***The Declaration and the Constitution establish the framework of not just a union of states but of “one people”.***
(Meanwhile, in reality, the Declaration of Independence was a beautiful disunionist manifesto.)
***“. . . When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve . .” Reading is really not that hard. By the way, the Declaration was not a “disunionist” manifesto, it was a revolutionary explanation of independence justifying the right to overthrow a government and a sovereign. Secession is not revolution. You diminish the Declaration's revolutionary meaning.***
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***It was a vote of the people in ratifying conventions in each new state that created the union.***
(Thereby proving that membership is maintained by the consent of the people of any said state. After all, the mechanism was not a referendum for the people of, say Vermont, to allow the former colony of New York to join.)
***Oh contraire, the Constitution required the approval of a super majority to be enacted - nine states - thus being exactly the mechanism of, say Vermont to allow or not allow New York to join. And all new states joining thereafter would also have to be approved by the others. You are confused***
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***Once joined it takes the consent of the whole for a State to depart.***
(Which theory contradicts the historical circumstance of individual states choosing for themselves whether they are part of the union or not.)
***See above.***
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***You are simultaneously a citizen of your state and of the nation as a whole.***
(Federal citizenship as you're imagining it was created by the Fourteenth Amendment to resolve the issue of it-not-actually-even-existing-prior-to-the-rump-ratification-of-the-Fourteenth-Amendment.)
***Oh dear! You do know, I hope, that after the original 13 states became one nation there were territories in which US citizens lived? And that these citizens were not fully self-governing until their territory was accepted as a state. Meanwhile these citizens, while not having “states” rights or citizenship still had federal rights and obligations. And all of this well before the Fourteenth Amendment. Whew!***
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***Just as one state may not abrogate or diminish your citizenship rights in another state, a state may not abrogate or diminish your national citizenship though secession.***
(Oh, how you must resent those damned revolutionaries who deprived your fellow subjects of their ability to participate in the Crown's government. Unless, of course, you're complete hypocrite.)
***You also do realize that the colonies were not states. I was speaking of constitutionally formed states and their permanent union. As for your argument
about the colonies overthrowing the King, well yes there were Tories and pacifists, and they did suffer greatly as did patriots. Your point being . . . Ummm, well, huh?***
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***Lincoln laid this all out, many times.***
(Lincoln wasn't around when the constitution was being crafted, how could he ‘lay out’ anything?)
***Do I sense an unreconstructed Southerner here? Everyone realizes the Constitution “punted” on the issue of slavery. It was a devils bargain to get it ratified. Lincoln most definitely laid out or “wrote”, if you will, the conclusion to that constitutional issue. He also put to rest the silly, but dangerous notion, that the “permanent” union that the Constitution created, could be reduced to a confederation which had previously been found wanting, and that secession was an option. Finally, though he did not want to, he “laid” out the South, decisively. He finally saw the war as a purging of an “original” sin that the Union had within its founding with hopes for ultimate extinction but that the South demanded to be kept, blemishing all. He is as much a founder as Washington, Jefferson, and all.***
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***There is no constitutional process for dissolving all or part of this union of states and people. A constitutional amendment would have to be enacted that would lay out the process.***
(Most of our rights are unaccompanied by a constitutionally mandated process. The First Amendment guarantees the rights of free expression, religious observation, political demonstration, publication without prior constraint, and the right to specifically petition the government. But that same amendment provides NO guidance for how to enjoy them because rights don't originate with government and the constitution doesn't create rights — it merely prohibits government intrusion into our exercise of our own original rights. The whole premise of the American experiment in self-government is that the people of each of the several states have the sovereign and natural right to withdraw from political union to which they withhold consent. As with other rights, the “process” would consist of the federal government staying the hell out of it.)
***I'll give you the short version (you can read your Montesquieu and Locke, et. al. for the longer one). Sovereignty posed a ticklish problem. So in typical American fashion, for practicalities sake, the founders “ignored” its philosophical conundrums, by simply asserting the “people” were sovereign. They concentrated on distributing the “exercises” of sovereignty assigning national uses to the federal government, and the rest to the states or “to the people themselves”. Neither the federal government nor the states are “sovereign”, but each has roles in the exercise of the powers of sovereignty.
The claim that the people are sovereign fits well with the notion of one nation. It also allows for the assertion that the people can overthrow an unjust government. Overthrow means revolution not secession. Of course, an unsuccessful revolution is seen as a failed rebellion, in which the losers are drawn and quartered.***
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***Good luck with that. Just trying to figure out who absorbs the national debt or how to keep social security payments flowing or how to divide military assets would never be resolved.***
(Yeah, because nations never negotiate treaties and shit./s)
***Yeah, and there once was a time that I thought I could “negotiate” certain things with my wife. Silly me.***
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***You may not be a citizen of California or Texas or Ohio, but as an American you have as much “right” to to those states as anyone else. Equal protection of the law and other federal rights is what you gained in union, having that also granted to all American citizens. That can't be taken from you by another citizen or a state in any legal manner.***
(Next time I take my ar-15 through a New York airport or visit a public firing range in California with my thirty-round magazines, I'll be sure to direct any inquiring authorities your way. You'll straighten them out for me.)
