Posted on 04/25/2002 9:41:56 AM PDT by Korth
WorldNetDaily book editor Joel Miller recently authored one of the best common-sense constitutional arguments against the government’s failed “war on drugs” that I’ve seen (“Alan Keyes is Wrong!”, April 23). It was a response to neo-conservative Alan Keyes, who had written in support of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s use of the federal Controlled Substances Act to exert federal dominion over drug regulation by the states. Keyes was addressing Oregon’s “euthanasia laws” that permit the dispensation of lethal drugs, and Miller agreed with him that “killing yourself . . . is not medically legitimate.”
The bigger issue, though, is what constitutional right the federal government has to exert such control over drug regulation – or any kind of regulation for that matter – by the states. As Miller pointed out, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which delineates the legitimate appropriations of Congress, does not include regulating drugs (or the vast majority of what the federal government does today, for that matter). The Tenth Amendment, moreover, reserves such powers “to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Miller interestingly quotes historian David Musto as having observed that until the late nineteenth century, the federal government laid no claim to such regulatory powers; such things were the responsibilities of the states, or the people. Miller is correct to invoke the Tenth Amendment in his argument, but this Amendment was all but destroyed during the War Between the States, after which federal political hegemony was established. As Dean Sprague wrote in Freedom Under Lincoln, “States Rights, which prior to 1860 had been as important a part of northern political beliefs as southern, were overturned.” This includes, first and foremost, the Tenth Amendment.
Miller also correctly observed that the “progressive era” federal regulatory agencies “were profoundly unconstitutional and un-American” and are “the elder bedmates of the coercive, expansionist politics of modern-day liberalism.” Exactly. This, however, is exactly the position that neo-conservatives like Alan Keyes hold.
There is a method in the neo-con assault on the Constitution: They routinely invoke the part of the Declaration of Independence about “all men are created equal,” but not the rest of the document, as our “national creed,” even if the policies they advance in the name of that creed are in deep conflict with the Constitution itself. For example, in Keyes’s article he bases his argument in support of federal drug regulation on the equality principle of the Declaration. He claims that the Constitution supposedly creates a “federal regime of ordered liberty” by which democratic mobs supposedly “govern themselves in dignity and justice” (I’m not making this up, honest).
To neo-cons like Keyes, the Constitution supposedly prohibits the interpretation of federal law by anyone but the federal government itself because the people of individual states are supposedly incapable of doing so; only “the people of the whole nation” are “competent” to perform this task. But his makes no sense, for there is no such thing as “the people as a whole” acting on this or any other issue. The fact that a small percentage of us votes every four years or so does not imply that we are acting with competence as “a whole people” on this or any other issue. A state referendum on a specific issue, on the other hand, is much more meaningful in terms of citizen participation.
Keyes barely ever makes a speech or writes a column anymore where he does not invoke the Declaration and make a not-too-subtle comparison between himself and Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, he frequently states that his main passion, the pro-life movement of today, is the equivalent of the abolition movement of the nineteenth century. (This comparison is not entirely accurate, however, if one acknowledges Pulitzer Prize winning Lincoln biographer David Donald’s statement that “Lincoln was not an abolitionist”).
The link between Lincoln and neo-con ideology is clear: Lincoln falsely claimed that the Union preceded the states, and was therefore not subject to their sovereignty. The neo-cons make the exact same argument in advancing whatever policy cause they happen to be involved in, whether it is drug regulation, abortion, censoring of television, waging war, etc. This is why so many neo-cons, such as the ones associated with Keyes and the Claremont Institute, are such slavish idol worshippers when it comes to Lincoln. They use his martyred “sainthood” to promote their political agenda through an ever more powerful federal government. That’s why they’re described as “neo-cons” and are not a part of the Old Right tradition: They are comfortable with Big Government, as long as it fights their wars and enacts their social and regulatory programs. This is one reason why there is such a large “Lincoln Cult” among conservative (but mostly left/liberal) academics and think tank employees.
