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.

Because the people of the several States are the only true source of power, however, the Federal Government enjoys no authority beyond what the Constitution confers: the Federal Government's powers are limited and enumerated.

Yes, to include providing for the common defense, and as Chief Justice Marshall has told us, Congress must judge for itself what measures to take when the common defense is threatened.

Think about this:

"If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy. The excise law in Pennsylvania, the embargo and non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the carriage tax in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but, fortunately, none of those states discovered that they had the right now claimed by South Carolina. The war into which we were forced, to support the dignity of the nation and the rights of our citizens, might have ended in defeat and disgrace, instead of victory and honor, if the states who supposed it a ruinous and unconstitutional measure had thought they possessed the right of nullifying the act by which it was declared, and denying supplies for its prosecution. Hardly and unequally as those measures bore upon several members of the Union, to the legislatures of none did this efficient and peaceable remedy, as it is called, suggest itself. The discovery of this important feature in our Constitution was reserved to the present day.

To the statesmen of South Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that state will unfortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice.

" --Andrew Jackson

In other words, if you try this nullification/secession crap, say hello to Uncle Billy!

Walt

Texas v. White - the argument for a perpetual Union - LOL.

The cases you cite are in reference to the federal government vs state government - one a case recognizing the power to create a national bank, the second a case affirming that the state laws and constutions - when in conflict with federal laws and the US Constition - are null and void..

In McCullough v Maryland, Chief Justice Marshall also stated,

"No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States."

The states, all 13 of them, created the federal government, and gave to it certain powers. The creation of this new government did not destroy the states, it was instituted primarily as a means of protection from invasion. Read the Federalist Papers, it's probably the most often cited reason for the new government. Marshall further states,

We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the Government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional.

This case is about federal power - not state powers. Also in Cohens v. Virginia, Marshall states,

"These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."

In other words, to carry out the objectives of the federal government, the federal Constitution is supreme. And when state powers (not conflicting with federal) are exercised, the states are supreme.

As Chief Justice Marshall explained, "it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States ; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument." Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 193 (1819).

I am quoting justices from the past.

The people, not the states, created the federal government, and no one said otherwise until slavery was threatened.

"No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States." Chief Justice Marshall, McCullough v Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, (1819)
"[I]t was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument."
Chief Justice Marshall, Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 193 (1819).
In this clause they are as clearly contradistinguished by a name appropriate to themselves from foreign nations as from the several states composing the Union.
Chief Justice Marshall, Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, 30 US 1, (1831)
"This is the authoritative language of the American people; and, if gentlemen please, of the American States."
Chief Justice Marshall, Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, (1821)

Walt, today there are 50 states, when the Constitution was ratified there were 13. The creation of the federal government did not abolish the states. The people of every state did not vote for the Constitition - their state politicians voted on it. We live in a Constitutional republic, not a democracy. It's a case of "We the people of these United States" creating the government. Article IV refers to states powers, not those of the people. The ratification had to be performed by the states, not by the people. Amending the Constitution is to be done by the states, not the people. Read the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and the Debates in the State Conventions and learn something useful. Unplug yourself from the Matrix.

The federal government is always supreme; ever hear of the supremacy clause?

"These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."
Chief Justice Marshall, Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, (1821)

Is Marshall a liar?

The federal government is always supreme; ever hear of the supremacy clause?
"These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate." Chief Justice Marshall, Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, (1821)

Is Marshall a liar?

Sovereign yes, but not completely sovereign.

You seem to have snipped it a bit:

"That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. In many other respects, the American people are one; and the government which is alone capable of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is the government of the Union. It is their government and in that character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and in many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory. The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."

--Chief Justice John Marshall, writing the majority opinion, Cohens v. Virginia 1821

Walt

You quote Madison when he suits you, and discount him when he does not.

Actually, I am willing to address ALL of Mr. Madison’s comments. Given your complete and total unwillingness to discuss certain issues with which he was intimately involved (the secession of the ratifying States from the so-called ‘perpetual union’ formed under the Articles, and the Federalists’ palpably unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts), it is perfectly obvious that ‘you quote Madison when he suits you, and completely ignore him when he does not.’

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

Wow – another private communication offered four decades after the fact. Just can’t abide what he said in his official government documents, such as the Report on the Virginia Resolutions, can you? You have to go fishing through his personal correspondence. Very well...

“...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...”

And, when last I checked, the Tenth Amendment (and its blanket reservation of “powers not delegated...nor prohibited”) was still a part of “the Constitution...of the U. S.,” and not part of “the Constitution and laws of the several States.” As such, the Tenth Amendment is part of the “supreme” law of the land, and can not be “discounted” no matter how much you may wish to do so. Your arguments suggest that you consider any reservation of powers to be unconstitutional – not surprising, given your past advocacy of “almost unlimited” government power.

”Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country...”

Actually, we see no such thing: Mr. Justice Jay was spouting mystical “crap,” as a review of The Federalist Papers and the Constitution proves beyond any shadow of a doubt. You’ve seen this before:

”...(T)he Constitution is to be founded on the...assent and ratification...given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong... the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation...”

“Get used to seeing it.” ;>)

It wasn;t until the slave holders saw their power to control the national government slipping away that the these positions were challenged.

Really? Is that why the 1803 edition of Blackstones Commentaries, the most respected legal reference in the country at the time, specifically discusses State secession? Is that why William Rawle (a noted abolitionist) discussed legal secession in his 1825 edition of A View of the Constitution? Rawle’s work was such a respected analysis of constitutional law that it was used as a text at West Point! Those slave holders sure must have wanted to get a jump on things! What was it someone said recently?

“You lied.”

