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To: wideawake

Not surprised you needed to give yourself a primer on sovereignty, and yet you still get it wrong. While it is technically true that a Federalist wrote the Bill of Rights, you and I both know that James Madison did not agree with nor desire a Bill of Rights. It was Thomas Jefferson who pushed for and got the BOR included. Certainly you are not going to try and argue that Jefferson was a federalist when the Constitution was written. That pig won’t fly.

Think about it. There is no need for the 10th if you were a federalist. Without the BOR the federal government WAS supreme. That’s precisely WHY a BOR was demanded by ANTI-Federalist and why Federalist Hamilton did NOT want the BOR. States that did not want to give up their sovereignty refused to join UNTIL the sovereignty was guaranteed. All the pretzel twisting non-logic in the world won’t change the facts.

The same argument made for the 2nd Amendment applies here. The BOR is a definition of rights for PEOPLE, NOT militias and NOT Federal governments. The PEOPLE (in militias) have the right to bear arms the PEOPLE (in the states) are sovereign, just as it says...”The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution (not right to sovereignty was delegated to the US), nor prohibited by it to the States (sovereignty was NOT prohibited to the states), are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Get that? The PEOPLE!!! Unless you lived in the South after 1865 which is when you had no rights and became slaves to the Union.

The following affirmation of my assertion comes from this web site: Read more: http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/10th-amendment.html#ixzz26T2gs4Tr

I suggest you read the documentation after the following. It should be very enlightening.

On June 8, James Madison proposed a list of about twenty amendments, which he had carefully chosen from the list of amendments submitted by the STATES. One of these was, of course, what became the 10th Amendment. The Congress voted to accept twelve of these amendments on September 25. They passed them on to the states and with Virginia’s vote for ratification, ten of these twelve amendments became law on December 15, 1791. These first ten amendments are today known as the Bill of Rights.

It is indeed quite clear. Notice that nowhere does it say anything about sovereignty not being permitted. If what you said was true, it would have been written exactly opposite from what it was.

Allow me to demonstrate.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


121 posted on 09/14/2012 10:52:02 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost (Johnny Rico picked the wrong girl!)
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To: Lee'sGhost
Not surprised you needed to give yourself a primer on sovereignty, and yet you still get it wrong.

The primer was for your benefit. You have no coherent concept of what sovereignty is, as your post goes on to show.

Certainly you are not going to try and argue that Jefferson was a federalist when the Constitution was written.

Jefferson was not a Federalist. Allow me to quote him verbatim:

You say that I have been dished up to you as an anti-Federalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it I will tell it you. I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore I protest to you I am not of the party of Federalists. But I am much farther from that than of the Anti-Federalists.

This is why your view of sovereignty is incoherent:

You wrote

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution (not right to sovereignty was delegated to the US)

There is no such thing as a "right to sovereignty" in a constitutional republic. Sovereignty consists in a set of powers, not a right. Only persons have rights. Governments have no rights, they have powers.

Under the United States Constitution, all of the powers associated with sovereignty in the common law tradition are specifically delegated to the United States.

How can an individual state be a sovereign if it has no power to declare a state of war? To conclude a treaty? To regulate the goods trading in and out of its ports and cities? To regulate the value of money?

Sovereignty isn't an empty word: it means something in the real world. And an entity that by law is not entitled to exercise the above powers is not a sovereign government.

124 posted on 09/14/2012 11:42:32 AM PDT by wideawake
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