I Pledge allegiance to the Confederate Flag

I Pledge allegiance to the Confederate Flag, and to the Southern People and the Culture for which it stands

The Confederate flag is again under attack, as it has always been, and as it always will be. It is under attack because of what it symbolizes. The problem is that to many Southerners have forgotten just what it does symbolize.

The Confederate Nation of 1860 - 1865 was the intellectual, as well as the spiritual, continuation of the United States of America as founded, planned, and formed by Southerners. It was the stated, and often repeated, position of almost all Southerners in the 1860’s that they, and the South, were the heirs of the original political theory embodied in the U. S. Constitution of 1789. In 1860 their attempted to separate from the rest of the states and form their own nation since that was the only way the South could preserve the philosophy and the virtues that had made the United States the magnificent nation it had become.

In both of these contentions, that is, the South was the true repository of the original political theory that made the United States great, and the South was the true home of the people who took the necessary actions to found, make, and preserve the original United States, Southerners have been proven by the passage of time to be correct.

The Southern colonies of Virginia, North and South Carolina and Maryland were where the majority of the original American population resided until the 1700’s despite the fact Massachusetts was settled only 13 years after Virginia and New York was settled 18 years before South Carolina. As the population of the colonies grew, the New England States and the middle Atlantic states, gained population so that by the time of the American Revolutionary War the two general areas of the north and the South were generally equal in size with a small population advantage being shown by Virginia. This slight difference in population by a southern state was to have a profound effect on the development of the United States.

First of all, the New England states managed to start a war with England, which they verbalized as "taxation without representation." In truth the problem from their point of view was the taxes on their trade. Having started the war they then promptly managed to lose it. The British, after conquering the entire north from Maine (then part of Massachusetts) to Boston, to Providence, to New York, to the new nation’s capital, Philadelphia, shifted their military forces to move against the Southern colonies. They secured their foothold in the South by capturing Savannah and Charleston and then proceeded to move inland to subdue the Southern population. They planed to catch the Virginia forces under General Washington in a coordinated attack moving down from the north, which they held, and up from the South that they thought they would also conquer.

The British army that had mastered the north found they could not defeat the Southern people. Once in the backwoods of the South they found themselves to be the beaten Army. The British defeats at Kings Mountain and Cowpens were absolute. Their Pyrrhic victories at Camden and Guilford Courthouse were tantamount to defeat. In both North Carolina and South Carolina they were so weakened they had to retreat from the area of their few "victories" within days. Their defeats at those well-known sites among others, along with their defeat at Yorktown in Virginia, led directly to their surrender.

Having secured the political freedom from England for all the colonists, Southerners then mistakenly sat back and took a smaller role in forming the new American government that operated under an "Articles of Confederation." That first attempt at forming a government fell to the firebrands of New England who has started the war and who still asserted their moral position of leadership despite their poor showing on the field of battle. These Articles of Confederation, the product of the Yankee political mind, gave too much economic self determination to the separate colonies (as the Northern colonies had demanded in an attempt to protect their shipping, trade and manufacturing) and too little power of enforcement to a central government.

After a period of six difficult years, when the Articles of Confederation failed as a form of government, another convention was called and a new form of government was drawn up. This time the convention was under the leadership of Southerners and they brought forth the document we all refer to as the U.S. Constitution. Even northern historians do not try to pretend the Constitution and the ideas embodied therein are anything other than a product of the Southern political mind. (Yankee historians cannot deny it, but they do choose to ignore it so their students grow up ignorant of the fact that the Constitution is Southern.) So, as it turns out, when the new nation found itself in political trouble it was the South which, once again, came to the rescue just as it had when the nation found itself previously in military trouble.

With the slight population advantage it enjoyed over other states, Virginia was able to give to the new nation politicians who are nothing short of demigods. Their names are revered in all areas of the civilized world wherever political theorists converge. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Henry, Taylor and Monroe are just a few, there are many more. These men along with the leading political minds of South Carolina, Rutledge, Heyward, and, most importantly, Pinckney, saw their new nation through its birth and establishment.

