Posted on 06/25/2012 12:13:28 PM PDT by Bob Ireland
Dear Arizona;
As Justice Antonin Scalia has just written, the SCOTUS opinion against the state of Arizona concerning immigration problems has made the phrase 'sovereign state' of no further effect.
The primary function of government is to serve the people it represents. One primary function under that obligation is to protect the population it serves. The SCOTUS opinion states that - if the United States Federal Government has statutory mandate to fulfill that obligation - then the state has no right to supersede the Federal Government when the Federal Government refuses to extend that protection.
The effect of the SCOTUS opinion today is to eliminate states' rights' in a major area of the states' statutory mandate. Put another way, the Federal Government can establish rules that eliminate states' rights under historical common law.
This author therefore suggests that the state of Arizona call a Constitutional Convention of interested states - to potentially include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Alaska and perhaps the Carolinas [and any other state wishing to bind itself under such restrictions as herein mentioned] - pursuant to forming a new sovereign nation established under the auspices of the original Constitution of the United States.
Such Declaration of Independence should include a rejection of an imperial presidency which reserves unto itself the right to establish and enforce laws as it best sees fit without legislative oversight. The Declaration should reject all laws and regulations that establish a socialist, communist or dictatorial interpretation of states' rights or citizen's rights.
Such a federation or commonwealth should recognize in perpetuity the right of any member state to withdraw from the union when the said union jeopardizes the rights, liberties or the pursuit of happiness of said member state and its citizens. It should recognize the responsibility of the Executive Office as lawfully established to enforce laws properly passed by the legislature of representatives of the people, and to be interdicted against reinterpreting the meaning of such legally passed laws or refusing to enforce said laws.
The convention of agreeable states should establish such legal standards as were envisioned by the Founding Fathers of the United States, and should carefully protect states' rights and individual citizen's rights.
It is impossible to see any other alternative for states and citizens wishing to protect their Constitutional rights in the face of a runaway Federal Government of the United States, and its various organs, that has all but suspended the founding intent of the original Constitutional Convention.
LET FREEDOM RING!!!
I have advocated a cheap and effective way to secure the [southern] border for some time now: MINE IT! With proper notification and protections there is no reason that anyone should ever get hurt... and invasion of illegal migrants of all nations would be severely curtailed.
Of course, as this thread indicates all too clearly, I am a radical! :-)
:-D
I wonder if we are passing beyond elections...
Ya know....he tees off enough Red states..and they leave..he gets to remain “president” of a handful of blue!!!
“So, you have a contract with someone, and they refuse to live up to that contract, but you are still obligated to remain in that contract and fulfill your part?”
To make the metaphor apt you have to stipulate that the contract had an opt out clause, because implicitly the Constitution did according to the principle of state sovereignty and by not denying the states the right to leave. Also, not all the states agreed to the contract. I don’t see how Tom, Dick, and Harry, if they don’t have power of attourney, can bind me to anything. The ratification process stipulated 9 states necessary to make the Constitution law, but since there were more than 9 states I don’t see how the others would be considered bound by it. Nevermind.
Also again, not all contracts are legal. You can’t, for instance, contract to be someone’s salve. This is so because slavery is illegal, but also because of the principle that certain rights are inalienable. That is, you cannot transfer them to anyone else. They are yours and can never be sacrificed.
So even if the Constitution explicitly said the states were abandoning their sovereignty—which it didn’t—that would be improper, because even if certain powers are delegatable ultimate sovereignty is non-transferable. Anway, they didn’t. They and the people retained sovereignty. The contract was to be united under the Constitution for as long as it suited the parties.
HOWDY! :-)
Perilous times...
The south was conquered and treated as a conquered nation. Reconstruction installed puppet governments and probably caused more racial animus than anything else.
The way I see it, the war simply established that might makes right and nothing else.
“Caesar eliminated the Republic by refusing to lay down the control over his ARMY which he brought back into Italy from Gaul. He and his successors ruled THROUGH the Senate no by executive fiat in any case. They never eliminated the Senate just its power.”
There’s a reason the previous poster emboldened the word “republic.” It was the republican form of government that Caesar killed, even if the senate persisted in name. Or maybe he only put it in coma, and Augustus killed it. Whatever, Rome ceased to be a republic. I wonder, according to what you post, whether you know what a republic is.
“It has grown into what it is because that is what the majority wanted.”
That would be all well and good if we were a democracy. We aren’t. how sickening and just plain sad that I have to read this sort of thing of FR, as well as every other damn place.
I would hope my proposal could be done peacefully... but I am prone to fantasies... perilous times. Whenever one advocates a major change to society's structure, one can never predict the outcome... opportunists abound.
By the same token, I wonder if we are evolving past elections under the present circumstances.
>>It replaced the Articles wholly, and illegally at that.<<
Not illegal at all.
Congress called the Annapolis and Constitutional Conventions.
The delegates to Philadelphia determined the Articles of Confederation could not be improved (they were right) and drafted a form of government that met the needs of the Union.
