Posted on 05/03/2010 8:38:55 AM PDT by speciallybland
Christian conservative leader James Dobson withdrew his endorsement of Kentucky Senate candidate Trey Grayson Monday, switching his support to Rand Paul’s campaign and accusing “senior members of the GOP” of misleading him about Paul’s record on abortion.
Dobson said in an audio recording that he made an “embarrassing mistake” as a result of misunderstanding Paul’s position on abortion.
“I was given misleading information about the candidacy of Dr. Rand Paul, who is running in the Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate. Senior members of the GOP told me Dr. Paul is pro-choice and that he opposes many conservative perspectives, so I endorsed his opponent,” Dobson explained. “But now I've received further information from OB/GYNs in Kentucky whom I trust, and from interviewing the candidate himself.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Who misled him on George A. Rekers, and Ted Haggard?
Dr. Dobson seems to have a real knack for being misled about key people.
Really? You consider John Marshall’s rejection of the incorporation of the takings clause as sweeping, persuasive evidence of the sentiment of the founders concerning natural law duties of the member states? Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243, was decided in 1833, a full generation after the founding, by John Marshall, the man whom many regard as the father of judicial review. Now if you are as concerned as you say you are about judicial activism (which is without doubt the unwholesome progeny of judicial review), Marbury v Madison (1803, well before your Barron case) surely must give you pause. And a true, original founder, Jefferson, it is well known, did not approve of the kind of concentration of judicial power that Marshall arguably planted in that decision. How can that be, if Marshall is such a sterling source for beliefs of the Founders?
The problem with revising history, you see, is that facts keep getting in the way. Real life is complicated and messy. That’s why quantity means something. You can draw a single case to your side for the antebellum period. I can draw founder after founder after founder. And I mean people who were signatories to the Constitution, pen to paper founders, not mere judicial appointees who came later.
So, let me ask you this, Mr. “I’m no revisionist,” where does John Locke come out on this? Because where Locke is, you will certainly find the Founders. Or are you prepared to tell me that, yeah, Locke was referred to a lot but nobody actually believed all that natural right stuff he kept spewing? Because if you accept Locke’s influence on the Founders, I have another quote for you to avoid responding to:
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.”
~John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter 19, “Of the Dissolution of Government,” Section 222 (1690) (See http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm).
Hey wow, that really sounds a lot like the Declaration, doesn’t it? It should. Imagine that, a government invalidates itself when it tyrannizes the lives, liberty, or property of the people. So where do ya think systematic genocide would fit in that template? Just curious ...
Frankly if the establishment GOP is for Greyson, I’d be for Paul as well.
Rand Paul is the direction we need to go. I’m sick of people like dobson and the rest of these rinos and big govt social cons.
Oh I don’t think that Rand is the be all and end all, and is in no way MY idea of even an adequate GOP Senator...HOWEVER, if the bigwigs in the GOP hate him, then he has my support.
I also find any attempt to read some unrelated platitude about a vaguely defined and likely ill-understood "natural law" into that observation to be contrived with certainty, and possibly a willful misrepresentation of my position.
Furthermore, I continue to find a disquieting amount of hypocrisy in your taking issue with the 1833 date of Marshall's decision (despite the fact that he belonged to the founding generation himself and was appointed to the court during the founding generation in 1801), seeing as you were recently citing 20th century pro-incorporation passages to support your position.
Though I'm certain you will ignore each of these salient and clearly stated points yet again, favoring instead the tactic of playing pretend philosopher with quotes you gleaned from hackish and amateur websites that understand their meaning even less than you do, I think the record is sufficiently clear that Baron v. Baltimore is thoroughly representative evidence of the founders position on incorporation. That in turn makes the incorporation argument at odds with the government they created. And by extension of your advocacy of it, it also places you at similar odds with them.
CC, the Constitution was written by men who were immersed in John Locke. Locke rejected the validity of any government that broke down on the core individual rights, the inalienable ones, life, liberty, property. He would invoke the right of revolution should the defense of those rights be abandoned. That assertion is the basis for the Declaration, and it was and is the principle objective of the Constitution to establish, and to “secure the blessings,” of a government that would consistently defend those rights, that without such a defense in place, a government dissolves to a legal nullity.
There are many evidences within the Constitution of this intended effect. To name just one, consider:
Article IV, Section 4:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
Thus, the Constitution obliges the federal to ensure valid governments in the states, and on the assumption that a valid government is still in place, to provide aid upon request to suppress intrastate violence, of which murder is certainly a species.
