Posted on 02/11/2009 6:06:39 PM PST by Kaslin
This is the 200th birthday of the first Republican to win a national election, Abraham Lincoln. It is good for Republicans today to remember Lincoln, not to be antiquarians, but to learn from his principled defense of the Constitution.
By becoming students of Lincoln, Republicans can win elections and would deserve to win by helping America recover its constitutional source of strength and vitality.
The greatest political crisis America faces today is neither the recession nor Islamic terrorism; it's not health care, education, immigration or abortion. It is that the United States Constitution has become largely irrelevant to our politics and policies.
All three branches of government routinely ignore or twist the meaning of the Constitution, while many of our problems today are symptoms of policies that have no constitutional foundation.
If we are to recover the authority of the Constitution and the many ways it restrains and channels government power, someone or some party must offer a principled defense of the cause of constitutional government.
They must understand not only the Constitution, but also the principles that informed its original purposes and aspirations, principles found in the Declaration of Independence among other places.
No one understood that better than Lincoln.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Tucker helped MAKE the Law of the Land...did you know that?
LOL!
He didn’t write the Constitution. You DO know that the Constitution is the law of the land, right? Not Tucker? lol
And nowhere in the Constitution is there anything about a state seceding from the Union. What SC did was extralegal, and they got their asses handed to them because of that fact.
You were asked to provide Constitutional sanction for secession. You failed miserably to provide even a shred of evidence that secession is sanctioned by it.
“Now....please show me where in the Constitution are the PROVISIONS for secession?”
There are none, as secession is not a legal option.
You do know that Tucker's View was written and published for the SOLE PURPOSE of explaining the Constitution to the People...don't you?
You do know that Tucker's annotated version of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England are STILL required reading in law schools today, don't you?
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And nowhere in the Constitution is there anything about a state seceding from the Union.
Um....that's why it's called the "rule of exclusion". If it's not INCLUDED, it's EXCLUDED.
Secession isn't INCLUDED in the Constitution, so it is EXCLUDED from the authority of the federal government.
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What SC did was extralegal
LOL! Extralegal?
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Well, since your sole say-so seems to trump decades of findings and opinions from no less than 4 acknowledged legal and judicial authorities......
I guess denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Have a nice day.
“You do know that Tucker’s View was written and published for the SOLE PURPOSE of explaining the Constitution to the People...don’t you?”
You do know that means absolutely nothing, right? The Constitution trumps Tucker.
“Secession isn’t INCLUDED in the Constitution, so it is EXCLUDED from the authority of the federal government.”
Nonsense. There is no escape clause for a state to ignore one or all of it’s federal obligations. If you can’t arbitrarily ignore one you can’t just chuck the whole thing. Not legally.
“LOL! Extralegal?”
Yes! lol! Extralegal as in it’s not sanctioned by law.
“Well, since your sole say-so seems to trump decades of findings and opinions from no less than 4 acknowledged legal and judicial authorities......”
It’s not my *sole say-so*; it’s the opinion of almost every legal authority since the Civil War.
“I guess denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”
True. There are still idiots around who wish that slavery were still legal and that the South had won. Talk about denial!
Some bad news for you- white sheets are scarcer since the recession. You’ll have to make do with what you already have.
Lincoln spit on the constitution.
I spit on Lincoln.
No, it is a lawful one. That's exactly why it is EXCLUDED.
“No, it is a lawful one. That’s exactly why it is EXCLUDED.”
Ah, so those things that are lawful are those things that the law doesn’t mention. Right.
Don’t forget to get your sheets half price at Walmart.
How so? Or are you talking about the Confederate constitution? I wouldn't worry much about the reb constitution because Jefferson Davis spit on that one so much you can't tell if anyone else's saliva is on it.
Where in the Constitution is the provision that relieves the president from those responsibilities?
How foolish you look to act as if someone is a proponent of slavery or racist just because they point out where the Republic started its way down the slippery slope.
How sad you are that you would rather blindly believe the government public school system would give you all the facts than to be bothered to read the history for yourself.
How blind, how foolish, how sad.
Nice try at changing the subject.
Try again.
How foolish you look defending the Satanic Confederate States. I’ve read the history myself, thank you. The South had no case, and extra-legally tried to rebel. They got their asses handed to them and lost. Now there are some who wish they won and wish that wicked *peculiar institution* was still around.
How blind, how foolish, how sad.
Same subject. If secession means anything there must something that relieves the president from those duties that infringe on the state’s supposed sovereignty. He’s taken the oath of office to defend the Constitution and the Constitution tells him to hold Fort Sumter. And as the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, that release must be found in the Constitution itself. So where is it?
“How foolish you look defending the Satanic Confederate States.”
Careful. A lot of them probably belonged to the same church you do.
War stinks. There’s plenty of blame to go around. We learned nothing or we wouldn’t still be fighting the stinking thing.
Lincoln’s oath of office, like all presidents before him and after him, included the vow to “defend the constitution”.
That oath does NOT include a vow to “preserve the union”. Lincoln chose to walk all over the constitution to preserve the union with the belief that the “ends” justified the “means”.
It is my humble opinion that as of December 21, 1860 (the day after South Carolina voted to leave the union), the union was, in fact, dissolved.
Faced with this dilemna, Lincoln COULD have chosen to “defend the constitution”, or “preserve the union”; and he made the choice to trash the constitution.
At that point in time, Lincoln could no more “restore the union” any more than all the kings horses could re-assemble humpty dumpty.
What Lincoln did was to create (by force) a “new” united states. The “original” united states of the founding fathers was gone forever.
I compare it to a married couple where the wife declares the marriage over and leaves the house; then the husband chases her down the street and beats the hell out of her and drags her screaming and kicking back to the house; claiming all the while that he has “saved” the marriage.
Do you still wonder why the south was and in many cases still is comprised of so many “yellow dog democrats”?
Get real.
I withdraw my remark. Thank you for pointing that out.
The Constitution IS the Union. Defending one is defending the other.
I don't know what "history" you have read, but a serious reading of the Constitution, in full context, will affirm my statement.
Lincoln did what he had to. Defending the Constitution and preserving the Union were the same. To be true to his oath of office, he could recognize no law higher than the Constitution, and that includes whatever some politicians in South Carolina wished to write. Solemn compacts and sacred oaths might not have meant much to the secessionists blinded in their lust for power, but it obviously meant much to Lincoln.
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