The military leadership, as well as the political leadership, of the South saw the nation through its expansion. Under Southern leadership the British were defeated a second time in 1814. Under Southerners, most obviously John Tyler and Andrew Jackson, Florida was added as a state. The defeat of Mexico in 1846, under the Southern leadership of James Polk and numerous Southern military officers, established of the United States as a force to be feared. That was an astonishing accomplishment for so small and so young a nation

Thomas Jefferson, who added the Louisiana Purchase, barely escaped impeachment for his efforts. The north argued continuously against the war with Mexico that added the area from Texas to California just as they had argued against the Louisiana Purchase. One Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, was particularly vehement against Texas being made a state. Northerners, having seen Mexico defeated and the United States enlarged all the way to the Pacific Ocean, then objected to the methods and motives of the acquisition of the Washington and Oregon territories in the northwest. Polk, who had added that vast area from Louisiana to California to Colorado to the pacific northwest, served only one term as President due to the constant attacks he sufferer in the Northern press. Left to the people of the north, the French would still control from Minnesota to Louisiana and Mexico would control from Texas to the Pacific while Canada would still include Washington, Oregon Idaho and Montana.

Every square inch of soil that now comprises the continental United States was added under a Southern president, and they did it over the strenuous political objections of the north. The provincial and mercenary Yankee people fought every effort to expand the United States. The expansion of the United States became a regional political disagreement that spread ill feeling north and South. Its accomplishment by Southerners was no small feat. It was accomplished under Southern military leadership and with much Southern blood. (Which is why Tennessee is called "The Volunteer State" and the names of Southerners are almost exclusively the only ones found on memorial tablets and monuments from Texas to California.). The expansion of the original colonies into the continental power it became was completely the results of the Southern mind and Southern leadership.

Having secured the freedom of the United States from England and then having formed and led the successful government into a new political age under a written constitution that is still the envy of the whole world, the South gave the entire military and political leadership that formed the United States into the boundaries it now enjoys. But these magnificent accomplishments were soon to be overshadowed by population shifts and the ensuing results that brings in a representative government. By the early 1820s the north had finally secured just enough additional population that it had achieved enough political clout to start protecting its first love, its money. The unfair and punitive tariffs that were passed in 1828 led to the South’s first half-hearted attempt to form its own separate government with the Nullification movement of 1832. The threat of war that South Carolina held out in 1832 then caused a negotiated modification of those laws to where the South could live with them. For the time being, the political question was settled by compromise.

While those changes pacified the political leaders of the South for the time being, some statesmen could see, even then, that if the North ever became totally dominant politically, the South would be destroyed, not just economically, but philosophically and spiritually as well. Those statesmen, with Calhoun in the lead, then started planting the intellectual seeds that led to the South’s second attempt at political freedom in 1860.

Unfortunately, in the 1840’s Yankee abolitionist introduced the new poison of the "voluntary end" of slavery as a political issue. There were attempts by many Southerners to defuse this situation by offering an economic solution. That is, Southerners offered to end slavery in the South just as England had ended it in the West Indies, by having the slave-holders paid for their losses when the slaves were freed. The abolitionist Yankees would have none of that. Their position was simple, the South could give up it slaves for free and each farmer could absorb the loss personally. There was to be no payment. To the Yankee abolitionists it was either their way or war.

The fact that the abolitionist movement became a dominant presence in the northern part of the United States from the 1840’s on is primarily because a liberal can politicize any subject and enrage any body of people regardless of the level of preexisting good will. (As current liberals have turned the simple good sense argument that one should not litter one’s own environment into the political upheaval of "the ecology movement." The effectiveness of liberal methods can currently be seen in the simple instance that most people believe such nonsense as the chemical cause of "ozone depletion" and "the greenhouse effect" despite any evidence of either. Liberals are absolutely capable, by their strident, activist natures of raising any question to harmful emotional heights.)

