You obviously find authority in the words of the founders on other matters. By what then, other than inconvenience, do you so flippantly dismiss what they had to say against incorporation?
I have already responded to your assertions concerning incorporation. Let me try again. I am not interested in validating the specific steps of incorporation’s judicial evolution. I raised incorporation primarily to show that the Court has repeatedly found it necessary to respond to the pressure of natural law inherent in the constitutional system, a pressure that was designed into the system by the Founders. You are coming at it as if it were a first semester shepardizing problem. I am looking for the dynamo that gave shape to the process as a whole, even if that process involved missteps and suffered abuses along the way (such as the South’s dubious abrogation of free speech against slavery before the war, or on the opposite extreme, Black’s desire to incorporate indiscriminately, without a sense of the hierarchy of rights).
Which is why I am somewhat disappointed you have once again very conveniently dodged the content of the offered quotes, which clearly establish the natural law as framework for the Founders’ constitutional system, including their federalism. I therefore press them upon you in fuller measure and without ellipses to nullify your excuse that Barton also used them:
“As promulgated by reason and the moral sense, it has been called natural; as promulgated by the holy scriptures, it has been called revealed law.”
“As addressed to men, it has been denominated the law of nature; as addressed to political societies, it has been denominated the law of nations.”
“But it should always be remembered, that this law, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same divine source: it is the law of God.”
“Nature, or, to speak more properly, the Author of nature, has done much for us; but it is his gracious appointment and will, that we should also do much for ourselves. What we do, indeed, must be founded on what he has done; and the deficiencies of our laws must be supplied by the perfections of his. Human law must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of that law, which is divine.”
~James Wilson, from Chapter II.: Of the General Principles of Law and Obligation. -, Collected Works of James Wilson, vol. 1 [2007]
In a speech given concerning slavery in the thirteen colonies, Rufus King said, “Mr. President I have yet to learn that one man can make a slave of another; if one man cannot do so, no number of individuals can have any better right to do it, and I hold that all laws and compacts imposing any such condition on any human being are absolutely void, because contrary to the law of nature, which is the law of God, by which he makes his way known to man and is paramount to all human control.”
~Rufus King, The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, Charles R. King, editor. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900, Vol. VI, p. 276, to C. Gore on February 17, 1820.
In a letter in which the above speech was referenced, Rufus King also said, “…I referred the decision of the Restriction on Missouri to the broad principles of the law of Nature, a law established by the Creator, which has existed from the beginning, extends over the whole globe, is everywhere, and at all times, binding upon mankind.”
~Rufus King, The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, Charles R. King, editor. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900, Vol. VI, p. 276, to C. Gore on February 17, 1820.
“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. There are, it is true, a great number of indifferent points in which both the divine law and the natural leave a man at his own liberty, but which are found necessary, for the benefit of society, to be restrained within certain limits. And herein it is that human laws have their greatest force and efficacy; for, with regard to such points as are not indifferent, human laws are only declaratory of, and act in subordination to, the former. To instance in the case of murder: this is expressly forbidden by the divine, and demonstrably by the natural law; and, from these prohibitions, arises the true unlawfulness of this crime. Those human laws that annex a punishment to it do not at all increase its moral guilt, or *
[*43] superadd any fresh obligation, in foro conscientiæ, to abstain from its perpetration. Nay, if any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine. But, with regard to matters that are in themselves indifferent, and are not commanded or forbidden by those superior laws,—such, for instance, as exporting of wool into foreign countries,—here the inferior legislature has scope and opportunity to interpose, and to make that action unlawful which before was not so.”
~Blackstone, from Section II.: Of The Nature Of Laws In General, Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books, vol. 1 [1753]
“This is what is called the law of nature, ‘which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original.’”
~Alexander Hamilton, quoting Blackstone favorably in The Farmer Refuted, 23 Feb. 1775Papers 1:86—89, 121—22, 135—36,.
As for my use of Wallbuilders, I have seen some of the critiques of his work and find them more biased and less convincing than you apparently do. However, as I do not have time or interest in resolving all possible prejudices, I leave you to yours. Barton’s material helped me find the quotes. I used them fairly to make my point (that correspondence to the natural law, especially the right to life, is inherent in the constitutional design at all levels), and you have once again failed to address their substance and their force, which works out very nicely for you, but does not advance the discussion one whit.
So to clarify, are you saying that something is untrue, simply because Barton, among others, has observed it to be true? What then of the sunrise? If Barton says it is day, will you say it is night? Isn’t this too much like Alynski’s “kill the messenger” tactic to be apropos as among fellow conservatives? I really thought we were trying to be better than that. Am I wrong?