To make it clear, the Founders would not regard any state that sanctioned genocide as a valid state, nor its laws as valid laws, whether they incur active or passive endangerment of those rights. Such a state represents an untenable absurdity in Locke’s social contract. If the whole point of the social contract is to protect and preserve individual rights (such as life) by mutual agreements that limit violence against those rights (such as murder), then the social contract is broken when that mutual protection is thwarted by the state itself.
Therefore, as a first line of defense, a statute repealing the statute against murder could be challenged as unconstitutional. One attack might be made on the foregoing Article IV grounds, especially if the repealing statute was entirely general, making it immune to an equal protection hurdle. With that fact pattern, I believe it would be a case of first impression, so it might actually fly, despite the tattered history of the Guarantee Clause. However, if a specific class of persons were targeted, such as FReepers, or the unborn, equal protection analysis would probably be more appropriate and more effective, assuming personhood of the victimized class could be established.
Still other approaches may be possible. In the event of a general repeal, and taking a purely textual approach to the 5th Amendment, the phrase:
“nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”
does not spell out any distinction as to whether it is a state or private actor doing the depriving. I know what the popular opinion is, and I think I know how SCOTUS would process the claim, but the text itself is open-ended on the matter, and a valid question to put to the Court.
The 14th Amendment presses the matter even more forcefully to the states, as they acquire a duty to defend the life, freedom, and property rights of any natural person by means of due process. Though it has been crippled as to private actors by subsequent case law (DeShaney, etc.), I believe it can still be argued the 14th strongly implies a state’s obligation, not only to avoid active infractions of its own, but to avoid passive failures of duty to act against private actors attempting to kill, enslave, or rob their fellow human beings.
Furthermore, an argument for the presumption of a universal, government-independent right to life can be found in the 2nd Amendment. If there is a right to life, there is a right to defend it, by lethal force if necessary. And history suggests that the Founders did include the 2nd as an explicit continuation of a right of self-defense established during England’s Glorious Revolution. It is therefore well-grounded in an individual, inalienable right to live, and stands as the last defense against the failure of government at any level to protect that right from infringement by either state or private actors.
(In fact, in a state with no murder statute, and assuming common law murder disabled as well, governance would tend to devolve to the best weaponists, potentially leading to the demise of the original government doing the repealing. So in one sense it could be viewed as a self-solving problem: Pro-murder governments don’t last long.)
It may well be asked then, if the inferential evidence of inalienable rights is so abundant in the text, why then was the ban on slavery specifically applied to private actors via the 13th Amendment? Fair enough. I take it to mean only that time and distance make it harder for later generations to draw exactly the same inferences as the Founders. The inviolable rights to life, liberty, and property, were to the Founders so obviously the Declaration’s golden apples set in the Constitution’s frame of silver (as Lincoln later described it), that not one of them, I venture to guess, would have believed a time traveler from our period asserting that mass murder could somehow be justified within the constitutional framework they designed.
Therefore, assuming the appeal to the judiciary would fail (based on their traditional reluctance to tinker with even a faulty stare decisis – Dred Scott comes to mind), the second line of defense would be for every constitutional officer at both state and federal levels to man up and assume responsibility for acting on their own understanding of the Constitution with respect to at least this one rogue doctrine. As has been rightly said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, especially if Locke has anything to say about it. If a rogue state legislature abandons reason and the underlying natural law principles of the Constitution, it is no excuse for those who should know better to stand by and do nothing while murder and mayhem wreak havoc with the Republic.
Which brings us to Nuremberg. In a complete void of statutory law, in the absence of any legal prohibition to the murder of millions, those who clung to their obedience to positive law (“we were just following orders”) were nonetheless held guilty by the world, and by us, with our natural law premise that no one may commit genocide without losing their validity as a government. Therefore, if a rogue state legislature should void the law against murder, and if there should be too few responsible, principled citizens within the state to prevent its wholesale departure from its duty to protect life, liberty, or property, then that state should be regarded as a collapsed and unlawful government, opening it to the full range of remedies applicable to such states.
Even so, military action is neither the first nor the only possible response to such a circumstance. Which is why it would be wrong to box someone into some kind of simplistic either/or mentality. There are too many imponderables that would only be seen clearly in the light of a specific and real fact pattern. We have already had one civil war and it wasn’t fun, and it didn’t do that well in its core mission, either, considering current racial tensions. Whereas sanctions defeated apartheid in South Africa, without offending the principle of local sovereignty, without measurable casualties, and with a more stable social outcome.