***Well, the doctrine of incorporation, is clearly a mess, I'll grant you that.
Don't worry too much about your 2a rights of where to take your AR. Soon it seems, your 1a rights to praise your AR may soon be criminalized. Here is where the free states have the opportunity to oppose and even criminalize the actions of the tyrant states and the Feds. There is fertile room for nullification and free state compacts. The winning state expansion of constitutional and concealed carry shows the way, given the absolute lack of probity by Congress and the Supreme Court.***
It's been fun, but I really need to move on to ordering my seeds. We basically grow, process and store all our own food with always well over a year's worth of fresh supply, rotated annually. I also have no need of any more ammo. Silly me again.
Read further: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another," (a 'union' as it were)"... and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." (from a union, presumably)
By the way, the Declaration was not a “disunionist” manifesto, it was a revolutionary explanation of independence justifying the right to overthrow a government and a sovereign.
I'm fairly certain that neither the Crown nor its ministerial government were overthrown by our successful separatist revolt.
Secession is not revolution. You diminish the Declaration's revolutionary meaning.
That's just the same semantic word play that leftists employ when they say that "communism is not fascism". The end-product of our revolt is that we separated from the British government and withdrew from their control, the very substance of secession.
Oh contraire, (I'm not holding my breath waiting for an actual contradiction to follow "Oh contraire") the Constitution required the approval of a super majority to be enacted - nine states - thus being exactly the mechanism of, say Vermont to allow or not allow New York to join. And all new states joining thereafter would also have to be approved by the others. You are confused
When New Hampshire became the ninth member of the original confederation to ratify the Constitution, it was not determining whether Delaware COULD be a member, which matter had already been decided by Delaware's own separate convention. Nor was it deciding whether Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, or South Carolina, which had all already ratified, COULD be member states. It simply determined WHEN the threshold number had been reached for members to begin proceeding as members. If not for New Hampshire, Virginia or North Carolina, or holdout Rhode Island would have been the ninth. The fact that North Carolina and, finally, Rhode Island did hold out testifies to the historical truth that other states could not bind them. Under your understanding of the arrangement, New Hampshire, in being the ninth, became a sort of super-delegate with the singular power to bind other states as well as itself.
See above.
See the below of the above.
Oh dear! You do know, I hope, that after the original 13 states became one nation there were territories in which US citizens lived? And that these citizens were not fully self-governing until their territory was accepted as a state. Meanwhile these citizens, while not having “states” rights or citizenship still had federal rights and obligations. And all of this well before the Fourteenth Amendment. Whew!
Actually, we still have territories and the federal government STILL maintains a distinction between a "US Citizen" and a "US National". If your understanding were correct, Puerto Ricans wouldn't have needed the Jones Act to confer citizenship. Let me know when Samoans can vote.
You also do realize that the colonies were not states. I was speaking of constitutionally formed states and their permanent union.
I hope that you're not one of those people whose usage of the word "state" is not narrowly constrained to a wholly American middle-school experience and that you believe it to truly merely mean 'a subdivision of the federal government'.
As for your argument about the colonies overthrowing the King, well yes there were Tories and pacifists, and they did suffer greatly as did patriots. Your point being . . . Ummm, well, huh?
I suppose the point of my analogy was to compare the analogues. It's a form of argumentation, really.
Do I sense an unreconstructed Southerner here?
You detected time-travel-sceptic who knows that there is an etymological connection between the words "author" and "authority".
Everyone realizes the Constitution “punted” on the issue of slavery. It was a devils bargain to get it ratified. Lincoln most definitely laid out or “wrote”, if you will, the conclusion to that constitutional issue.
And how, exactly, did he constitutionally do this without changing the constitution? You people keep using words incorrectly. Multi-syllable latinates aren't just emotional intensifiers.
He also put to rest the silly, but dangerous notion, that the “permanent” union that the Constitution created, could be reduced to a confederation which had previously been found wanting, and that secession was an option.
It is with some hilarity that I note that the perpetuity clause is found in the Articles of Confederation and not the Constitution.
Finally, though he did not want to, he “laid” out the South, decisively. He finally saw the war as a purging of an “original” sin that the Union had within its founding with hopes for ultimate extinction but that the South demanded to be kept, blemishing all. He is as much a founder as Washington, Jefferson, and all.
If he is a founder, it is of some new nation enjoying no continuity with its predecessor.
I'll give you the short version (you can read your Montesquieu and Locke, et. al. for the longer one). Sovereignty posed a ticklish problem. So in typical American fashion, for practicalities sake, the founders “ignored” its philosophical conundrums, by simply asserting the “people” were sovereign.
I am fairly certain that the founders truly believed in the sovereignty of the people and that it was not a jaded political expediency.
They concentrated on distributing the “exercises” of sovereignty assigning national uses to the federal government, and the rest to the states or “to the people themselves”. Neither the federal government nor the states are “sovereign”, but each has roles in the exercise of the powers of sovereignty.
According to the Treaty of Paris, the states were sovereign in the international sphere. That is why they have the power to negotiate Articles and Constitutions and such.
The claim that the people are sovereign fits well with the notion of one nation.
The ratification process recognized the sovereignty of state populations, which is why it proceeded along state lines instead of being a simple popular referendum.
It also allows for the assertion that the people can overthrow an unjust government. Overthrow means revolution not secession.
Tell it to the British, from whom we seceded.
Of course, an unsuccessful revolution is seen as a failed rebellion, in which the losers are drawn and quartered.
The only consistent principle espoused by anti-secessionists is that might makes right.