“You got caught.”

;>)

Anyone who considers the whole record will not accept your skewed, prejudiced and factually incorrect position.

That obviously excludes you, given your patent unwillingness to ‘consider the whole record.’ Or shall we discuss, here and now, the secession of the ratifying States from the so-called ‘perpetual union’ formed under the Articles, and the ‘federal-judge-approved-but-entirely-unconstitutional’ Alien and Sedition Acts? Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath waiting...

Your attempts to pervert perception of these events always puts me in mind of what Jefferson said...

I am not at all surprised, given your confessed dependence upon judicial ‘opinion,’ that you failed to quote the following:

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1803

"It is every American’s right and obligation to read and interpret the Constitution for himself."
--Thomas Jefferson

"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1820

Read ‘em and weep...

An appeal to reason will show your posts for the disinformation campaign that they are.

Does this mean are finally willing to discuss the secession of the ratifying States from the not-so-perpetual union formed under the Articles? Hmm? If not, perhaps we can discuss the de facto federal judicial approval given the outrageously unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts? No? What were you saying about “disinformation?”

;>)

”That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation...

“Many?” “Most?” Pointless generalities, of which you whole-heartedly approve simply because they issue from Mr. Justice Marshall. How touching...

“The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void.”

As I observed previously, the Tenth Amendment is part of the United States Constitution, not any State constitution. All you have done is push forward another ‘straw man’ argument.

“These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empiure...”

Ah, yes –Mr. Justice Marshall, the unabashed advocate of ‘empire.’ For your further edification (since you repeatedly quote Mr. Justice Marshall), allow me to quote Mr. Justice Holmes (with my own clarifications in brackets ;>), who stated that he could not “separate John Marshall from the fortunate [for the advocates of empire] circumstance that the appointment of Chief Justice fell to [Mr. Unconstitutional ‘Alien & Sedition Acts’] John Adams, instead of to [Mr. ‘Declaration of Independence’ Thomas] Jefferson a month later, and so gave it to a Federalist [i.e., imperial elitist] and loose constructionist [i.e., someone who equates the written Constitution with toilet paper] to start the working [i.e., revision by select committee of government lawyers] of the Constitution...”

;>)

From a newsgroup...

(So, you quote ‘newsgroups’ but refuse to discuss factual, documented history. How impressive. Perhaps you should quote mentally unstable ‘street people’ as well: I’m sure they would support your argument whole-heartedly... ;>)

Although the preamble is not a source of power for any department of the Federal Government, 1 the Supreme Court has often referred to it as evidence of the origin, scope, and purpose of the Constitution.

Only those who refuse to discuss history, including Mr. Madison’s comments in Federalist No. 39, the original version of the Preamble (which listed the people of each State separately), the ratification documents of the States, and the final version of Article VII, would refer to the Preamble as important “evidence of the origin, scope, and purpose of the Constitution.” That obviously includes you...

“No one can doubt that this does not enlarge the powers of Congress to pass any measures which they deem useful for the common defence.”

“No one can doubt?” What a load of malarkey! It would appear that neither Mr. Justice Story nor you ever read Mr. Madison’s Report of 1800: Mr. Madison completely, inarguably, and in great detail refuted the ‘common-defense-clause-as-a-source-of-expanded-federal-power’ argument. You can find a link at my FR home page: read it. Better luck next time.

Yes, cherry picking.

Oh, very well – I admit to being more selective in my posts than you appear to be: I refuse to post anonymous nonsensical rubbish.

;>)

Will you condemn Jefferson Davis for saying the same things as Justice Story?

You are the one who quotes Mr. Davis, not I. By the way, are you quoting Davis the “traitor” (as you call him), or Davis the ‘statesman?’ The world wonders...

;>)

You've seen this before; I don't recall a single word of condemnation of Davis by you. I don't expect one now. After all, Davis was a slave holder. That gives him a free pass among confederate apologists.

Mr. Davis is relevant only to those who find no foundation for their arguments in the ratification debates, the secession of the ratifying States from so-called ‘perpetual union’ under the Articles, the ratification documents of the States, the written words of the Constitution, the preeminent legal references of the Republic’s early years, and the written words of the Founders. No wonder you depend on him...

It says the states OR the people.

It also says “reserved” – and rights or powers may only be “reserved” by a party to a compact. And, as Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison (and the ratification documents of the States, and Article VII itself) make abundantly clear, that means the people of the States.

From the moderated ACW newsgroup...

What, no ‘street people’ or Democratic Party pollsters? You're ignoring a major source of support...

;>)

Secession amounts to asserting the right to exercise prohibited powers...

More ‘circular reasoning:’ secession is prohibited because you say secession is prohibited. (You almost-unlimited-government-power types really seem to depend on it! ;>) Feel free to prove me wrong: what clause of the United States Constitution specifically prohibits secession? Hmm?

The record, and common sense shows your argument to be fatally weak.

Where, exactly, was that constitutional clause prohibiting secession? ;>)
By the way, perhaps you should contact Harvard Professor of History William E. Gienapp, who recently observed that “the proponents of secession had a strong constitutional argument, probably a stronger argument than the nationalists advanced.” Maybe if you ‘turn him on’ to your whole ‘newsgroup’ thing, he’ll revise his professional opinion...

;>)

And your habit of continually misrepresenting the languuage of the 10th amendment takes you off the field as a credible player in these discussions.

Does this mean you still won’t consider the ratification documents of the States? Or Mr. Jefferson’s and Mr. Madison’s Resolutions? Or The Federalist Papers? And that you won’t even bother to locate the term “reserved” in a legal dictionary?

Does your mother know where you are?

;>)

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