So I think the answer to your question lies in how we might reimagine our own civil war. What might we have done better or different? What would work now that wouldn’t have worked then? Who is really in charge when a government breaks the social contract, and who could issue the constitutional appeal for federal aid in suppressing internal violence? I don’t know why you think these are easy problems. They terrify me for their complexity and potential for bad consequences if handled uncarefully. Maybe that’s just me. But I do see one clear and guiding light, that whatever we do, we must be able to justify both means and ends as valid under the Constitution, and under the natural law it was designed to support as well.
Sorry for the length.
SR
Well, I am relieved. I always worry at a lengthy response that some deadly new information will appear that will unseat my case and I will have more research to do. Happily, you have simply reiterated that you got nothin’ new for me, bro (or sis, whatever).
Suit yourself. BTW, I don’t know why you’re still fighting Barton, as I haven’t used his site since you objected. As an accommodation to you, of course. The quotes are from the primary sources. And did I predict it or what! You do not want to deal with Locke at all, do you? That’s OK. I understand. I didn’t think you would. That’s why I used him. :)
Also, I studied natural law as a part of my law school education. Multiple semesters. Primary sources. Good stuff. But if you want to keep feeding off your Barton prejudice, fine, that’s up to you. Personally, I think you can’t respond to it because you’re like a classmate I had. She was an accounting whiz, very smart person, but just could not get the whole natural law thing. Deeply panicked during finals week. Oh well. That’s how it goes.
BTW, your name, conimbricenses, suggests you know something about the Jesuits. I think they were OK with Aquinas and his whole natural law thing, so it’s really ironic you’re so dyspeptic about it. Funny. Or sad. Depending on your point of view.
Later,
SR
I'll note that your perception of hostility to natural law is an imagined one, though even that is beside the point. So instead I'll put it to you plainly: your beloved quotes DO NOT show what you apparently think they show. Though you seem to maintain otherwise, they still say little, if even anything, PARTICULAR to the constitutional doctrine of incorporation.
At best they're a motley amalgamation phrases and quips and excerpts and a few of the more famous lines talking about "natural law" in the most abstract and generic sense possible that you've managed to gather and glean from across the internet. And for that act of scraping together the generic platitudes of others, you seem to envision yourself as some sort of a philosopher.
The simple reality though is that not a SINGLE ONE of your quotes so much as even addresses the particulars of Marshall's arguments in Barron v. Baltimore, much less challenging or refuting them or demonstrating them not to be, in fact, representative of the founders' understanding of federalism. That's the real issue here. And until you figure that out, find some more substantive sources, and quit interpreting every single criticism of your poorly constructed argument as if it were some grand and intentional repudiation of a broad and great and vaguely defined concept of "natural law" that you barely even seem to comprehend yourself, your argument will remain at and continue to offer this discussion exactly what it did when you first attempted it: nothing.
Whatever. I don’t really care what a non-founder has to say, other than as a datum of interest to subsequent events, when better evidence, directly from the founders’ own pens, is available (and much of it on the internet – what a surprise!). Best evidence rule.
The naked truth is, you just don’t want to respond to the founders themselves, so you have contrived a “kill the messenger” attack on me. Hey man, if that floats your boat, fine. Alinsky would be proud.
Later,
SR :)
Curious.
In fact, almost as curious as your quotes, which say nothing even remotely resembling what you purport them to say.
It all attests to one of two possibilities: you are horrendously ignorant of American history, or you are delusional. The former is more easily corrected than the latter, but it requires the afflicted to recognize it and seek betterment for himself. That is also a difficult task when the former exists in the presence of the latter, which I fear may be your case.
Con,
A founder is one who actually founds. The entire generation alive in 1776 is the founding generation, and many of them personally knew the Founders, but only a few among them are actually the Founders, most notably those who crafted the original ideas and wrote the original founding documents which are the subject of our inquiry. I name my sources among that stratospheric group. Your single thread of evidence is from a man who had no role in the creation of those founding documents, but instead helped “found” that pernicious doctrine we now call judicial supremacy (aka judicial activism).
Furthermore, the fact that you do not understand how the natural law principles of those original Founders trump a Ron Paulish hyper-federalism is not my problem, not anymore. You do realize you never actually refute anything. You only throw mud at the messenger. Nice. Seriously, did you go to school with Alinsky, or what?