Said delegates submitted the Constitution to Congress. The Confederation Congress of the United States did not have to pass the Constitution to the States. It did.
The legislatures of the States did not have to arrange for popular elections of delegates to State ratifying conventions. They did.
The States held special conventions of the people’s delegates. They did not have to ratify, but they did.
Our beloved Constitution is perfectly legal.
Indeed. Most people talk tough at the keyboard but would never have the guts to refuse to pay taxes.
They wouldn't even have to break the law, necessarily. Just don't make money or own anything significant, and you don't have to pay income tax. (Or is that too much to ask?)
“I don’t think that those who advocate secession are either patriots or take their oaths under the Pledge of Allegiance seriously.”
They are patriots, since our forefathers are known if for nothing else for seceding from the British empire and establishing through the states a new form of government.
No, I don’t take the pledge seriously. It is an unwelcome burden and serves no good purpose. Since when can kids make binding oaths, anyway?
“I don’t think that those who advocate secession are either patriots or take their oaths under the Pledge of Allegiance seriously.”
They are patriots, since our forefathers are known if for nothing else for seceding from the British empire and establishing through the states a new form of government.
No, I don’t take the pledge seriously. It is an unwelcome burden and serves no good purpose. Since when can kids make binding oaths, anyway? And what does an oath made under duress signify?
If secession was illegal, then the actions of the those eleven Southern states led to the destruction of the republic as created by our Founding Fathers, and the South bears ultimate responsibility for the deaths of the 620,000 Americans who died in the ensuing war. However, if secession was a legal action, then blame for the aforementioned tragedies can be placed squarely upon the shoulders of President Abraham Lincoln; the deification of the putative “Great Emancipator” can cease, and he can be forever known as the President who plunged the nation into the bloodiest conflict in its history.
The legal theory of secession was largely untested (every previous attempt was summarily put down) and provocative. The southern fire-eaters knew this but instead of exhausting legal remedies they instead sought to enforce secession by force. It didn't work out so well for them, either legally or on the field of battle.
You have an ironic sense of humor...
Madison said [my bold]:
The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect.
Madison was one of the coauthors of Virginia's ratification of the Constitution which said:
... the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.
Virginia cited that in their secession document of 1861.
Albert Taylor Bledsoe, in his 1866 book, "Is Davis a Traitor or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861?" notes the following regarding the Virginia ratification:
In the first place, the Constitution was not to be established by the people of America as one nation, or by “the people of the United States as one great society;” and this fact was perfectly well known to the Virginia Convention of 1788. It has already been sufficiently demonstrated, that the Constitution was ordained, not by the people of America as one great society, but by each People acting for itself alone, and to be bound exclusively by its own voluntary act. It would be a great solicism in language, as well as logic, to say that the people of the United States as one great society, might resume powers which were not delegated by them. The sovereignty which delegates, is the sovereignty which resumes; and it is absurd to speak of a resumption of powers by any other authority, whether real or imaginary.
Then again, New York's ratification of the Constitution was voted for by the two other authors of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay [my bold again]:
Ratification of the Constitution by the State of New York; July 26, 1788.
WE the Delegates of the People of the State of New York, duly elected and Met in Convention, having maturely considered the Constitution for the United States of America, agreed to on the seventeenth day of September, in the year One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty seven, by the Convention then assembled at Philadelphia in the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania (a Copy whereof precedes these presents) and having also seriously and deliberately considered the present situation of the United States, Do declare and make known. ...
That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; ...
... Under these impressions and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged or violated, and that the Explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution ... We the said Delegates, in the Name and in the behalf of the People of the State of New York Do by these presents Assent to and Ratify the said Constitution.
The New York ratification was accepted by the other original states.
“Doesn’t the 10th Ammendment guarantee secession, as a right reserved because it is not mentioned in the Constitution itself?”
At least someone understands how the Constitution works. The Constitution gives certain powers to the feds and denies certain others to the states. It does not take powers away from the states without saying so.
The only way there’s actually an argument is over states that didn’t precede the Constitution. But that’s specious. You can say they were created by the federal government, though that’s reductive and arguably inaccurate. Actually, the people—that is, sovereign people—have to apply to be a state before the feds take notice.
Anyway, once they’re made states their statehood is equal to the other states, yes? Nothing anywhere says Arizona is a state in every way New York is a state except they’re not sovereign. They are sovereign because they are a state. That’s what it means to be a state. If they’re something else, then we should stop calling them “states.”
Have we had an election where a majority of eligible Americans actually voted?
If has grown into what it is because the majority quit paying attention and/or have been misinformed and/or quit playing and stay home.
I doubt the SC's decisions here fully reflect a majority opinion, but it's what we have in our more or less one party system, complete with its false choices every election.
The election game is rigged. You won't get serious Constitutional changes until you first change the game, but there's no way the PTBs will let that happen, as votes, legislation and rulings continue to show.
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