Posted on 05/23/2002 8:52:25 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
If my friend 4CJ will permit me, that is entirely the point. You keep saying it, but the Constitution does not.
At the end of the day, the only thing that ratifies your opinion over 4CJ's and mine is the gun you keep offering to blow our heads off with. Tacitly and politely, of course. It is armed violence which is now the basis of the Union, not the consent of the governed. Oh, we get to vote.....but everyone knows it doesn't really count any more.
This is where the rubber meets the road. And as our friends 4CJ and Stainlessbanner have pointed out, this argument is anterior to all the others, and all the others, including the outcomes of the various Supreme Court cases, depend upon it.
1. As our friend has pointed out again, all the States, including Rhode Island, were indeed sovereign before they ratified the Constitution. Rhode Island, he points out, remained sovereign longer than others, while the People deliberated -- and ignored threats of retaliation from Connecticut if they didn't "git thar mahnds raht", in the ineffable line of Strother Martin.
2. Rhode Island explicitly -- and unnecessarily -- reserved the right to resume full sovereignty and secede from the Union, in her articles of ratification.
3. All the States had sovereignty, because every single State was a People, colonized, populated, and revolutionized individually and separately from all the others, and most importantly for our purposes, every State had individually and separately, and by a sovereign act taken as a People, a populus, mastering their own affairs, ratified the Constitution.
4. The People never, ever, EVER give up sovereignty, in the United States.
5. The Southern States therefore had the right, which they did not, anywhere in the Constitution, surrender, to gather together in conventions as populi, as Peoples, to reconsider the Union -- and to withdraw from it, in a series of acts of sovereignty over which the other States and Peoples had no right of supervision, much less approval, any more than they had the right, which Connecticut thought they did, to compel Rhode Island's ratification of the Constitution.
6. Please re-read No. 5 slowly, for comprehension.
7. The argument advanced here, that secession is legal only if it is approved by the other States, confutes itself. Let us consider it.
Suppose Florida, citing language and cultural differences, wanted to secede and join the Antilian Confederation. Suppose Florida took her case to the Union for "approval", as the Unionist apologists, who favor the "Suitors of Penelope" theory of ratification, indicate she should.
To whom does Florida apply? How can Florida apply? Florida has no sovereignty, and is a subordinate political unit of an undivided United States. Does Florida apply to Congress? Does Florida ask the other States to go into Convention to consider her appeal? Does the Florida legislature do this, or the governor? They can't, they're bound by the Supremacy Clause. They can't touch it. So Florida must convene a State convention, and pass a plebiscite for disunion, and submit it.......to whom?
What constitutes a sufficient response by the other States, under the Suitors of Penelope Theory? Suppose 40 States go into convention (remember, their state governments can't touch this either -- they're bound by the Supremacy Clause, too) and approve, five States convene and say no, and the other five don't even bother to hold a convention or reply? What then? And what does the United States Government do? Is the United States Government a party to resolving this question? Careful with your answer -- it'll reflect on Lincoln. Does the President of the United States simply forbid Florida to leave the Union, relying on his Executive powers to see that the laws are executed? That's what Lincoln did. But in that case, the Government is talking down to the People -- and therefore the People are not sovereign, but the Government is sovereign instead.
And that, Sir, is Lincoln's Revolution.
Lincoln may have felt himself justified in making that revolution -- as he himself said about Robert E. Lee, it's always the best men that do the most damage -- and he may have been utterly convinced that he had to square a circle, in order to eliminate slavery, which he saw as a blot on America's escutcheon that undermined our exemplary role in the world. At least that is what Donald Douglas, in Lincoln, says was Lincoln's primary motivation in eliminating slavery -- and I believe him. But by ending slavery the way he did, he also ended the American Experiment in terms congenial to the cynics of the Old World, and gave the lie to the Founders, who said that a People could rule itself, and not be ruled by men of power.
8. Therefore, the Southern States were within their rights to withdraw from the Union when they saw that their differences with the majority in the North were irreconcilable, and that the champion of the anti-Southern faction had emerged triumphant in contol of the apparatus of the United States Government. They were within their rights to secede, and by overthrowing them by armed violence, Lincoln enthroned Government as the Sovereign over the People, and made the People the plaything of politicans and generals. In so doing he laid the groundwork for National Greatness politics, the Gilded Age of access capitalism and government by pocketbook, socialism, and eventually world empire.
Some historians think that A. S. Johnston was the more grievous loss, who was killed at Shiloh. He was the shining star in a Western campaign that, on the Confederate side, was blotched with poorer leadership than was available in the East. Poor, uncooperative, or incompetent generals like Braxton Bragg and Leonidas Polk abounded, and the more energetic generals tended to get shot by sharp-eyed Western farmers in blue uniforms, as at Pea Ridge and Shiloh. Someone pointed out the mismatch between the average Southern soldier in the East in 1862, and the shop clerks and sutlers who were poured into blue uniforms and sent south to soldier for Irvin McDowell and George McClellan. Well, it wasn't quite the other way around in the West (U.S. Grant shook several bullets out of his own uniform after the first afternoon of Shiloh), but as things turned out, the Southern leadership talent was killed in the early going, leaving Grant, Rosecrans, and Sherman a relatively easy time of it.
