"That terrible man, Non-Sequitur is at it again!"
"Don't worry Ma'am, Seems like Idabilly and Cowboyway have this thread under control...."
Posted on 02/17/2010 3:43:05 PM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative
Prior to the American Civil War, it was popularly assumed that states which had freely chosen to enter the Union could just as freely withdraw from said union at their own discretion. Indeed, from time to time individual states or groups of states had threatened to do just that, but until 1860 no state had actually followed through on the threat.
Since then, it has been considered axiomatic that the War “settled the question” of whether or not states had the right to secede. The central government, backed by force of arms, says the answer is No. As long as no state or group of states tests the central government’s resolve, we can consider the question to be “settled” from a practical viewpoint.
This assertion has long troubled me from a philosophical and moral viewpoint. We are supposedly a nation of laws, and the central government is supposedly subservient to the laws that established and empower it.
In a nation of laws, when someone asks, “Do states have a right to secede from the Union?”, a proper answer would have one of two forms:
Here, x would be an explanation of the laws that supported the Yes or No answer.
With the secession issue, though, we are given the following as a complete and sufficient answer:
“No, because if any state tries to secede, the central government will use force of arms to keep it from succeeding.”
There is no appeal to law in this answer – just brute force.
Based on this premise, the central government can amass to itself whatever right or power it chooses, simply by asserting it. After all, who has the power to say otherwise?
Come to think of it, that’s exactly how the central government has behaved more often than not since the Civil War.
This issue came to mind today because of an item posted today on a trial lawyer’s blog (found via Politico). The lawyer’s brother had written to each of the Supreme Court justices, asking for their input on a screenplay he was writing. In the screenplay, Maine decides to secede from the US and join Canada. The writer asked for comments regarding how such an issue would play out if it ever reached the Supreme Court.
Justice Antonin Scalia actually replied to the screenwriter’s query. I have a lot of respect for Scalia regarding constitutional issues, but his answer here is beyond absurd.
I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.")
He actually said that a constitutional issue was settled by military action. Oh, and by including the word “indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance, the issue became even more settled.
What if the president were to send out the troops to prevent the news media from publishing or broadcasting anything critical of his administration? This is clearly an unconstitutional action, but by Scalia’s logic, if the president succeeds, we must then say that the military action “settled the question” of free speech.
If these scenarios are not comparable, I’d like to hear why.
“Signed Vigilance Committee”
Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougism [sp.-DS] as this.
(v. 3, p. 399. Fragments: Notes for Speeches, Sept. 6, 1859)
If I insisted that every Lost Cause website remove all the Southron myth that they try to pass off as fact then they would all shut down for lack of anything to post.
Of course you could prove me wrong by providing links with information on this mythical "Jubilee of Pole Bearers" of your's but I notice you can't do that.
Absolutely. Your turn.
OK. I am not an atheist. Happy?
And again, it would be so easy for you to do but yet, you refuse.
OK, I am a happy heterosexual who married far better than I deserved. My wife is a saint who for the past 26 years has put up with me and who loves me in spite of my many faults. I have a teenaged daughter, but since she was adopted then I guess that doesn't help prove my point.
I should point out that just because I said all this doesn't mean I'm the slightest bit interested in which way you lean or anything about your own personal life. So you can save it.
You northrons must get a thrill up your leg every time someone calls you a faggot or mentions Obama.
The only ones who do that are all Lost Causers. Hence the puzzlement over why all y'all are so fascinated with either subject.
Then it would fall ,by default, to a State(s) Right to Secede, right?
Y'all have chosen - The point of view Admired by Adolf Hitler - Figures!
I have never denied a state's right to secede be it over slavery, as the confederate states did, or whatever bizarre reason you can come up, or no reason at all. The only question is how to go about it.
Y'all have chosen - The point of view Admired by Adolf Hitler - Figures!
Well Hitler wouldn't back a loser for any reason. Even considering the similarities between the two men - both ran an a country who's wartime economy was dependent on slave labor, both nationalized large industries, and both believed that they belonged to the master race.
So Lincoln’s rotten and Jeff Davis is no better? I have to salute you for going a lot farther than most fans of the Confederacy in admitting the imperfections of your big fish is Richmond. If you’ll go even further and look at how Jeff ran roughshod over the reb constitution and southern states’ rights, you might start to understand why the Confederacy was no good.
This was not what Lincoln believed......
“Well Hitler wouldn't back a loser for any reason. Even considering the similarities between the two men - both ran an a country who's wartime economy was dependent on slave labor, both nationalized large industries, and both believed that they belonged to the master race.”
I feel- That Hitler appreciated Lincoln's( Total War ) on Southern civilians.....
This is a good read:
“Perhaps the veneer of lies and historical distortions that surround Abraham Lincoln are beginning to crack. In the movie, “Gangs of New York,” we finally have a historically correct representation of the real Abraham Lincoln and his policies. Heretofore, many socialistic intellectuals, politicians and historians have whitewashed these policies in order to protect Lincoln's image because of their allegiance to the unconstitutional centralization of power he brought to our government.