Unfortunately, the loss of the War for Southern Independence in 1865 caused the very thing that Southern statesmen had foreseen in the 1830’s; that is, the north became dominant and the cultural, spiritual, and economic base of the South was decimated. The loss of the war was most severely felt in the South, of course, but it has also had political repercussions in the north as well.

Without the South in a position of dominance, the leadership of the United States has gone from Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Tyler and Polk to the inept, or leftist, Grant, Harding, Arthur, Harrison and Roosevelt, among others. Plus, the ascendancy of the leftist north to national prominence has also caused the rise of leaders in the South who had to be acceptable to the north. Such spectacularly immoral or totally incompetent Southern politicians as Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are examples of the quality of the men that the South must now produce to garner northern votes. When these modern day jackals are contrasted with the demigods the South produced when unfettered by the northern voter, that in itself should be enough to make all people reject northern philosophy and northern politics and embrace all things Southern.

As the forces of the left have gained ascendancy in the United States, the pressure intensifies to completely obliterate anything that remains between them and complete leftist victory. That means that the traditional enemy of leftists, the South, must be erased in its every form. That is why leftists always demand that even symbols of the South be eradicated.

We, therefore, now have a coalition of people who want the Southern flag taken down and hidden from public view. This coalition is composed of three main groups. First of all are African-Americans, whose emotional position is totally unmitigated by any knowledge of history. Secondly, there are Yankees who have moved to the South and who, despite their remarkable political failures in their own states, have learned nothing and continue to vote leftist here too. Or either these northern imports have been transferred here to run the newspapers that are owned by the people who live outside the South. And, thirdly, there are leftist Southerners, or Southerners of "politically correct" leaning, who have apparently learned their history from the television and movies and who feel the South is a bad place because it is not egalitarian enough.

But the demands of this coalition of political thinkers need to be put in proper perspective. Before anyone starts to tell someone else how to act and how to think, it is incumbent on him to demonstrate the success of his own ideas and actions. So far the introduction and enforcement of leftist ideas in our world has led to nothing but sorrow and degeneration. The force necessary to make people live under a leftist government has been the direct cause of the murder of over one hundred million people in this century alone. Leftist political theory has enslaved and impoverished billions of people worldwide. Its introduction has weakened even such great nations as England and France and reduced them to the status of third rate nations. Socialism in Scandinavia has reduced it to an economic level even less than that of England. In the United States leftist ideas have turned our country into the increasingly sick society it has become.

So until this coalition of leftist can point to a single successful instance of where their leftist philosophy has improved a country, or a people, rather than to the spectacular political failures the left has precipitated in any place into which its poisonous philosophy has been introduced, they have no right to demand anything of anybody. Leftist, the most spectacular political failures in all of history, have no standing to demand that Southerners accept anything that flows from their false philosophy. And of all people, leftist have the least demand on Southerners, the people who formed, guided, expanded and gave them a great country.

The Confederate flag is a symbol. It stands for the people who had the spirit, the courage, and the intelligence to give the world its greatest governmental entity. As long as the Confederate flag flies there is hope that the terrible scourge leftists have placed on the world will pass. It represents the culture that produced the most wished for, the most just, and the finest political system on earth. And as long as the Confederate flies there is hope that the greatness that was once ours may someday be reestablished.

"Sumter was a Fort in 1861 and was never used for any other purpose prior to the south starting the civil war."

When the rebs here claimed it was a Customs House I started doing some surfing. It turns out Sumter was not even completed even though it was under construction for over 30 years. It sounds like it was a Federal Boondoggle project and was never actually 'open for business' let alone as a customs house.