I therefore retain my conviction that it is you sir who is engaged in evasion. However, in as mush as I now believe you will feel compelled to have the last word, and that it will necessary involve uncivil insults, have at it.
Bye,
SR
To say then that Marshall "had no role in the creation of those founding documents" is thus not only counter-historical, but inexcusably ignorant of basic American history. It is also telling to this particular case. If the Bill of Rights emerged largely from the Virginia convention in large part at Marshall's hand, then it follows that he would know more than almost any other founder of its intended original role as a constriction on the federal government rather than the states and thus possesses PRIMARY authority to speak against incorporation as an eyewitness.
Not that any of this will convince you. You've already amply demonstrated that you're a true believer, wrapped up in a bizarre fixation with a vague concept of "natural law" that you barely even understand yourself. You strike me as someone who took a college course or two from a professor who was all wrapped up in the "natural law explains everything" branch of political theory. My guess is he was probably either a Straussian or his own smaller cottage variety of self-defined "natural law" conservatism. I suspect there's a good shot of him being at a Hillsdale, or a Claremont-McKenna, or another of those little niche conservative liberal arts colleges, though there are also a handful scattered in some of the bigger state universities so that cannot entirely be precluded. But for whatever reason, you grew to idolize that professor, thinking he had given you the keys to the world. What he did in reality was leave you in a rut of freshman semester Political Theory, so that here you are years later still spouting cliched lines of John Locke-this, John Locke-that, and still trying to prove and reprove essay question #3 from the midterm wherein you were given the not-terribly-imposing task of demonstrating the Declaration of Independence drew inspiration from the Second Treatise of Government, or some other similar common test of whether the students were actually sleeping through the lectures but little more. That same rut has also impaired your ability to not only move beyond your generic grasp of "natural law," but to also make any meaningful application of it in the particular to any specific question of government and policy. Thus, when I attempt to engage you in a discussion of what Marshall specifically said about the incorporation doctrine, your only answer is to dredge up some unspecific quote of little Alec Hamilton vaguely blathering on about "natural law" much as you yourself do, though applied to no end, much as is the case with your own arguments. And when that fails you, your final retort is to put the remainder of your ignorance on full display by frivolously attacking Marshall's bona fides as a founder in a way that immediately exposes how little you know of Marshall or the founders at large. And just who were you quoting the other day again as a representative "founder," all while dismissing Marshall today...Poor King Rufus? So setting aside how 'bout them apples and other such formalities, I will close by offering you one piece of advice: expand your philosophical reading list. Natural law is not a bad thing by any means, but it isn't the grand unifying theory of how our government works either...or at least not at the very cursory and amateurish level you seem to understand it. It's time to step beyond Professor-so-and-so's American Government 102 or else you will only continue to embarrass yourself in these discussions. That is not an intended insult, Springfield. It is a statement of fact, offered constructively in the slim hope that you might find an interest in bettering yourself and your argument from it. But since the operative word there is slim, I do not consider myself optimistic.
No, a ratifier is not a writer or a contributor in the sense of original thinking. However, I understand that defining the scope of who the Founders really were is a debated issue. I really limit it to those who made the most notable contributions to the creation of the original documents, not to its broader acceptance in the states. Again, as a matter of best evidence, authors should take precedence over voting delegates, and the precedent tributaries of thought such as Locke and others, should be considered important and even dispositive if the authors so regarded them.
Sincerely, I am not trying to be difficult. The legal studies I undertook at over 50 years of age did not come to me as from a divinely inspired professorial idol talking to a young and easily overawed mind, as you suggest. Initially, I contested the issue. Being more of a traditional Calvinist, direct, divine revelation was more my notion of how universal moral principles were communicated to the human soul.
However, my mind changed as I studied, again reading directly from Augustine, Aquinas, the Greek classics (I only read Koine, and that badly, so pardon my skipping the Attic), and of course Descartes, Locke and many others. Modern sources as well, reflecting on the same general problem domain, such as Budziszewski, Robert George, and the like.
So no, I do not have some bare-bones context into which I am mindlessly throwing the phrase “natural law” like some potent talisman. I believe there is a moral contour to the universe that any soul may find, and so strong it is, that they may feel it even when they cannot see it. And I believe there is evidence the Founders not only saw it that way, but designed their Constitution deliberately to accommodate it. Hence the inalienability of the rights to be protected.