The false sainthood and adulation afforded Lincoln has its basis in the incorrect assumption he fought the war to free an enslaved people. To believe this propaganda one must ignore most everything Lincoln said about the Black race and his continued efforts at colonization. Lincoln's treatment of the American Indian has been very much ignored, though not exactly misrepresented.
One would find it hard to refute that Abraham Lincoln's political idol was Henry Clay. Lincoln would say of Clay; “During my whole political life, I have loved and revered Henry Clay as a teacher and leader.” Lincoln delivered the eulogy at the funeral for Clay. When elected President, Lincoln set about implementing Henry Clay's political philosophies.
Throughout Clay's political life he was a strong believer in National Socialism and a complete racist in all references to the American Indian. As Secretary of State Clay would declare: “The Indians’ disappearance from the human family will be no great loss to the world. I do not think them, as a race, worth preserving.”
http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/issues/lincoln.html
That's interesting....
We will never know, will we? Back at ya - Lincoln unleashed this beast from it's chains! Turning our Constitutional Republic into an Empire.......
The beast was certainly let loose from its chains but I say the secessionists were the ones who lit the match. They didn’t secede in order to cooperate with the rest of the nation for they had no better venue for cooperation than that already present within the US Constitution. They seceded in pursuit of conflict with the North and the country was better off because Lincoln answered the challenge sooner rather than leaving it for a later generation and an even more bloody war.
A must read for a supporter of Lincoln's actions..
My family ( Who saw the elephant) Would agree with this below. They wrote of how (noble) your beloved sniveling, Torch-wielding Yankee - Actually were! Would you disagree with this man?
“....The people of North Carolina, more perhaps than those of any of the eleven seceding States, were devoted to the Union. They had always regarded it with sincerest reverence and affection, and they left it slowly and with sorrow. They were actuated by an honest conviction...that their constitutional rights were endangered, not be the mere election of Mr. Lincoln, as others did, but by the course which subsequent events were compelled to take in consequence of the ideas which were behind him. The Union men of the State, of whom I was one, whatever may have been their doubts of the propriety of secession, were unanimous in the opinion that it was neither right nor safe to permit the general government to coerce a State.
But when Fort Sumter was fired upon, immediately followed by Mr. Lincoln's call for “volunteers to suppress the insurrection,” the whole situation was changed instantly. The Union men had every prop knocked from under them, and by stress of their own position were plunged into a secession movement. I immediately, with altered voice and manner, called upon the assembled multitude to volunteer, not to fight against but for South Carolina. I said, if war must come I prefer to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood, I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood. If we had to slay, I had rather slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; and that it was better, whether right or wrong, that communities and States should go together and face the horrors of war in a body-—sharing a common fate, rather than endure the unspeakable calamities of internecine strife.
To those at all acquainted with the atrocities which have been inflicted upon the divided communities of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, the humanity of my action will be apparent. I went and shared the fate of the people of my native State, having first done all I could to preserve the peace and secure the unanimity of the people to avert, as much as possible, the calamities of war. I do not regret that course. I do not believe there is an honorable man within my hearing to-night who, under the same circumstances, would not have done as I did...”
(Life of Zebulon B. Vance, Clement Dowd, Observer Publishing and Printing House, 1897, pp. 439-442)
No. Lincoln, like Webster and Andy Jackson and Henry Clay and James Buchanan among others, believed that secession of any kind was not permitted. I don't agree with them. I hold with James Madison that secession with the consent of the other states is allowed.
I feel- That Hitler appreciated Lincoln's( Total War ) on Southern civilians.....
Well if you think that was 'total war' then you either have no concept of the term or cling to the Southron myths on what really happened.
In the movie, “Gangs of New York,” we finally have a historically correct representation of the real Abraham Lincoln and his policies.
"Gangs of New York" is historically correct? Are you flippin' serious? I'll bet you think all Five Point hookers looked like Cameron Diaz.
Honest to God I do not know how you can post such crap with a straight face. You truly have gone off the deep end.
Hello! Earth calling
Our limited constitutional republic was destroyed.By Lincoln
South Carolina Commissioners to Buchanan Dec. 28, 1860:
Sir: — We have the honor to transmit to you a copy of the full powers from the Convention of the people of South Carolina, under which we are “authorized and empowered to treat with the Government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, light-houses, and other real estate with their appurtenances, within the limits of South Carolina, and also for an apportionment for the public debt and for a division of all the property held by the Government of the United States, of which South Carolina was recently a member, and generally to negotiate as to all other measures proper to be made and adopted in the existing relation of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity between this Commonwealth and the Government at Washington.”
Any More myths?
“Honest to God I do not know how you can post such crap with a straight face. You truly have gone off the deep end.”
Lincoln was a proponent of limited Government? Honored Madison and Jefferson did he?
"That terrible man, Non-Sequitur is at it again!"
"Don't worry Ma'am, Seems like Idabilly and Cowboyway have this thread under control...."
"All we ask is to be left alone. Now get the hell off our land"
More so than Jeff Davis. And nowhere near as bad as you would have us believe.
Dream on.
"Don't start a war you are not prepared to win. Military Science 101."
End the occupation....
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