A preliminary survey of the entire coastline of the fledgling United States was begun in 1817, and by 1828 plans had been drawn and adopted for Ft. Sumter¹s construction. In the introspective atmosphere of the Ante-Bellum United States, which expected little chance of naval assault from any foreign nation, construction on the new fort was slow and in 1834, with only its granite foundation above the water¹s surface, construction was halted altogether due to an ownership dispute over the actual property on which the fort sat. Construction resumed in January of 1841but by 1860, on the eve of South Carolina¹s secession from the Union, the fort was still incomplete.
When South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860 Ft. Sumter¹s outward appearance was impressive towering nearly 60 feet above the water¹s surface, with masonry walls five feet thick, and three levels of guns on four of its five sides, but the barracks and the officer¹s quarters, which lined the fort¹s rear 317 foot gorge wall were still under construction. If one took the time to inspect the structure further they would also have noticed that many of the second tier gun embrasures remained opened, each about 15 feet square. Much work still remained to be done. Despite its incomplete state, Sumter was the most recently armed of all the United States forts with potential to mount 135 guns, however, only 10 of these weapons were actually mounted, all defiantly facing the Atlantic Ocean. The balance of the fort¹s weapons were stacked on the parade ground. Along with piles of construction sand and a city of storage sheds.
One mile to the north-east, across the entrance of Charleston Harbor on the southern tip of Sullivan¹s Island, sat Ft. Moultrie and its 80-odd man garrison of the First United States Artillery. Moultrie was the polar opposite of Sumter; it was as old as the hills and was barely 11 feet in height with delapidated walls upon which decades of sand drift had accumulated. It was no uncommon sight to find local cows grazing on the weeds that grew out of Moultrie¹s ancient masonry walls. As secession became a reality, Moultrie¹s meagher garrison was the only organized force available to resist the state¹s action. Hopelessly outnumbered by hostile civilians and state militia, Moultrie¹s commander, Kentuckian Major Robert Anderson, decided to transfer his tiny garrison across the channel to the much more defensible Ft. Sumter. At Sumter Anderson could be re-supplied and reinforced more easily than at Moultrie, and if his government desired, he would be in a position to bottle up Charleston Harbor to all outside shipping. In a text book maneuver during the night of December 26-27, 1860 Anderson and his men slipped across the water and occupied Ft. Sumter. When the citizenry of Charleston awoke the morning of the 27th to find U.S. forces occupying the strongest bastion in the new Palmetto Republic, all hell broke loose!

Source: http://www.civilwarcharleston.com/fort_sumter.html

Nothing suggests Sumter was ever a customs house. Just more fables from the modern day appogilists for the Southern Slavocarcy.

This gives the lie to claims that a righteous North went to war in 1861 to free the slaves.

You guys must have reading comprehension problems. No one here said that the North went to war to end slavery.

Let me say that again just so it might sink through your thick skull.

The North did not go to war to end slavery! They went to war to preserve the Union!

Do you get it now?

Moreover, it undermines the claim that the South seceded to preserve the institution of slavery. If that had been the South's goal, then what better guarantee did it need than an unrepealable amendment to the Constitution to protect slavery as it then existed?

The radicals that caused secession knew full well that Lincoln and the vast majority of Republicans had no intention of ending slavery as it then existed. Lincoln said so very explicitly both before and after he was elected. He repeted that pledge in his innugural. But that was not good enough for those greedy bastards in Charleston and elsewhere. They were not interested in preserving slavery as it then existed. They were interested in the expansion of slavery to the west. They wanted that for two reasons. One was the money they could get from selling slaves and the second was to create additional slave states to maintain their political power in congress. They knew Lincoln and the Republicans would not roll over as the Whigs had done for 40 years and allow the slavers to get their way. Lincoln, the Republicans, and the vast majority of Northerners would never allow westward expansion of slavery and that is why the Slavocracy broke the Union. It was all about slavery. The radicals were a small faction, they were skillful propagandists. They used trumpted up states rights issues and outright fear of 'free blacks' raping and pilliging to fire up the citizenery into support for their scheem.

