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 ...
Okay. Why?
The lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday to express concern that millions of voters do not have a government-issued ID - particularly older people, racial minorities, low-income voters and students.
..........."The senators are seeking vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and federal civil rights law, which bars different standards from being applied to individuals within a jurisdiction. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act gives the Justice Department significant authority to review laws before they are implemented in states with a history of discriminatory voting practices. Three states subject to Section 5 - Georgia, Texas and South Carolina - require a photo ID in order to vote. Texas and South Carolina enacted their laws last month."
The other point he makes is that you have to be FOR something to win. I suspect Perry knows this. At the moment, it seems to me, he's our best hope. Unless we want Romney.
I don't agree with that at all. The left despises a lot of low-quality candidates too. It may mean they are conservative. Doesn't mean they ought to be president.
Hello Huck. Given your POTUS prognostication skills, I'm glad you don't agree. I'm just sayin'. Call it another 'first' (of many) sign.
Hamilton was the proponent of a strong centralized government and was the father of the excise tax that instigated the unrest. He was also the proponent of calling in the state militias to smash it and in fact led the operation in the field.
I think he wants to shove conservative whites into minority status and then systematically beat us up with discriminatory admin policies and even legislation -- like Woodrow Wilson's Jim Crow regulations, and the laws the Nazis passed against the Jews.
Keep in mind, though, that his coalition would always be essentially and psychologically minoritarian -- and those are the regimes that like to kill people in numbers, in order to keep the restless natives down. Case in point from the headlines: the Assad family of Syria and their Alawite kinsmen's regime. Ditto Robert Mugabe down in Zim, and his tribal homies. The last few white Rhodesian farmers are being driven out or killed now.
Just sayin' ....
Actually, he didn't -- Washington did. It was the first and last time a President of the United States put on his old military uniform, climbed into a saddle, and led troops into the field in person.
The rebellion was quelled more than crushed, certain guilty parties were punished, and Hamilton, who accompanied the Militia Washington had called out, was politically rebuffed. His excise measure was quietly taken down and not reimposed in the form he had intended.
Hamilton's "don't tax you and don't tax me; let's tax that fellow there under that tree" measure was actually an industrialist's tax on agrarian crops, disguised as a tax on distilled spirits, and therefore a foreshadowing of the NewYorky-grabby, chiseling impulses that produced, eventually, the American Civil War.
Having no ready access to markets for their surplus, the trans-Appalachian farmers had taken to distilling their grain into a more-transportable, value-added form and barging it down to the river towns in the Mississippi Valley. It was a good solution for a low-infrastructure situation. Hamilton's tax was an attempt to rob out the fruits of their ingenuity, labor, and risk-taking and appropriate them for his Treasury. Heard anything like that lately?
Federalism is a system of government in which a written constitution divides the powers of government on a territorial basis.
The division is made between a central, or national, government and several regional or local governments.
Each level of government has its own area of powers.
Neither level, acting alone, can change the basic division of powers the constitution makes between them.
Each level operates through its own agencies and acts directly on the people through its own officials and laws.
Since the U.S. Civil War, the powers of the federal government have generally expanded greatly, although there have been periods since that time of legislative branch dominance (e.g., the decades immediately following the Civil War) or when states’ rights proponents have succeeded in limiting federal power through legislative action, executive prerogative or by constitutional interpretation by the courts.
Hence, the national government has the power to make laws over a variety of things but the Constitution (10th amendment) says that state and local governments have power to make laws over everything else that the national government doesn’t make laws about.
Often, they share the power to make laws about certain issues. For example, there are national laws about gun rights and restrictions that all states must follow.
However, Colorado also has laws that are more specific about what rights Colorado residents have concerning guns in Colorado, such as Colorado is the only state that doesn’t require a permit for handgun owners.
“Human flaws for sure (like any of us) but a great American none-the-less.” I agree. I went to high school with both his kids. George Corley Wallace, III (generally known as George Wallace, Jr.)and Peggy Sue Wallace Kennedy. Both were very nice and she was drop dead gorgeous.
Washington left after reveiwing the militia force in Bedford, returning to Phila. and leaving operational command to Hamilton.
Two ironies; the major uprisings were in Washington County where Washington had extensive landholdings; many of the farmers protesting the tax were vets of the Rev. War and had received land grants in return for their service.
Land in Wash. Co. is not necessarily suited to agriculture; its hilly, rocky and heavily forested. Nor is there the deep top soil of the Lebanon or Lehigh valleys to the east.
You are correct about the difficulties of getting agricultural products to market, however, in 1794 there was very little market down river, the markets were over the mountains to the east. Altogether it was a hard scrabble existence and they were taken advantage of by the eastern elites.
Note that the militia force sent out numbered about 13,000 men. That exceeded the county's total population. The suspected perps were rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and thrown into filthy holding pens and kept there. Men that were in anyway involved were force marched over the mountains (in the winter) to Phila. The actual leaders took off down river to Louisiana.
Altogether a very instructive episode of centralized government and also a chrystalizing element in the development of the political parties in America.
What theory is that? The theory that the amendment actually means what it says?
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