sovereignty. If, as you seem to suppose, they were merely seeking the approval of a larger, whole national population through expediently localized processes, why then would they have bothered with state identities? Why, instead, did they not pursue this piecemeal ratification along the more natural lines of common geography and solicit "Blue Ridge Folk" or "Chesapeakers" or "Adirondackers"? Why did they not treat along ethnic lines and seek the approval of Scot-Irish or the Old Dutch? Why not break down the population according to religion and have separate conventions for the Quakers and Episcopalians? If, as you claim, ratification spoke of the will of an aggregate, then why seek the affirmation of nine states and not a like majority of the general population instead? Yet they insisted in recognizing, as unitary political powers, those pesky states (please investigate the word "state") which confound you with their persistent existence before, during, and after the Articles. I wonder, do you hold that France was created by the League of Nations, all evidence to its preexistence and continuance not withstanding?
A consistent application of your theory of demonstrable sovereignty would hold that the Irish, having engaged in a popular referendum to determine their nation's adoption of the European Union constitution, actually DISPOVED the political sovereignty of Ireland. You seem to believe, when it accommodates your pre-conclusions, that sovereignty is expressed through a singular government such that the extra-governmental ratification process which took place in each state disproved the very political self-determination upon which the very matter of the choice depended. The contradiction necessarily arises that one proposition, that the states are shown to manifestly NOT be sovereign by the action of the people, is used to support a second proposition, that a larger nationhood IS sovereign through the same popular action, even (and especially) when it is tediously state-defined. That is, you claim that the sovereignty of the states was disproved by the direct action of the conventions as opposed to the agency of the state governments *in order* to prove the sovereignty of a greater nation, the circumvention of its government not withstanding. For you, the identification of "the people" is hinged to government in such a way as to allow it to swing whichever way you think you need. You either believe in "popular sovereignty" or you don't.
Not only did you misplace the emphasis to highlight "CONVENTIONS" and not the pertinent "OF NINE STATES" (in an inflected language, this would demonstrate the genitive of possession), you left off the part which is absolutely fatal to your argument. I'll reinstate it: "..., shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same." That is, upon ratification, those states pending membership came under the constitutional supremacy of the United States Constitution. As a corollary, any state NOT "so ratifying the Same" did not. So if, say, Pennsylvania had been a lone dissenter and never ratified the Constitution, it would be outside the union. If you do not agree that an independent Pennsylvania would be a sovereign Pennsylvania, and that states were therefore initially invested with sovereignty in order to be able to parley with it, then you are beyond reasoning.
Most of the really significant fighters establishing the US had no illusions about the need to subordinate the states to a central government (they often called it the “General Government”. All the major Founders: Hamilton, Washington and Madison had no illusions about this. Madison even considered abolishing state governments all together during the period coming up to the Convention. Ironically enough it was Hamilton who convinced him that they could still serve important functions.
Marshall’s legal thinking when constitutional questions were brought before him started with the Federalist papers and his thinking rarely, if ever, deviated from them. Since Hamilton wrote two thirds of them we can safely conclude that Marshall was a Hamiltonian and he would not dispute that label. And judicial review started yrs before Marshall was on the Court with Hamilton defending the constitutionality of the Carriage Tax Act in 1792 so that wasn’t a Marshallian inovation. The biography John Marshall, Definer of a Nation, by J. Smith is an outstanding work of biography and legal explication. Reading decisions by Marshall shows a powerful logician and scholar of the law. Jefferson said that in argument with Marshall (his cousin btw) one could never concede one point or you were finished.
States conceded most of the important aspects of true sovereignty to the new Union and the Federalist discusses the consequences of not having a supreme head in a Union/federation/confederation with the examples from history of the Netherlands, ancient Greek leagues and others. The conclusion was that these inevitably dissolved and they wanted to prevent that. Hence, the constitution (or Foundation of Law) had to overrule any contrary law within this Union. And decisions about what laws were constitent with it could not be made politically (via public opinion) but via a Judiciary put outside politics by lifetime appointments and removal only through impeachment and conviction. There has never been a conviction and only one impeachment, Justice Chase in 1804.
My understanding of the 10th amendment is that it acknowledges that a state has full rights over laws which only affect citizens of that state. This generally is limited to police regulations, health regulations etc. And I believe most of the supporters of that amendment intended it to allow states full freedom over slaves. But they can never enact laws which run counter to federal law and the Supremacy clause.
My statement is in no sense a “misdirection”. It speaks to the issue of true sovereignty in that had the intention that states be truly sovereign then that would mean that they would have the right to withdraw. Hence, state governments were deliberately removed from the decision so that they could never ON THEIR OWN withdraw ratification by a legislative act which would be allowed under true sovereignty.
There was no national mechanism through which the ratification process could have been made in any case the decisions had to be made within the states as frameworks. But the Founders, particularly the greatest of them, DEFINED themselves as Americans and never denied that there was an American PEOPLE though it may have been spread over states and territories. Your alternative methods are utterly impractical and ignore the obvious advantages that defined borders provide.
Most of the rest of your post is too rambling and scattershot for me to bother with. You can check the post above for my thoughts on the Supremacy clause which by itself destroys any idea that states are sovereign.
BTW two states remained out of the United States for several yrs: North Carolina and Rhode Island. Both were because of sabotage and subterfuge by interest groups who stood to lose power. Both were also admant that they not be treated as outside the Union promising to get it right as soon as possible. Washington took a benign approach to the issue.
Federal power has grown because that is what the American people wanted. Until those people change this will not change. State governments are laughably corrupt so much so that people turned to the federal government for defense against the local crooks. Local governments are often more corrupt than the state ones.
Look, for example, at the relation that Black Americans have to the federal government. It freed them, protected them from the ex-slavers for a decade until the Democrat parties got back on their feet in the southern states. Then it was Supreme Court rulings which forced those states to respect their constitutional rights over the next century. Hence, they have FAR more respect and affection for the federal government.
Generally, the only chance of cleaning up state and local politics comes when federal attorney’s get involved. That is certainly true in Illinois and Chicago where I see it every day.
When I describe or analyze something why do you insist on taking my opinions about what I see as something I wish for and something personal? Explaining that the final say on a law: good, bad or indifferent, rests with the Supreme Court somehow strikes you as Communism. But it was the Founders who established its role not Karl Marx or me.
Then there is the problem of how the greatest political conception ever created, the US Constitution, could have become so corrupted that you now consider it an enemy.
Where could help come from if that is true? The idiots and petty crooks which make up state governments?
What geniuses could surpass those of 1787? Those who don’t even understand the system they are criticizing?
Besides even a perfect government could come to a bad end if it is controlled by imperfect people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.