And if you don't think the seven deep south states that were the first to seceed didn't do it because of slavery, you must be calling those very same individuals liars. Whiskey Papa has alread posted the secession documents from those states that say quite plainly that they were breaking the Union and going to war to defend the instution of slavery.

I seem to recall a thread a while ago in which you put words in to my "mouth" and accused me of being a racist, and then didn't have the cojones to apologize.

I'm not going to go looking for it, but I did apologize for accidently directing that post to you instead of the real racist that did post it. You know that is a fact.

I didn't attribute words to you and you get all upset. Seems like you may have some sort of unwarranted superiority complex.

Excuse me? What the hell do you call this?

To: ConfederateMissouri
You must keep in mind that Ditto learned his "history" at the Walt Disney Institute. The North was all pious and in no way profited from the slave trade. All Southerners are fork-tongued serpents who only enslaved Africans in order to abuse them and become filthy rich. Also, America started with Plymouth Rock, there was no Jamestown, the Pilgrims came here for religious freedom and not financial profit, etc. etc.
268 posted on 12/27/01 10:26 AM Pacific by Leesylvanian

When did I say any of that.

More dreck from the neo-confederate fringe. As usual [i]t is riven with half-truths, myth and misinformation.

Your observation regarding “dreck,” “half-truths, myth and misinformation” reminded me of something else I read recently:

...(T)he people of the United States as a -whole- are the sovereigns of the country and NOT the states...

Walt
124 posted on 12/26/01 2:55 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa

As James Madison noted in Federalist No. 39:

“In order to ascertain the real character of the government, it may be considered in relation to the foundation on which it is to be established...

“On examining [this] first relation, it appears, on the one hand, that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State - the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution will not be a national but a federal act.

”That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors - the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation - is obvious from this single consideration: that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules has been adopted. Each State in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act...” (italics in the original)

Mr. Madison refuted your "people of the United States as a -whole-" claim at least four different times, just within this short passage. Your statement therefore seems unable to qualify even as a “half-truth:” would you prefer that we refer to it as “dreck,” “myth,” or "misinformation?”

;>)

Mr. Madison refuted your "people of the United States as a -whole-" claim at least four different times, just within this short passage.

I told you to get used to seeing this:

To: donmeaker

Under the terms of the 10th Amendment, powers not delegated or prohibited by the Constitution are reserved to the States or the people of the States - and the Constitution nowhere delegates or prohibits secession. 'So: there. No legal foundation to oppose secession. End of story.' As Harvard history professor William Gienapp recently noted, "the proponents of secession had a strong constitutional argument, probably a stronger argument than the nationalists advanced"...;>)

57 posted on 12/24/01 2:36 PM Pacific by Who is John Galt?

Okay, that is not what the tenth amendment says.

Now, as to Madison:

In Dec., 1832, he wrote to Nicholas P. Trist as follows

"The essential difference between a free Government and Governments that are not free, is that the former is founded in compact, the parties to which are mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of them therefore can have a greater right to break off from the bargain, than the other or others have to hold them to it. And certainly there is nothing in the Virginia resolutions of 1898, adverse to this principle, which is that of common sense and common justice."

(James Madison, Writings; Rakove, Jack N., editor; The Library of America; 1999; p. 862)

In March, 1833, he wrote to William Cabell Rives as follows:

"The nullifiers it appears, endeavor to shelter themselves under a distinction between a delegation and a surrender of powers. But if the powers be attributes of sovereignty & nationality & the grant of them be perpetual, as is necessarily implied, where not otherwise expressed, sovereignty & nationality are effectually transferred by it, and the dispute about the name, is but a battle of words. The practical result is not indeed left to argument or inference. The words of the Constitution are explicit that the Constitution & laws of the U. S. shall be supreme over the Constitution and laws of the several States; supreme in their exposition and execution as well as in their authority.

