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To: neverdem
Southern attempts to withdraw from the union quickly led to individuals taking up arms to fight what they perceived as federal tyranny.

I'm no fan of the Confederacy, but this is just stupid. The southern states, not individuals, took up arms to fight against "federal tyranny."

the Constitution did not countenance armed rebellion against the federal government.

Of course it didn't. Confederates never claimed it did. They withdrew from the Constitution, basing their "right" to do so on the theory that the states retained their full sovereignty even after joining the US under the Constitution.

As a backup justification they had the right of all men to revolution, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

This is merely a very lame attempt to associate the recent DC ruling with the Confederacy, guilt by association and all that. Won't work.

6 posted on 03/30/2007 5:20:28 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.)
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To: Sherman Logan
The Parker court, by implicitly reviving Confederate constitutional theory, takes the ideals of conservative judicial activism in a lunatic direction????????????????????????????????

But I love lunatic Confederates. WTF?

The libs are having a hissy fit.

Remedy: more range time.

52 posted on 03/30/2007 10:13:33 PM PDT by Candor7
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To: Sherman Logan
I'm no fan of the Confederacy, but this is just stupid. The southern states, not individuals, took up arms to fight against "federal tyranny."

Agree. However, (ya gottalove that word) there is a tangential connection. In order to have a "well regulated militia," those who might be called to serve in such, viz us citizens, have to have effective weapons privately available to ourselves.

IMHO,I don't think the founders were necessarily talking about formally existing state guard units, but rather citizens and states having the ability to form them in times of a perceived need. The Confederate states certainly had both: i.e., existing militia units, and the ability of those states and private citizens to form new ones with armed citizens. In the North, many private militia units were also formed, with privately owned weapons.

"The "hunter" nonsense always personally offends me. Of course, my little arsenal is used to slay various edible creatures, but its real purpose is to be available to me so that I and the neighbors can go out and slay invaders, or the forces of any tyrants, foreign or domestic, that might show up in the neighborhood. It's a basic American thing.

Does the ability of American citizens to form themselves, or to be formed by their political units, into militias with privately owned weapons somehow leave open the possibility of civil war? You bet.

63 posted on 03/31/2007 1:38:45 AM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Hillary: A sociopath's enabler in the White House?)
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To: Sherman Logan
The southern states, not individuals, took up arms to fight against "federal tyranny."

Actually, the Southern States didn't take up arms first -- first, they called constitutional conventions to consider secession. That's the People in convention assembled -- we ratify amendments and the original 13 States created the Union that way, which established the pecking order:

State constitutions and state laws come under the Constitution by the operation of the Supremacy Clause; but within the State sphere there are things the USG cannot touch. The People and the States themselves are two of them.

The People, in fact, are the literal top of the totem pole, the untouchable Sovereign. When we sit as the People and resume our powers, our powers are absolutely unlimited, subordinate to nobody who isn't the invisible high God of Israel. And any powers and rights our States didn't delegate to the Union and the USG, remain with Us. So said John Marshall, when he was a delegate to Virginia's ratification convention -- and the Tenth Amendment was a memo to the future to the same effect.

64 posted on 03/31/2007 3:53:01 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: Sherman Logan
Good point. There is a version of history that has it that the Confederates fought against governmental infringement on what they saw as their rights. In fact, many clearly fought precisely in obedience to government (this must certainly have been the case with Lee).

There is a vast difference between revolution and secession: one is an act of the people, the other of the government.

107 posted on 03/31/2007 2:36:52 PM PDT by Christopher Lincoln
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