But the alleged supremacy of the federal government over the states is a lie. It was established by the most violent means, a war that killed the equivalent of more than 5 million Americans (standardizing for today’s population), not logic, argumentation, or even legal precedent. It is a lie because:
Each American colony declared sovereignty from Great Britain on its own; After the Revolution each state was individually recognized as sovereign by the defeated British government; The Articles of Confederation said, “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence”; The states then decided to secede from the Articles and dropped the words “Perpetual Union” from the title; Virginia’s constitutional ratifying convention stated that “the powers granted resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” This right was also asserted for all other states; In The Federalist #39 James Madison wrote that ratification of the Constitution would be achieved by the people “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong,” flatly contradicting the contrary assertions of Keyes and other neo-cons; The Constitution always speaks of “the United States” in the plural, signifying that the individual states were united in forming the federal government as their agent while maintaining their sovereignty over it; The Constitution can only be amended with the authority of the states; Until 1914 U.S. Senators were appointed by state legislatures so that the states could retain a degree of sovereignty over federal “officials,” who now have carte blanche to rule over us as they wish.
Only by endlessly repeating what Emory University philosopher Donald Livingston calls Lincoln’s “spectacular lie” that the federal government created the states (and not the other way around), and that the nation was supposedly founded by “the whole people” and not the people of the states in political conventions can the neo-cons continue to champion the further centralization of governmental power to serve their own political ends, whatever they may be.
Of course, it’s not only the neo-cons who perpetuate this lie. Liberals and other assorted leftists do so as well. The left-wing journalist Garry Wills, for example, praises Lincoln’s “open air sleight of hand” in effectively rewriting the true history of the founding (not unlike so many of the former communist governments rewrote their own histories during the twentieth century) because it enabled us to embrace “egalitarianism” and the massive welfare state in whose name it has been advanced (Lincoln at Gettysburg).
Columbia University law professor George P. Fletcher echoes the neo-con mantra in Our Secret Constitution, where he celebrates the fact that the centralized state that was imposed on the nation by the Lincoln administration has led directly to the adoption of myriad “welfare programs,” “affirmative action measures,” the New Deal, modern workplace regulation, etc. He is quite gleeful in his description of the Gettysburg Address as “the preamble of the second American constitution.” This is not necessarily a written constitution, however, but one that has been imposed by federal policy.
This transformation of American government from one in which federalism, states rights, and the rights of nullification and secession allowed the citizens of the states to retain sovereignty over the federal government to a consolidated, monolithic Leviathan, means that Americans now live under what historian Clinton Rossiter called a “constitutional dictatorship.” He used this phrase in a book of the same name which appropriately featured an entire chapter on the “Lincoln Dictatorship.”
There is no "unalienable right to end" one's life.
The dictionary definition of unalienable was an (apparently vain) attempt to draw your attention to the meaning of unalienable. You have apparently resolved to take refuge in asserting that delegating is the same as giving away. Perhaps you are serious.
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-- Which you then attempted to refute with the dictionary line, now abandoned in your last post. - You now admit an inalienable right can be delegated, - ie, - partially 'given away'.
Therefore, -- we, [the people] never 'gave away' the unalienable right to end our lives as per the Oregon law, nor did we delegate the power in the constitution to the justice dept to 'regulate' that right.
Get it? -- [I won't hold my breath]
Delegating is not "giving away." There is no "unalienable right to end" one's life.
Quibble about words if you like, but your religious opinion on our right to life, or on our right to end it, is not a proper basis for constitutional law. -- Exactly my original point, never refuted.
The dictionary definition of unalienable was an (apparently vain) attempt to draw your attention to the meaning of unalienable. You have apparently resolved to take refuge in asserting that delegating is the same as giving away. Perhaps you are serious.
You are beating a dead, pedantic, horse. Shifting the argument to word meanings is an empty rhetorical ploy.
As if he was supposed to do otherwise?
and did nothing until the ships were within that range.
A smart and effective move that won him the battle.
When they steamed past it the men were ordered up from under the fort and the guns opened fire hitting the boilers of the ships which killed most of the men killed.
As I said, heavy fire and precision hits won the battle.
The soldiers never became relevent since they did not land.
And that precisely is the impact of the victory. 44 men with six guns, two of them immobilized, in an earthen fort stopped a 5,000 man invasion flotilla accompanied by 4 warships with over 20 ships total.