Without a supremacy in those respects it would be like a scabbard in the hands of a soldier without a sword in it. The imagination itself is startled at the idea of twenty four independent expounders of a rule that cannot exist, but in a meaning and operation, the same for all.

"The conduct of S. Carolina has called forth not only the question of nullification; but the more formidable one of secession. It is asked whether a State by resuming the sovereign form in which it entered the Union, may not of right withdrasw from it at will. As this is a simple question whether a State, more than an individual, has a right to violate its engagements, it would seem that it might be safely left to answer itself. But the countenance given to the claim shows that it cannot be so lightly dismissed. The natural feelings which laudably attach the people composing a state, to its authority and importance, are at present too much excited by the unnatural feelings, with which they have been inspired agst. (sic) their bretheren of other States, not to expose them, to the dangers of being misled into erroneous views of the nature of the Union and the interest they have in it. One thing at least seems to be too clear to be questioned; that whilst a State remains within the Union it cannot withdraw its citizens from the operation of the Constitution & laws of the Union. In the event of an actual secession without the Consent of the Co-States, the course to be pursued by these involves questions painful in the discussion of them. God grant that the menacing appearances, which obtrude it may not be followed by positive occurrences requiring the more painful task of deciding them!"

(ibid; pp. 864, 865)

You can't dragoon Madison into supporting your lies.

Walt

I told you to get used to seeing this:
To: donmeaker
Under the terms of the 10th Amendment, powers not delegated or prohibited by the Constitution are reserved to the States or the people of the States - and the Constitution nowhere delegates or prohibits secession. 'So: there. No legal foundation to oppose secession. End of story.' As Harvard history professor William Gienapp recently noted, "the proponents of secession had a strong constitutional argument, probably a stronger argument than the nationalists advanced"...
;>)

57 posted on 12/24/01 2:36 PM Pacific by Who is John Galt?

Okay, that is not what the tenth amendment says.

Now, as to Madison:

Thank you for posting the perfect lead in: “Now, as to Madison:”

"...(T)his assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong...[an] act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation..."

And as you are aware, any ‘reservation’ of rights or powers applies only to the parties to a compact: in this case (as Mr. Madison makes abundantly clear) “the people...composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong” (or as I put it, “the people of the States” ;>). In other words, “you can't dragoon Madison into supporting your lies.”

;>)

As for the rest of your quotes:

1) Not a single one of them supports your “people of the United States as a –whole-“ nonsense;

2) Each and every one was made many decades after ratification, and is therefore less relevant than Mr. Madison’s comments during the ratification debates;

3) The fact that the “Constitution & laws of the U. S. shall be supreme” in no way affects any reservation of rights agreed to under the terms of the same Constitution;

4) The phrase “Neither of them therefore can have a greater right to break off from the bargain” suggests equal rights, not superior rights;

5) And “whilst a State remains within the Union it cannot withdraw its citizens from the operation of the Constitution & laws of the Union. In the event of an actual secession without the Consent of the Co-States, the course to be pursued by these involves questions painful in the discussion of them...” in no way precludes State secession. Quite the opposite, in fact: Mr. Madison used similar language in Federalist No. 43 when he discussed the secession of the ratifying States from the so-called ‘perpetual union’ formed under the Articles of Confederation (a subject you avoid like a vampire avoids holy water):

Two questions of a very delicate nature present themselves on this occasion: 1. On what principle the Confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it? 2. What relation is to subsist between the nine or more States ratifying the Constitution, and the remaining few who do not become parties to it?

...(A)n answer (to the first question) may be found without searching beyond the principles of the compact itself...A compact between independent sovereigns, founded on ordinary acts of legislative authority, can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty between the parties. It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties that all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach, committed by either of the parties, absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the federal pact, will not the complaining parties find it difficult to answer the multiplied and important infractions with which they may be confronted? The time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas which this paragraph exhibits. The scene is now changed, and with it the part which the same motives dictate.