Which is why I sincerely do not understand how anyone, especially with the kind of vastly superior erudition you claim to have, could think the Founders, almost all theists, would allow their design to be so compromised that genocide would be permissible in the states under their notion of federalism. I really, really don’t get that. These were smart guys. Why would they set themselves up for failure in such a critical part of their mission?
As for Incorporation, it is a bit player in the drama, a piece of evidence for my argument that the grander design existed, and that is how I offered it, if you will review my introduction of it. You decided to latch onto Marshall’s resistance to it in a takings case, as your entire proof of universal opinion among the Founders. If you are in so lofty an educational status as you would have me believe, why are you relying on a single datum on a line of evidence that is not even the central issue? Does that really meet the rubric of a credible academic proof?
I am trying to be nice, and I have not derogated your intellect or education as you have mine, but I simply don’t see why you are defending the islands whilst I take the mainland unopposed. I am still a good learner after all these years, and I hope you will do me the kindness of giving a more well-rounded response to my inquiry, and help me see what I am missing, rather than simply lambasting me for my intellectual deficits without informing me what you actually believe about what natural law is, and how it may or may not have a role in comprehending the federalism of the primordial founders.
I am all ears. Really. Just ask my wife. :)
SR
No, a ratifier is not a writer or a contributor in the sense of original thinking.
So...by your same reasoning then Thomas Jefferson and John Adams shouldn't count either, because they were in Europe as foreign ministers during the constitutional convention. Nor were John Hancock, Patrick Henry, or Samuel Adams, seeing as they only took part in the ratification stage as well.
You are playing pick-and-choose with your founding fathers. It's a very strange world where an Alexander Hamilton (who blathered about monarchy at the convention, but lost almost every single vote and got ignored by the rest of the delegates) "counts" as a founder and Rufus King (a comparatively minor figure) also "counts," but John Marshall (a judicial heavyweight who people actually did listen to) does not. In fact the only criterion I can even discern is their perceived convenience to your argument. Marshall is inconvenient to your point (and I'm still not convinced you even know what your point is beyond regurgitating a muddled concept of natural law for its own sake interspersed with increasingly obvious name-dropping), so you dismiss him.
Your selective editing, your “Bartonian ellipse,” as it were, has resulted in a grave, and what appears to be an intentional distortion of my working definition of “Founder.” I therefore reiterate my earlier post:
“No, a ratifier is not a writer or a contributor in the sense of original thinking. However, I understand that defining the scope of who the Founders really were is a debated issue. I really limit it to those who made the most notable contributions to the creation of the original documents, not to its broader acceptance in the states. Again, as a matter of best evidence, authors should take precedence over voting delegates, and the precedent tributaries of thought such as Locke and others, should be considered important and even dispositive if the authors so regarded them.”
Under that definition, the “selectivity” to which you object is simply a natural outcome of the purpose, which is to show what influenced the substantive content of the founding documents. Therefore, while I have already granted in the above statement that broader definitions of “Founder” could theoretically include anyone from the period, no matter how attenuated their role, I will still contend that Marshall was not a player as to formation of the substantive content of the founding documents, and you have not refuted that. If you would prefer another term for the subclass of Founder I am referencing, perhaps “Framer” would be closer to the goal, but it is not quite perfect, because I do not wish to exclude those who contributed to the Framers’ thoughts, given their power to explain the origin of the Framers’ content.
Furthermore, because the Declaration stands in an organic relationship to the Constitution, Jefferson, as the author of the Declaration, is most certainly a Founder under the foregoing definition. And Jefferson, in agreement with Hamilton, Blackstone, Locke, et al, would not countenance a vision of legitimate government that allowed at any level for genocide:
“strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.”
~Thomas Jefferson, Letter to J.B. Colvin (Sept. 20, 1810)
And here, Jefferson, whom both of us must regard as a top tier Founder using any reasonable definition, makes my central point, that the Constitution, as a body of positive law, only serves as a means to an end, that end being the preservation of “life, liberty, property,” the core individual rights, grounded in natural law, without which one loses both law and country. Can you see how that might exclude genocide?
Your selective editing, your “Bartonian ellipse,” as it were, has resulted in a grave, and what appears to be an intentional distortion of my working definition of “Founder.”
