Posted on 05/13/2002 6:04:59 PM PDT by NathanM
I'm so glad this message is finally getting out!
The 14th Amendment is a fraud, and the foundation of judicial activism in this nation.
The 14th Amenmdment is why no true conservative can ever bash the Confederacy. The Radical Republicans centralized this government, and gave the US judiciary veto power over State Legislatures.
This is not government by consent of the governed.
It can't be stressed hard enough how this amendment destroyed the Union the victors of the Civil War were supposedly trying to "save".
Which may be perceived as a good thing, in the not too distant future...
James Madison even said so.
http://www.jmu.edu/madison/emancslaves.htm
To provide a commensurate remedy for the evil, the plan must be extended to the great mass of blacks, and must embrace a fund sufficient to induce the master, as well as the slave, to concur in it. Without the concurrence of the master, the benefit will be very limited as it relates to the Negroes, and essentially defective as it relates to the United States; and the concurrence of masters must, for the most part, be obtained by purchase.
The 14th Amendment was one of the first times the US Government took property without just compensation, and they've been doing it ever since, with less and less qualms every year.
This would lead a resonable person to assume that the amendment had the requesit 3/4 of the states before approval by the senate.
Not true. Just before submission to the senate New Jersy withdrew it's ratification in protest to the high handed tactics of the Republicans.
The 14th then stands alone as the only extraconsitiutional amendment approved by the senate.
It comes as no surprise to anyone that this amendment has changed the face of our democratic republic. This amendment has singlehandedly reshaped our government into the centralized institution that it is today.
That's why it's so nauseating to see the Yankees praised as if they were divine saviors. They were men with the same designs and flaws that are in all men.
Reconstruction was a scheme from northerners embittered by Lincoln's assassination, looking for blood, personal gain, etc. and coming to the south to pit blacks against southern whites - to exploit uneducated blacks for political gain.
Not a day goes by that I wish Lincoln had not been assassinated. He would have been a friend of the South, and kept the vindictives at bay.
Few people realize that during Reconstruction, the radical occupiers actually held phony elections and installed black majorities in State legislatures! Just to "show" southern whites. Now think what that did for race relations for the next 100 years. Did you know that it took longer for the yankees to admit all the Southern states & Reps. back into Congress than it did to fight the 4 year war?
IF the south had won, I think we would have gotten back together by now, on constitutional terms. We probably would have done so to fight WWII. Who knows. I wish the Southern states had never seceded.
The short of it is Congress, the President and SCOTUS care NOT for what is written in the Constitution.
If they did;
Your money would be made of gold, silver or copper.
RICCO would never have become Law,
There would be no Federal Reserve Bank,
You could own and shoot machine guns,
Abortion would be legal at the Federal level, not because of some non-existant privacy right, but because the Federal Government does not have the right to legislate physicians or surgeons.
Police could not search your car without a search warrant or your permission,
You could buy codeine over the counter like asprin.
There would be no FDA, FAA, FEC, FCC or FBI.
You can probably name more. The point is the Federal Government ignores the US Constitution, the Several States don't seem inclined to demand their Rights and most of the People either don't know or don't care.
And of course Article V says "..No state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate".
If nothing but for the principle of telling the truth.
So I think this article has importance. I'm glad it was written and posted.
Things have gotten so bad (or so tolerated) that just recently a large group became alarmed when the congress proposed federal aid to states to help with the cost of local rezoning (the federal way). The antagonist are up in arms over the further federal intrusion. They never once considered not taking the money.
Today we simply assume that if federal monies (and the attached strings that go with it) are available then it's simply the law.
This is the legacy of the 14th Amendment.
"This is not government by consent of the governed."
Anybody else see the hilarity of holding up the Confederacy as a defender of "consent of the governed?"
One third of the population of the Confederacy was held in slavery, with no rights whatsoever. The Confederate states seceded precisely because they saw the long-term perpetuation of this institution being threatened by Lincoln's election.
That noted, the 14th Amendment was indeed passed by questionable methods. But it was passed, and it is now part of the Constitution. Don't like it, organize and get it repealed.
I believe three states have and continue to be deprived of representation in the Senate without their consent (any state which ratified the Seventeenth Amendment, and any state which joined after its ratification may be presumed to consent; IIRC three states have done neither).
No funnier than holding up the post-revolutionary war US. Nothing was different about the Confederacy - except a bit more emphasis on state sovereignty. Slavery was a national institution even before the Declaration of Independence which says:
"...As FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract alliances, establish Commerce and do all other Acts and things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do."
Independence is essential to liberty, as decentralization is essential to liberty. Don't fall for the slavery smoke, that the centralizers always throw up to confuse the real issue. Slave ships dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, and slaves were sold by Africans. They were felt to be too irresponsible for liberty, as children are.
State independence was thrown out with the slavery bathwater.
The "popularly elected senate" is an oxymoron. A popularly elected senate is really a House, where the members have 6 year terms. Their original purpose was to say no. Now they are too heholden to have any discipline. The 17th Amendment(1913) seems to me the worst thing that happened in the 20th Century, and the 14th was the worst thing in the 19th.
Thus the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution were indeed written to promote the consent of the governed, with wording that left the door open to eventually expand "the consent of the governed" to include all people.
The Confederate Constitution, OTOH, was intentionally written to exclude a third of its population from ever being able to exercise this right.
Absolutely opposite concepts.
Then I'd like to see someone sue because progressive federal taxation violates the equal protection clause.
Affirmative Action violates the equal protection clause.
Any Federal program that tilts the playing field, to achieve equal outcomes, violates the equal protection clause.
The insidiousness of the 14th is not just what it does to the states, but to the duplicitous hypocrisy it allows the Federal government to engage in. You can tell it's a product of Congress, for Congress.
Lets get portions of it repealed. I've given a lot of thouht to it, and I think the best attack on it would be to make it unenforceable by the Federal Courts - but it would be enforceable by State Courts. Essentially, the equal protection clause would be written into every state Constitution, but not the federal one. The mechanics of this have precedent in the 11th Amendment, which takes US judicial authority away from out-of-staters, when they sue a State.
I have a dream that one day the ACLU would have to win 50 "equal protection" lawsuits, whereas now the 14th allows them to just win one, in order to control the entire nation.
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