The second question is not less delicate...It is one of those cases which must be left to provide for itself. In general, it may be observed that although no political relation can subsist between the assenting and dissenting States, yet the moral relations will remain uncanceled. The claims of justice, both on one side and on the other, will be in force, and must be fulfilled; the rights of humanity must in all cases be duly and mutually respected; whilst considerations of a common interest, and, above all, the remembrance of the endearing scenes which are past, and the anticipation of a speedy triumph over the obstacles to reunion, will, it is hoped, not urge in vain moderation on one side, and prudence on the other.

And, as you are no doubt aware, Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson repeatedly referred to the Constitution as a compact among the States, and to the States as parties to the constitutional compact.

Shall I post quotes?

;>)

I post the Tenth Amendment, verbatim, and you post "Yadda, yadda, yadda." I will let others judge which post more closely resembles 'Seinfeld'...

You have on occasion -failed- to post the tenth amendment verbatim.

To: donmeaker

57 posted on 12/24/01 2:36 PM Pacific by Who is John Galt?

All your posts don't make a hill of beans.

No reasonable person would adopt your positiion based on the whole record--which you tried to subvert.

Walt

Neither of them were on the Supreme Court.

Ah, yes - your tired old cicular argument: you insist that the court determines what the Constitution means because the court says it determines what the Constitution means. One legal scholar recently made this observation regarding your court:

“The careful reader will no doubt notice that judges are not exactly the heroes and heroines of my tale [of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights]. Federal judges, after all, enthusiastically enforced the infamous Sedition Act of 1798, cheerfully sending men to prison for their antigovernmental speech and neutering juries along the way. It is hard to imagine a bigger betrayal of the original Bill of Rights, whether we look at the First, or the Sixth, or the Tenth Amendment. A century later, the Supreme Court strangled the privileges-or-immunities clause in its crib in the Slaughter-House Cases; blessed Jim Crow in Plesy; and blithely allowed judges to fine a newspaper publisher (in a juryless proceeding lacking specific statutory authorization) simply because the publisher had the audacity to criticize the very judges in question. [Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U.S. 454 (1907)] (Thus a single [federal] court acted as legislature, prosecutor, complaining witness, judge, and jury - quite a trick if you can get away with it.) Due process of law, according to the Taney Court, was satisfied by fugitive-slave hearings presided over by a financially biased adjudicator, but violated by free-soil laws like the Northwest Ordinance. And although Roger Taney himself (rightly) had doubts about the federal government’s power to draft citizens outside the Constitution’s careful militia system, the Supreme Court, in the Selective Draft Law Cases, gave this argument the back of its hand.

“...As Phillip Bobbitt and Richard Fallon have observed, textual arguments count in court - and so do arguments from history and original intent - but precedent counts, too. Judges must consider all these factors, and others as well, when deciding cases...”

In other words, the precedent established by your 'men in black' is hardly the flawless icon required by your 'whatever-the-court-says-is-right-is-right' argument. Perhaps you should consider "textual arguments," "history" and "original intent" (i.e., 'reality') from time to time...

;>)

All your posts don't make a hill of beans.

No reasonable person would adopt your positiion based on the whole record--which you tried to subvert.

You are nothing if not entertaining, friend Walt! I quote the ratification debates, the Federalist Papers, the ratification documents of the States, the words of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, the early history of the Republic, the most prominent legal references of the era, the Constitution itself, and judicial opinions consistent with the foregoing - in other words, “the whole record.” You quote your ‘men in black.’ My position is based upon "textual arguments," "history," "original intent," and consistent “precedent.” Yours is based almost solely upon “precedent” (whether it is consistent or not), and almost completely ignores everything else.

(Speaking of which, would you care to discuss the secession of the ratifying States from the so-called ‘perpetual union’ formed under the Articles of Confederation? No? How about the palpably unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts – which were enforced by federal judges? I thought not. What was it, again, that you were saying about "the whole record?" ;>)

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