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To: TigersEye
Here are your words: "...perhaps the Mass. constitution exceeds the authority granted to the States by the federal Constitution". That sounds to me like you're claiming that the Federal Constitution is granting rights to the states and that the states are dependent on the Federal government for those rights.

Nothing you've presented here places the U.S. Constitution in conflict with the Massachusetts Constitution. I certainly don't believe that "It takes a village..." crap but there are certain situations when the state has to take some responsibility. Certainly when parents abuse their children, the state must step in. And if John Adams was correct when he wrote in the Massachusetts Constitution that education "among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties", then the state has a clear responsibility here to insure that parents are providing some form of adequate education to their children.

310 posted on 06/30/2003 10:39:37 AM PDT by ConstitutionLover
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To: ConstitutionLover
Here are your words: "...perhaps the Mass. constitution exceeds the authority granted to the States by the federal Constitution". That sounds to me like you're claiming that the Federal Constitution is granting rights to the states and that the states are dependent on the Federal government for those rights.

I don't know why it sounds like that to you. It didn't sound like that to me when I wrote it. ; )

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

What does this sound like ... to you? You believe that government has the power to dictate educational standards to parents. I don't. The excerpt of the Mass. constitution, written by John Adams, that you posted does not clearly state a power of the State to control education, IMO. It sounds to me like it defines a duty to help and gives a good reason to do so. We will probably disagree about that and it is doubtful that either of us will change our minds unless some more compelling information is presented one way or the other.

311 posted on 07/01/2003 7:34:34 AM PDT by TigersEye (Joe McCarthy was right ... so was PT Barnum!)
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