It in no way compares to Thermopylae
It does indeed and your simply saying otherwise, which is all you've bothered to do so far, does not make it any more so than you calling your car and airplane gives it the power to fly. As an interesting sidenote, the battle itself earned the nickname the Thermopylae of the war between the states among its contemporaries and in its own time. They evidently saw enough similarity to make the comparison, and who better knows the battle than those who participated in it?
and was not a significant battle.
Again, your simply saying so does not establish anything, and that's all you've done so far. I asserted earlier and continue to maintain that, were it not for that battle, Texas history would have been significantly altered.
Sherman and Grant would not have been fooled
Why not? What did Sherman and Grant know about Dick Dowling and his dockworkers in an earthen fort that Butler did not?
and would have destroyed the fort and its men
Exactly how could they have done so and how do you know they would have done so? You made the assertion, now defend it. Neither Grant nor Sherman were invincible against surprise attacks or attacks waged against the odds. Or need I remind you of what happened at Cold Harbor?
Texas history would not have changed in any way
And as I earlier noted, you simply saying so bears no relevance onto what actually happened or would have happened. So what's your point?
except that Blacks may have had a brief period of freedom and a degree of power as they had when the murderous vengence of the Slaveocrats
You mean the ones that accounted for something less than 5% of the Texas population?
was prevented by the victorious Union army from exercising its full power over them.
That's funny. Last I checked, slavery continued in many areas held by the north until 1866, long past the war. I also recall Lincoln rescinding several individual orders by his generals that had sought the freeing of slaves under areas they had conquered. Simply having the union army around was no guarantee of emancipation no matter how hard you want it to be.
As far as I am aware there weren't thousands of Blacks murdered after the war there as there were in the Deep south. Since the Slaveocracy was not as strong in Texas the ex-slaves could always go to the west where the cotton culture was non existent.
If you admit the slave institution was not strong in Texas, why then do you appear to take some perverse joy in the fact that the yankees tried to invade and subdue by force a state where over 95% of the population was slave-free?
Texas turned its back on its greatest citizen
To some degree. More than anything else, it was a policy disagreement. Houston was a constitutional unionist and finished second to John Bell for that party's nod for president in 1860. The majority of Texans favored secession. Houston led a political campaign to keep the state in the union and lost. It's as simple as that. And as an historical side note, Houston's son fought for the confederacy and the general himself eventually came around to the confederate side before his death.
when Sam Houston was forced by the Slaveocracy to resign his Senate seat
Not so. Houston left the senate when his term expired in 1859 to run for Texas governor, the office which he held until 1861 when Texas seceded and formed a confederate state government under which the governor's office went to Edward Clark. Prior to secession, Houston twice declined offers from Lincoln of the use of federal troops to prevent it by the point of the bayonet rather than the democratic process (as Lincoln did in Maryland). Following secession, Houston gradually became a public supporter of the confederacy until his death in 1863.
Or in other words, learn some history before you shoot your mouth off again.
I will end my part by reminding you that without a coherent account of the source of our rights, we can't very well defend them.
How strange that you think I must somehow explain & 'read a teaching', that only you can see.
Unalienable rights are self evident, imo. The declarations language is clear. - My life is mine to live. I need no imput from you or Ashcroft.
I will end my part by reminding you that without a coherent account of the source of our rights, we can't very well defend them.
I'll await your self touted 'coherence' with bated breath.
"How strange that you think I must somehow explain & 'read a teaching', that only you can see."
Okay, I'm the only one who can see a Declaration teaching on unalienable rights.
"Unalienable rights are self evident, imo. The declarations language is clear. - My life is mine to live. I need no imput from you or Ashcroft."
I see that you are quite confident that you are reading the Declaration clearly. You seem to think, "The Declaration tells me what I already think -- that I am a wholly self-justifying and independent entity, entitled to liberty from all constraint, merely because I am, well, such a nifty kind of guy. When it speaks of my duty to alter or abolish certain kinds of governments, for example, it just means my really clear liberty to do so, if I want to.
I will end my part by reminding you that without a coherent account of the source of our rights, we can't very well defend them.
"I'll await your self touted 'coherence' with bated breath."
