Posted on 07/26/2011 1:36:11 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
......The last attempt to campaign on the appeal of the 10th Amendment was made in 1996 by Bob Dole, who carried a well-worn version in his breast pocket. The strategy amounted to unilateral policy disarmament. While Bill Clinton described improvements in education and public safety, Dole talked of procedural limits on federal power. The domestic centerpiece of Dole’s campaign was a void, a negation.
Given President Obama’s record of federal overreach, the 10th Amendment may have more political appeal this time around. But the problem with a sweeping application of the amendment is not merely political.
[snip]
For the most part, George Washington and Chief Justice John Marshall endorsed Hamilton’s more expansive view of federal authority. Even Jefferson and Madison eventually made their own “convenient modifications.” Jefferson — whose theoretical purity often resulted in hypocrisy — managed to make the Louisiana Purchase without amending the Constitution to enumerate this massive exercise of federal power. Madison signed legislation establishing the Second Bank of the United States. The new government, as Hamilton foresaw, would need to act in a “vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.”
The Jefferson-Hamilton debate has recurred in American history, often in the context of race. It has not strengthened the Jeffersonian argument that some of its main champions have been John Calhoun and George Wallace. Following the desegregation of schools in 1954, 19 senators and 77 representatives signed a manifesto criticizing Brown v. Board of Education, in part, because the “Constitution does not mention education.” It is possible, of course, for a sound argument to be pressed into the service of a bad cause. But any Southern politician needs to be careful about historical context.................
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Federalism is a beautiful concept and is excellent in practice, but I do think there are fundamental issues that are beyond the state e.g slavery....issues that can’t be delayed in judgement.
That being said, the left hates a structured government. They want a 51% government ie everything changes each election. There is no foundation in their mind,...well, some of them may be fond of the Bill of Rights in an odd fashion, but they would willingly give up aspects of it, if it suited their ends.
I personally, would rather amend the constitution than throw it away constantly. It means something to me and so does federalism. Our government may obviously need to adjust and change it’s political structure, but I think it needs just as much wisdom as it once started with.
July 25, 2011 -- UCLA: Gov. Rick Perry’s ‘Seven Breakthrough Solutions’ would make for bad business, undermine meaning of a university
[July 25, 2011]...........Miner said people who know Perry understand that two things he feels strongly about are states’ rights and the institution of traditional marriage.
“Nothing has changed with the governor’s philosophy here,” he said.
Besides confirming Perry’s support of a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Miner pointed to the governor’s state record. Perry supported the Texas Defense of Marriage Act and a state constitutional amendment defining traditional marriage, Miner noted.
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/perry-supporters-defend-his-remarks-on-n-y-1654839.html
That is why the Left is addicted to moral issues and emotional claims. They resist logical discussion and enable the propagandist to crank up his calliope without check.
Just as was done with the slavery issue. The result was war, and the destruction of half the country. Think Obama would do less, to get total power? (Helpful suggestion: No.)
You really want to drag that stuff in here again? Planning to ride the long arm of the sidebar moderator again?
Was it ten, or twelve, impossible things that Alice was supposed to contemplate before breakfast?
Michael Gerson is incredibly deluded if he thinks any of the founding fathers ever, ever imagined federal authority included the rights to tell people what kinds of products they could use, seize their property in order to give it to other private entitites (i.e. non-public uses), force people to buy products (insurance) from private entities, tell them how to run their schools, etc.
Mr. Gerson, I can read the US Constitution for myself and understand its plain meaning. It’s not complex. Most citizens can no doubt do the same as I. Don’t try to tell me George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton or any of the other founders were statists. That’s pure crap!
Rick Perry's Confederate past [Salon "exclusive" that gets it wrong]
Bump!
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Tenth Amendment states the Constitution’s principle of federalism by providing that powers not granted to the federal government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution are reserved, respectively, to the STATES or the PEOPLE.
Most States are sick and tired of an over bearing Federal Government telling them what they can and cannot do. They fear the National Government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.....
If you watched Obama’s class and race warfare whine to the nation last night, you caught his closing comments. For those who didn’t here they are. Not so subtle.
*************
“...... America, after all, has always been a grand experiment in compromise. As a democracy made up of every race and religion, where every belief and point of view is welcomed, we have put to the test time and again the proposition at the heart of our founding: that out of many, we are one. We’ve engaged in fierce and passionate debates about the issues of the day, but from slavery to war, from civil liberties to questions of economic justice, we have tried to live by the words that Jefferson once wrote: “Every man cannot have his way in all things — without this mutual disposition, we are disjointed individuals, but not a society.”
History is scattered with the stories of those who held fast to rigid ideologies and refused to listen to those who disagreed. But those are not the Americans we remember. We remember the Americans who put country above self, and set personal grievances aside for the greater good. We remember the Americans who held this country together during its most difficult hours; who put aside pride and party to form a more perfect union.
That’s who we remember. That’s who we need to be right now. The entire world is watching. So let’s seize this moment to show why the United States of America is still the greatest nation on Earth –- not just because we can still keep our word and meet our obligations, but because we can still come together as one nation.” [end]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/25/address-president-nation
And Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, is telling Americans and the world that those who speak out against overbearing government should be considered terrorists. How convenient for the 2012 presidential race and for MSM and Obama's demagoguery about the Tea Party.
One, there is no "national government" -- there is, however a federal one, and that usage remains accurate.
Standing up to the Feds, though, is a train that left the station about the time people either failed to stand up to Abraham Lincoln, or died trying.
There is now no practical check other than the ballot box, on presidential claims of illimitable federal power.
People have forgotten, and of course the schools don’t teach, that constitutionally each state is sovereign and the federal government is supposed to be small and its powers narrow and limited.
It is interesting to watch the once sovereign nations of Europe being gobbled up and homogenized, with their individuality and sovereignty being destroyed by the European Union, much as the US federal government has done to the individual states in the USA.
I once had hopes that in the US the process could be reversed with the states reaffirming their constitutional rights and authority but now that seems almost impossible.
It is disheartning to see how the federal government and their rumpswabbing trained media have been successful in inculcating acceptance of federalism to the point that the idea of states rights is treated as a radial and antiquated notion, held by a just a few antiprogressive, racist, fringe kooks.
A cry in the black education wilderness - LINKS to articles of education-leftists-race.
As you pointed out, the alternative is death, destruction, defeat, and oblivion. I think he'd enjoy a civil war right about now.
I agree with you.
Everything he does smacks of “in your face” — the Cambridge incident, like the comments of Shelia Jackson Lee — he plays this theme and he knows it’s being heard.
He is the racist and he has driven wedges exactly to dismantle our “coming together as a nation.”
So is Mandating Gardasil by Executive Order
for the Merck and Perry’s Chief of Staff (Was he with
Rove and Gore, too?)
a state’s right issue, too?
Is Perry claiming he has the right to do this everywhere now?
PerryCARE? NO WAY. NO MORE RINOs.
The first sign of a quality consrvative POTUS candidate is that the Left really hates and despises them.
I think this is the first time I’ve read a Gerson article that I agreed with.
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