Well, let's proceed on this line a little further. I've told you what I think........what then, did the States give up at the moment of ratification? Do you subscribe to Lincoln's "Suitors of Penelope" construction: that once they ratified, the doors slammed shut and were bolted behind them, and the Many Unintended Entrained Consequences set in motion? Do you think Rhode Island's reservations were valid, or is there language in Article VI, Article VII, or George Washington's covering letter, that precludes Rhode Island's taking a reservation?
Do you think the States bound themselves thereafter helplessly to the United States Government, regardless of what they had intended, under the theory that They Should Have Known? That the People's assent to government is not "perpetual", i.e. continually given, but that it is a one-time, instant decision on the threshold, that binds them forever and forever to the discretion of United States magistrates and the Chief Executive?
Is the United States Government the Sovereign of the U.S.A., its Lord, Master, and God Emperor? Well?
Sorry, but I'm a naturalized Southerner, and in the 1960's Lint'n Johnson showed us what rights the states had.....by sending troops to any state that even looked at one of his orders funny.
So, tell me what rights you think the states have, or had, before the Chief Justice, in an exercise of judicial activism from the right, began calling up state-sovereignty cases for review. Tell me what rights the states (notice I'm using a lower-case "s" now) had when Landslide Lint'n was president, and liberal university professors (when I challenged them) admitted that they looked on the Tenth Amendment as a dead letter, because now we were all modern and evolved and stuff.
I don't concede that at all because that is not the fact of the matter with the overwhelming majority of Supreme Court decisions. When the court issued it's ruling in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education did they say that those areas practicing 'separate but equal' policies could go ahead and continue while no future instances would be allowed? When the court issued their decision in Furman v. Georgia did they say that Georgia and the other states could go ahead and execute those already on death row, but had to alter their laws for those they would try in the future? No, to both cases. The court ruled that actions made in the past were illegal and that they could not continue. It voided those actions and required changes be made based on those decisions. Likewise in Texas v. White. Chief Justice Chase didn't say that secession was illegal as of now and don't you ever try it again. He said, "Considered, therefore, as transactions under the Constitution, the Ordinance of Secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the Acts of her Legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law." The actions taken were as invalid and illegal in 1861 as they were in 1869.
Impossible and invalid in US law.
An ordinance or act of secession is a "thing" in the laws of a state which is clearly blocked by the Supremacy clause.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 requires that controversies between the states be submitted to the Supreme Court.
Read it and weep.
Walt
How hard is it to understand? Words that are completely missing ("perpetual", "permanent") can be divined by them in a heartbeat, but the literal and plain meaning of a statment is ignored or overlooked.
Be my guest, my esteemed friend. When you are thru, please take a moment to join us on the verandah for your pick of mint juleps, brandy and cigars.
Article IV, Section 1 of our Constitution requires that the public acts of each state shall be given "Full Faith and Credit" in every other State.
As you well know, the supremacy clause holds that the Constitution is supreme over mere legislative acts.
Read it and weep.
I don't know any such thing and you don't either; who are you trying to fool?
The supremacy clause clearly states that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance are the supreme laws of the land.
Do you give the lurkers so little credit, that they don't know how the clause reads?
And men have to administer the document. And someone, or group of people, have to have the final say. That group of people is the Supreme Court. It's a real document, made for real situations.
That is what you neo-rebs deny, and that is why your argument is SO lame.
Walt
I'm sure lurkers wait with baited breath for every word that flies from you fingers. But if you haven't been following the thread, a certain poster who holds the opinion that "pursuant" is nit-picking.
And men have to administer the document. And someone, or group of people, have to have the final say. That group of people is the Supreme Court. It's a real document, made for real situations.
Then file suit if you disagree.
That is what you neo-rebs deny, and that is why your argument is SO lame.
Article IV REQUIRES that the public acts of the states be accepted by the others. The federal government did have the ability to prescibe the rules of what was acceptible, and they did in 1790. And accordingly, under those provisions, the Declarations of Seccesion are valid. The states had seceded according to the rules, fair and square.
That is what you neo-cons deny, and that is why your argument is SO lame.
I don't doubt for a second that he wrote that; I credit you entirely. However:
1. He's wrong.
2. He's handling matters above his pay grade. He has no standing whatever to judge acts of the People in Convention assembled. When the People assemble as the People, they can take back every delegated power, every decision, nullify every ordinance, law, discretion, appropriation, and court decision ever made. The People answer to God. Period. Or don't you believe that?
3. With the words, "Considered, therefore, as transactions under the Constitution", the Justice fibbed. They were not undertaken "under the Constitution". They were undertaken by the People, who are above Constitutions, as witness the fact that they may assemble at will, and change the Constitution at will. The Constitution is their creature, not the other way around.
Unless you're a Lincolnian, in which case, the Justice had to earn his pay by subjecting every person in the United States to the Government, and enthroning the Government as Sovereign.
Why, thank you, suh. It being yet morning, I do believe I'll stick to the brandy -- thank you verr' kindly, suh.
Not when the People sit as the People; it isn't "in" the laws of a state, but their acts are above the State itself.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 requires that controversies between the states be submitted to the Supreme Court.
Another statute. In the ordinary course of things, it would be a useful law.......as long as the States were still in the Union, and hadn't been taken out by their Peoples.
Next time you decide to amuse yourself with that "read 'em and weep" stuff, and by otherwise pulling the wings off flies, Walt, better make sure that fly isn't an eagle first.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.