I did nothing more than apply your definition as you are applying it to Marshall, which is to say excluding him from the ranks of the framers. It makes no difference that you subsequently enumerate an expansive definition that might theoretically encompass him if in fact you are applying the narrow one to exclude him. And as I previously noted, even that narrow exclusion is suspect to the point that it appears to be premised on nothing more than its convenience to your pro-incorporation position and your desire to exclude Barron v. Baltimore from the body of authority among the founding generation to argue against incorporation.
I will still contend that Marshall was not a player as to formation of the substantive content of the founding documents, and you have not refuted that.
Except that I have, back when the original point was raised. Let me ask you this: does the Bill of Rights not count as a "founding document?" If it does (and I think the case is especially strong here considering we are discussing the incorporation of the Bill of Rights as a legal concept), then it is absurd to exclude John Marshall from your definition because the simple truths of history contradict you.
The Bill of Rights came directly out of the Virginia ratifying convention, where both its first draft was prepared and its implications were most thoroughly discussed. In fact, Marshall gave one of the most forceful and influential speeches from that entire convention - elaborating point by point why many of the amendments we now take for granted were necessary in establishing the formative structures of our judicial system. That alone is more than sufficient to establish him as a valid measure of the original intent behind the Bill of Rights, which again is the subject at hand with the incorporation doctrine.
Look, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? If a conversation ever gets anywhere, it’s because the participants try in good faith not to get bogged down by things not central to the argument, and incorporation is useful but not central to my argument, and you are surely aware of that.
Therefore, I will concede that when I began this conversation I was implicitly referring to founders who were also framers (and no one argues Marshall to be a framer, unless you wish to distort “framer” out of all reasonable bounds), and thus confused the issue by using the broader term, and further confused the issue by referencing individuals who were not framers per se, in contradiction to my own implied definition. My apologies. It was careless of me.
However, as a result of my imprecision you have relentlessly tugged at that one loose thread, and it has enabled you to completely avoid exposing your own view of the central matter, what is natural law and how does it relate to the founder’s original constitutional design. I never get your view. You must wish to hide it for some reason.
In any event, I have not responded because I have lost faith that you wish to get to the core issues. You are intentionally hiding in the distraction I created for you. That works well in college debate class, but it does not serve the interest of patriots trying in good faith to restore a faltering country to its founding principles.
Therefore, when you are ready to defend your own view of the matter with greater transparency and good will, we may resume. Until then, I will assume you simply are unwilling to discuss the matter. Your choice.
SR
Therefore, I will concede that when I began this conversation I was implicitly referring to founders who were also framers (and no one argues Marshall to be a framer, unless you wish to distort “framer” out of all reasonable bounds
I again ask: since when is a major participant in the Virginia ratification convention that wrote the first draft of the Bill of Rights not a "framer" of that document?
The only one distorting that term here is you, and you are doing it STRICTLY out of convenience because quite simply you have no other argument to answer Marshall's ruling in Barron v. Baltimore, which establishes conclusively that the "incorporation" doctrine is a modern judicial activist pile of crap.
As to the "natural law" you keep blathering about, I have yet to see evidence that you even understand what you purport to be talking about and therefore see no further point in trying to engage you upon something that you probably do not comprehend.
Whether you went there or somewhere else, you certainly exhibit something I like to call the "Hillsdale Effect" - the process by which an idealistic conservative-leaning student is exposed to a VERY rudimentary concept of "Natural Law" while being told (somewhat correctly) that it is neglected these days in the "mainstream" politics and philosophy departments. They quickly become convinced that they have been given the "key" of "natural law" and that it is a grand unifying theory that explains how the entire world works, even as they have in truth barely scratched the surface of the concept. They then become very arrogant about having that "key" and begin applying it in discussions of PARTICULARS by inappropriately abstracting them to a general concept or rule and insisting, by way of an interpretation that they present as esoteric but which is really just a cover for a vague and shallow grasp of the concept itself, that everyone else who disagrees with them on that particular is inherently "wrong" and in fact at war with "natural law" itself by way of that misapplied and often barely even relevant general rule.
To put it another way, your "natural law" interest is probably well intentioned but your metaphysics of abstracting upon are an unmitigated disaster. So long as you are obstinate and unwilling to straighten them out, it is a complete waste of my time to engage you further on that subject...which is why I'll stick to the particular of Marshall, and yes he did speak for the founding generation when he conclusively stated that the incorporation doctrine was a pile of crap.
Whoa, since you have decided to use radically unconventional definitions for founders, I am electing to spend my time elsewhere. Life is too short to waste it on nonsense, especially at my age. See you in the funny papers. :)
Your True Friend,
SR
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