Posted on 11/28/2023 2:27:06 PM PST by TBP
And yet, the author mentions nothing about the 17th Amendment, enacted in 1913?
Repealing that amendment would go a long way toward what’s being advocated here.
Problem is that a good number of states love federal tyranny. California and New York, for example. It nicely complements their own state tyranny.
And the voters there seem to be okay with it.
Elko Daily Free Press
July 31, 1996
Joseph Sobran
Judge Bork and the Tenth
WASHINGTON — Nearly a decade ago, the Senate rejected Judge Robert Bork’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was defeated largely because he insisted that a primary test of the Constitution’s meaning is the “original intent” of its authors — an idea abhorrent to liberals, who prefer to treat the constitution as a malleable “living document.”
I’ve often wondered how Judge Bork would have ruled as Mr. Justice Bork. Nobody doubts that he would have lifted the court’s intellectual level. But he might have had his sharpest disagreements not with the court’s mundane liberals. but with its two keen conservatives. Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Judge Bork has often dismissed what he once called “conservative nostalgia for the Tenth Amendment.” Justice Thomas in particular has insisted that the Tenth still demands serious consideration.
The Tenth is like no other provision of the Constitution. It says that the powers that aren’t delegated to the federal government belong to the states and the people.
Unlike, say, the clauses that authorize Congress to raise armies and coin money. the Tenth is not specific. It is comprehensive. It either means everything or it means nothing, because. unlike other clauses. it tells us how to interpret the rest of the Constitution.
The big battle over the Tenth occurred during the New Deal, when the Franklin Roosevelt administration wanted to expand federal power far beyond anything explicitly listed in the Constitution. Roosevelt’s troubles were over when his compliant court ruled in 1940 that the Tenth Amendment was no more than a “truism.” That is. it meant nothing. A couple of years later the court ruled that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce meant that it had the power to regulate — I paraphrase loosely — damn near everything.
In a recent TV interview, Judge Bork suggested that the Tenth is dead and gone. He said: “In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, [the framers] listed the powers of Congress, which were somewhat general, but definite enough. And in the Tenth Amendment they said they really meant it. that powers not granted remained with the states or with the people. That was a system that began to break down almost at once.”
He added: “I think the idea of enumerated powers through which the federal government is limited is an unrealistic idea and never had a chance of working .. The Tenth Amendment and the enumeration of the federal powers ... have become passé. The federal government has assumed plenary power, and it is too late to turn back.”
I hope he is wrong. But what if he is right?
If the Tenth was futile from the start, the implications are enormous. It means that the anti-federalists were right when they opposed ratifying the Constitution. They argued that the federal government, given the powers enumerated in the Constitution, would be so powerful that it could usurp any number of other powers never granted to it, and nobody would be able to stop it.
In other words, the Constitution would be unenforceable against the very government it was supposed to restrain. To put it another way, the Constitution itself doomed us to unconstitutional government!
It’s no answer to say that this is a democracy, and that if this is what the people want, so be it. The Constitution was supposed to protect us from pure majority rule.
What it comes to now is that the Constitution may be distorted by either majoritarian political pressures or the minoritarian eccentricities of a federal judiciary. The one thing it doesn’t do is define (and thereby limit) federal power.
What would the Tenth mean in practice? It would mean that a minority could challenge any law passed by Congress, and Congress would have to prove that it had the constitutional power to enact that law.
This was the clear “original intent” of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution, and the clear understanding of generations of American afterward. The borders of federal power were always disputed, but not the principle of enumerated powers. Now Judge Bork says that the principle itself is lost.
Just one question: So why pretend we have a constitution?
© Universal Press Syndicate
South Carolina's secession from the Union was absolutely legal. The South Carolina legislature had ratified the Constitution and had the authority to revoke this ratification. South Carolina was held in the Union by military force, not force of law.
South Carolina's secession from the Union is the same as Great Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.
They tried that in 1861, and the corrupt liberal states of the North ganged up on them and destroyed them.
Same thing would happen today if states tried to resist tyranny.
I'm not sure if the 2022 elections saw those legislatures replacing some of the RINO traitors with MAGA. Anyone know?
Except Britain was an Island and it was hard to invade, while they could march a 100,000 troops down from Maryland to subjugate South Carolina.
And all this was predicted in the Anti-Federalist papers.
The “power” maybe...
The “balls” rarely...
“States can and must resist Federal tyranny.”
States tried that twice. Once in the 1800s. We know how that turned out. Then again in the 60s. The federal government showed up with guns and bayonets. That was enough to shut that one down.
16 and 17
I’ve commented on this many times in the past.
Right now there are 23(?) states that are Republican across the board. Going to be 24 once Landry is sworn in.
If all 24 united and acted as one, they could damn near put a stop to all of it. At least in their respective states. First thing they could do is pickup the lawsuit that Tennessee filed against Soetero about forcing the states to pick up the tab for refugee’s health care costs. That case worked its way around the court system, finally being dismissed because of....wait for it....STANDING. Liberal judge said that the Tennessee legislature had no standing in standing up for the citizens of the state because the dirty Governor and AG didn’t approve the lawsuit.
But, sadly, way too many(if not all) of the legislatures, Governors, & AGs are about as RINO and Establishment as they can be. Most of them just trying out and waiting their turn to get to DC. Doing the same dirty corrupt sh*t, if not worse, than any of the clowns in DC.
“If the Tenth was futile from the start, the implications are enormous. It means that the anti-federalists were right when they opposed ratifying the Constitution. They argued that the federal government, given the powers enumerated in the Constitution, would be so powerful that it could usurp any number of other powers never granted to it, and nobody would be able to stop it.
In other words, the Constitution would be unenforceable against the very government it was supposed to restrain. To put it another way, the Constitution itself doomed us to unconstitutional government! “
Sobran with the TRUTH here !
No wonder they fired him ftom National Review.
“States can and must resist Federal tyranny.”
Not in Colorado.
lol… digital currency was passed by red states and red state governors. Covid tyranny was enacted in all 50 states.
Essential industries such as medical, infrastructure, security at all levels were stripped of any resistance by mask mandates, gov cash for covid.
Now digital currency is here and will be enforced after elections.
They are transing kids in kindergarten. We allowed this and they are still pedal to the metal.
We lost it and mail in ballots ensured tyranny would never leave. That was all done under a “CONservative prez.
Take a good look at the budgets for all 50 states.
There’s not a red state among them.
Not one.
None of the fifty state legislatures have any intention of resisting Deep State.
It was done despite a conservative president.
Because Deep State already had control of the SCOTUS, the Congress, and the bureaucracy.
If Andy Jackson had been President in 1861, traitors would have swung in about amounts. Lincoln was as softy.
In about 1 mounth.
.
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