Nope. I'm done. May God have mercy on our silly delusion of a free-floating human "right" to self-government, based on nothing and beholden to no one. Maybe we'll even get through another generation or two before someone entices us to "want" a grave injustice like slavery or conquest. Maybe by then we'll have some better reason in our souls to say no to the temptation than the foolish self-assertive brainless arrogance by which we seem determined to attempt to manage our affairs.
This insignificance of the Sabin skirmish is illustrated by the complete lack of even a mention in the Historical Atlas of Civil War Battles which I consulted last night. Not only did the War essentially end at the Louisiana western border but the lack of Union interest in that theater is clearly shown by the small forces Butler was allowed to send into action. No invasion of any importance is stopped by the destruction of two ships. But to you that was an "armada" lol. Grant's entire strategy was to complete the splitting of the South. Texas was utterly irrelevent to that strategy having already been split off by Vicksburg's fall. Sherman and Grant would not care about the maybes at the fort they would simply lay seige to it until they took it. They understood war unlike Butler. Certainly they would not have plans which would be destroyed by a couple of lucky hits on their "Great Armada."
The only comparison to Thermopylae is in number of letters in the name Them-11, Sabine Pass- 10. This is the entire valid equation. Whatever the six people who heard of the "Battle" called it, it was no Thermopylae. Such claims call in question any statement made by people who believe them and spread them.
Thanks for the information on Sam, I forgot the details of how the State turned its back on its most important man and wisest politician and plunged into insane mass lunacy for no good reason.
However, it is totally false that slavery existed in the north at anytime after the war. Where does that insane lie come from the same source that compares a trivial skirmish to Thermopylae? Slavery was illegal in the North BEFORE the war except for the Border states. What does Lincoln (trying to defeat rebellion not free slaves) controlling the political actions of his generals have to do with anything except to give desperate Defenders of Slaveocracy a chance to look idiotic?
I don't see where I expressed any kind of joy about Union forces subduing the treasonous insurrection in Texas but it certainly was required by the constitution.
Perhaps you can kindly point out all those historical currents in Texas that were changed by the victorious skirmish at Sabin. I mean other than to give you an opportunity to scale the heights of hyperbole.
While I admit to knowing little Texas history I certainly know enough American history to understand the unconstitutional nature of the attempted insurrection led against the Union by the Slaveocrats. This is an area within which the D.S.'s are fatally deficient and are reduced to parroting easily disprovable lies about the nature of the War and its meaning.
This war came about in spite of the efforts of the best and most important of the founders: Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jackson. Only Jefferson, at his least rational, gave any contenence to the idea of secession and his understanding of the constitution was weak at best.
I'm glad to see you've kicked into 'angry yankee rant' mode and all, but I fail to see what point you are driving at our what it has to do with our earlier discussion. I do not have the time to argue with more than a few self contructed brick walls over the issues of the war itself at any one time, so in advance please note that you will find no audience in me. I think it a safe assertion that nothing I do will change your view of the war itself. Accordingly, I see no reason to waste my time responding to your commentary on these issues and therefore will ignore them.
This insignificance of the Sabin skirmish is illustrated by the complete lack of even a mention in the Historical Atlas of Civil War Battles which I consulted last night.
And I suppose your little atlas is the supreme authority and arbitur of what constitutes significance in the war? To the contrary, I need only note that in its own time Sabine Pass made national news in both countries as evidence of its significance. If you wish to dispute this further, by all means go for it. But I see no sense in doing so when your entire argument is an appeal to your own authority and a couple of modern books you happen to own.
Not only did the War essentially end at the Louisiana western border but the lack of Union interest in that theater is clearly shown by the small forces Butler was allowed to send into action.
5,000 men on a 20+ ship flotilla is hardly a small force. Perhaps it is small in comparison to, say, Gettysburg figures, but in and of itself it was a sizable army.
No invasion of any importance is stopped by the destruction of two ships.
And as I said earlier, those of us in the region that was being invaded, Texas, tend to think otherwise.
But to you that was an "armada" lol.
In comparison to the size of civil war naval engagements, a battle involving a 20 ship flotilla and shore battery is pretty intense.
The only comparison to Thermopylae is in number of letters in the name Them-11, Sabine Pass- 10.
