Posted on 06/04/2025 9:08:26 AM PDT by MosesKnows
I assert that the Constitution is not about what the people can and cannot do; the Constitution is solely about what the government can or cannot do.
The statement challenged is that “the Constitution is solely about how the newly constituted government is to function within the enumerated powers of legislative.”
I also assert that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are not law. This assertion includes the 18th, 19th, 23th, 24th, and 26th Amendments.
Not exactly. An area of northwest Virginia occupied by Federal troops declared that it was the rightful and loyal government of Virginia and that its capital was Wheeling. It condemned as treasonous the Richmond government that had declared the state's secession. The Lincoln Administration declared the Wheeling government to be the true government of Virginia, and when it decided to become a state of its own, Lincoln and Congress agreed that it did not violate the Constitution's prohibition.
Agreed. Very good assessment IMO. Wish others had the same grasp on the Constitution and the powers that have always tried to obliterate it.
Perhaps the more appropriate question is "Why do these amendments have this clause and the others do not?".
“It is impossible for a Constitutional Amendment to be ‘unconstitutional.’”
It would be if it violated other parts of the Constitution, wouldn’t it?
An excellent and most relevant question, and here is my answer.
Each amendment that contains this section has this in common: Each amendment takes a power of legislation away from the states and gives it to Congress.
The 18th Amendment is the example I will use. Before the 18th Amendment, each sovereign state had the power to legislate alcohol because Congress did not.
Eighteenth Amendment
Section 1
After one year from the ratification of this article, the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Who knows what legislation Congress enacted to make alcohol possession illegal?
You are correct. It tells the government what it can do. And more importantly what it can’t. They ignore the can’t because we let them.
Nope. The newest amendment would supersede the older provision.
Remember Prohibition? The 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol.
The 21st Amendment nullified the 18th.
for later
Sorry but Lincoln claimed the southern states had NOT left the Union. That is why he provoked South Carolina into firing on Sumter because he no legal authority to use the military against the southern states.
Well, I suppose cagy Lincoln had his reasons for saying that, but establishing a new gov't - The Confederate States of America - on February 4, 1861 spoke pretty loudly about the South's severance from the USA.
Legal and political maneuvering notwithstanding, the South took itself out of full State status until after the Civil War.
And God bless those who took care to bring the South back into the USA with minimal retribution and fully restored status, but not until AFTER the 13-15 Amendments were ratified by the Union States.
E Pluribus Unum.
” The newest amendment would supersede the older provision.”
Interesting. Good to know. Thanks!
That is an interesting comment: the southern states can't have it both ways but the northern states can have it both ways.
That is called Victors’ Justice.
You might be interest in some of the by-play on the adoption of the 13th amendment as described in an entry on Wikipedia, which is reliably pro-Lincoln Doctrine.
“Having been ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states (27 of the 36 states, including those that had been in rebellion), Secretary of State Seward, on December 18, 1865, certified that the Thirteenth Amendment had become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution.[84] Included on the enrolled list of ratifying states were the three ex-Confederate states that had given their assent, but with strings attached. Seward accepted their affirmative votes and brushed aside their interpretive declarations without comment, challenge or acknowledgment.”[85]
Those 27 states included Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama and North Carolina and Georgia.
Georgia was the necessary 27th state to ratify. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I understand you to say the South did, in fact, secede. I agree.
You and I just need to understand that we have rejected the Lincoln Doctrine which itself repudiates the concept that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government . . .”
As to your personal opinion that the South's consent was not necessary for the reconstruction amendments - neither the North or the South had that view after the arbitrement of the sword.
I see it as a question of law and of fact.
In a sense the South did not legally secede if you, like I, take the Declaration of Independence as a road map to valid secession. There was no "long train of abuses and usurpations" that the South "submitted to a candid world." It was more of inconvenience and fear rather than substantial and actual grievance.
However, I think in fact they seceded with their new gov't and four-year Civil War that ensued.
The point of all that is that I think the South compromised their right to fully ratify the 13-15 Amendments. However, besides that, I am gratified that the South was taken in by the Union with minimal retribution ad maximum forgiveness.
You might have noted that prohibition itself was a new provision superseding an old one. The enumeration prohibited the feds from regulating my booze.
I agree, but my assertion was that the amendments are not the law,
The First Amendment does not contain the clause I referenced and is not relevant.
“Comment: It requires 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislators to ratify an amendment. That is a large group to hold at the point of a literal or figurative bayonet.”
Stated earlier, repeated for emphasis: “The consent of the southern states to these amendments was obtained though the coercion of federal bayonets.”
you are correct
it is to protect the people from abusive government
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