Thank you. It's nice to find SOMEONE who agrees with me on this.
I have been having a two day debate with another member here on another thread about this very issue.
I asked HIM to point out a prohibition aginst secession in the Constitution and he never did. He made some arguments about an "organic" Constitution, quoted letters written between two of our founding fathers and told me that all the foremost Constitutional experts agree with him, but he never actually directed me to the Article and Section of our Constitution where the prohibition exists.
He also stated at one point during our exchange that until the 14th Amendment was adopted, the Bill of Rights applied only to the Federal government, not the States. Now I know from the way it is written that the 1st Amendment applies only to the Federal government ("Congress shall make no law..."), but that was the first time I had ever seen someone argue that Amendments 2-10 didn't apply to the State governments, especially since the 6th and 10th Amendments specifically mention the States.
I'm no "confederate apologist", and I think secession is the wrong move for a State in virtually all instances, but I interpret the Constitution as it is written, not as I would personally like it to be.
Wayne
It's not just a matter of agreeing with you, it's a matter of you being 100% correct. Whether I like it or not, Secession is not prohibited by the Constutition, it does not give the power to the Federal Government to stop it, so by definition it gives the power to the states and to the people of the individual states to decide that issue.
Keep up the good fight and remember..
Never try to teach a pig to sing
It wastes your time and annoys the pig :)
By the way, they can't point to something in the Constitution that doesn't exist. But what they do try to do is impress you and everyone else with the massive volume of text that they can spew out.
It makes no difference. They are just as wrong with 3 million words as they were with 10.
Actually, if you go by original intent, the Federal BOR was for the federal enclave. That's why all the States have their own Constitutions. It was considered a separation of powers.
Here's a great Constitutional resource The Founders Constitution
In the English common law upon which our Constitution was based, juries in a trial judged the law the actions and the character of an accused criminal.
A 'peer' as it was originally used was someone who knew the accused, and therefore could judge his actions and whether or not they were justifiable.
By placing the 6th Amendment in the Constitution, the Founders ensured the judgment of the crime took place in the same area in which it was committed, and the accused would have access to his 'peers' and defensive witnesses.
The usage of the word 'State' in the 10th Amendment was to make very clear the ONLY power the federal government had was what was written in the legal contract known as the Constitution.
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The Adoption of the 14th Amendment changed our form of government from a federal/restricted national one to a wholly NATIONAL one. So many courts (including the Supreme Court) have said.
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I interpret the Constitution as it is written, not as I would personally like it to be.
As do I.
MANY FReepers think the Constitution is like Burger King in that they can 'have it their way".
The Constitution is a legal document. Remove a single, tiny part, and the entire contract is worthless.
Section 10. [1] No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation.
Excellent point. We can use other sources as reference, but we should explictly read the Constitution and not make inferences to suit our desires.
>>>He also stated at one point during our exchange that until the 14th Amendment was adopted, the Bill of Rights applied only to the Federal government, not the States.<<<
He even got that part wrong. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to give former slaves the same rights as the whites. Nothing else. The phony concept of "Incorporation", which "applied" the Bill of Rights to the states, was just another in a long line of Supreme Court usurpations.