Again, an assertion made on your own authority. So again I ask, what is your point? I am simply noting the historical fact that Sabine Pass (1) was in its own time identified as the Thermopylae of the war and (2) compares very closely in terms of odds against the side defending the pass to Thermopylae, hence the comparison. In other words, your own personal dispution of this is largely irrelevant beyond your own opinion
This is the entire valid equation.
No. It's simply your own silly and historically uneducated opinion. Nothing more.
Whatever the six people who heard of the "Battle" called it
Hey, don't blame me for your lack of an education and accompanying lack of familiarity with history.
it was no Thermopylae.
Opinion.
Such claims call in question any statement made by people who believe them and spread them.
Not near as much as the demonstrated lack of historical knowledge possessed by you as evidenced by your posts.
Thanks for the information on Sam, I forgot the details of how the State turned its back on its most important man
Turned its back on him? Nah. It was really little more than a policy disagreement. Houston's stature as a state hero does not mean the rest of the state had to agree with him 100% on political policy.
Further, as I noted earlier, Houston came round as a supporter of the confederacy before his death in 1863. In fact, at the time just before his death there was widespread rumor and, in the man himself, perhaps a little truth to that rumor that Houston was considering a bid for Governor of the Confederate State of Texas.
However, it is totally false that slavery existed in the north at anytime after the war.
Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky would likely disagree with you on that little fact. I also invite you to check out Lincoln's first inaugural address. Towards the end, he endorsed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution permanently protecting slavery. That same amendment passed with the required 2/3rds majority in both houses of Congress a few days earlier and was submitted to the states for ratification. So no, the situation regarding slavery in the pre-war and wartime union states was NOT one of complete abolition, and in fact many of those regions remained slaveholding until 1866.
Where does that insane lie come from
History.
the same source that compares a trivial skirmish to Thermopylae?
That comes from history too.
Slavery was illegal in the North BEFORE the war except for the Border states.
And that exception is precisely what I am talking about. It is also the same exception that Lincoln wrote into his emancipation proclaimation which, as one British commentator at the time noted, "freed" the slaves only in the regions where Lincoln had no control with which to enact his proclaimation.
What does Lincoln (trying to defeat rebellion not free slaves) controlling the political actions of his generals
It demonstrates precisely that - that the north did not set out to free the slaves despite your earlier characterization that the northern invasion armies were there to do just that. I'm simply noting a matter of consistency here.
Perhaps you can kindly point out all those historical currents in Texas that were changed by the victorious skirmish at Sabin.
For starters, it likely moderated the civil rights movement in Texas. States like Alabama and Mississippi were originally NOT in the "deep south." They were known at the time of the war as the gulf states, the carolina's being the "deep south." Yet the Jim crow era emerged most strongly and visibly resisted in those two gulf states, backlash against a direct invasion and conquest being among the major contributing factors. To take a prominent example, the KKK itself emerged as a backlash organization to the military invasion and consequent subjugation of those states over the next decade of reconstruction. Texas' history turned out far more mild, even though it too was a "gulf state" with strong similarities to the other gulf states before the war. But Texas was never subjected to wartime military invasion, largely because we stopped it at Sabine Pass.
While I admit to knowing little Texas history I certainly know enough American history
No you don't. The ignorant historical mistakes you have made in your posts demonstrate that much.
Nothing you do will change my mind? Quite the contrary any cogent, and true facts are readily accepted as was your correction wrt Sam Houston. However, you can save the electrons if you want to try and get the standard D.S. litany of lies past me. They would be shredded as easily as the preposterous proposition that an incompetently lead Union "Armada" floundering on a little bad luck was another Thermopylae. Although I do appreciate exposure to the most absurd claim I have yet to find on FR. It has provided a week of laughs watching you try and justify such overblown hyperbole and outright falsehoods. You may as well try for the trifecta and work Marathon in as well then an Armada, losing Marathon and Thermopylae would be just perfect.
Why would a D.S. called himself a "capitalist" in any sense since the Slaveocracy hated capitalism (and anything else modern) with a blue passion? Slaveocracy is opposed to capitalism at every point of its theory and practice especially wrt freedom of the individual and attitude toward work. Such opposition was one of many reasons that the Slaveocrats' pretensions of independence and sovereignty was so laughably absurd and meatheaded.
In light of your unnecessarily vitriolic posting patterns, I see no reason why I should continue a discussion with you.
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