Posted on 07/18/2008 8:05:56 AM PDT by marktwain
One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of independence.
Oklahomans are trying to recover some of their lost state sovereignty by House Joint Resolution 1089, introduced by State Rep. Charles Key.
The resolution's language, in part, reads: "Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: '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.'; and Whereas, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and whereas, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and Whereas, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government. … Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the 2nd session of the 51st Oklahoma Legislature: that the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. That this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers."
Key's resolution passed in the Oklahoma House of Representatives with a 92 to 3 vote, but it reached a bottleneck in the Senate where it languished until adjournment. However, Key plans to reintroduce the measure when the legislature reconvenes.
Federal usurpation goes beyond anything the Constitution's framers would have imagined. James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, "The powers delegated … to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people." Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not "subordinate" to the national government, but rather the two are "coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. … The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government."
Both parties and all branches of the federal government have made a mockery of the checks and balances, separation of powers and the republican form of government envisioned by the founders. One of the more disgusting sights for me to is to watch a president, congressman or federal judge take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, when in reality they either hold constitutional principles in contempt or they are ignorant of those principles.
State efforts, such as Oklahoma's, create a glimmer of hope that one day Americans and their elected representatives will realize that the federal government is the creation of the states. A bit of rebellion by officials in other states will speed that process along.
Dixie Ping - 10th ammendment
Every dollar the Federal Government give to States comes with strings attached.
“Every dollar the Federal Government give to States comes with strings attached.”
I like it.
Ping for my home state. I like what he is doing here. But Charles Key is a maverick, to say the least. Some would call him kooky. But he knows no fear.
THIS JUST IN:
3 DIVISIONS OF MEXICAN TROOPS AND APPROXIMATELY 1,000 CHINESE AND RUSSIAN UN PEACEKEEPERS HAVE BEEN DISPATCHED TO THE OKLAHOMA STATE CAPITOL TO PUT DOWN A REBELLION BY SOME SILLY FOLKS WHO ACTUALLY BELIEVE WE STILL HAVE A CONSTITUTION.
FILM AT 11!
(Far-fetched? Give it a few more years.)
Here’s a follow-up news bulletin I’d LOVE to see on this topic:
After two days of heavy fighting, the heavily armed Oklahoma insurgents decimated the UN force sent in to quell the rebellion and the dozen or so surviving Mexican troops were last seen heading south wearing stolen civilian clothing in hijacked lawn care trucks.
Washington considering the use of tactical nukes on Oklahoma City and Tulsa, the centers of the uprising.
That post gives me hope for the future of this country. Let’s hope for Oklahoma’s Senate to approve it so it can move into the court system.
Walter Williams is indeed a national treasure. He is indispensable to the march for the restoration of freedom in the United States.
Agree. That would go a long way to curing one of the biggest ills today. Our House of Lords would finally have someone to answer to, their respective states.
Thanks for the ping SB.
When will President Abraham Obama roll the tanks to put down the rebellion?
Whose independence and Independence from what? There was no Constitutional rights being denied to any southern citizen. The secession was merely a power grab by a power mad gang who wanted to be able to take their human property anyplace they wished over the objections of the rest of the nation and in opposition to the old precedent of the Northwest Ordinance.
I'm all for our federal system and structure of limited and divided sovereignty, but the greedy would-be builders of a slave empire are not who I would hold up as the champions of limited government nor would I lay the guilt for today's overgrown government on the neck of the great Republican hero Lincoln.
"...distinct and separate...' per Federalist Papers #51. If you read the Constitution as a strict constructionist, as I do, the weight is tipped to the Congress, explicitly and further tipped to the States and the People by the Bill of Rights implicit to all other 'things' imaginable that the States or the People invented over time as something(s) to be legislated.
The Federal Government has grown far to large and has exceeding it's 'Carrying capacity' to govern. The the 16th Amendment needs to be repealed.
The 'Separate but equal' story is a very old 'Urban Legend' that just refuses to go away just like the 'wall of separation between church and state.'
Neither one is in the US Constitution.
"...In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself..."
PUBLIUS Federalist 51 - http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm
Katherine Jenerette
What's even worse: every one of those dollars came from the states to begin with.
It's like we send half of our money to Washington only to get (some of) it back with a laundry list of rules about what we can do with it.
And of course the 17th Amendment, in that order.
This is just as bad as the Feds takeover. Somehow they forgot about the part of the Tenth Amendment were it states "OR TO THE PEOPLE"
Kind of helps to be qualified. Having a law degree, for example.
Great article written by DR. Williams let’s hope more states follws Oklahoma.
Speaking as a northerner, I’d say you are very ignorant of the background to the War for Southern Independence (yes, it was more than just slavery). As an abolitionist/libertarian, the same principles of self-determination that would have driven me to fight plantation slavery in the south, also demand that I fight the destruction of the 10th Amendmant and state sovereignty that the North perpetrated in and after the Civil War. A pox on both their houses in this case.
I’m stunned that he got a 92-3 vote in favor of the 10th amendment. I guess the politicians felt it would look pretty stupid to go on the record as opposing states’ rights while serving as state legislators. But how many of them are really willing to contest with the Feds when it starts getting ugly?
Then of course you would expect the Oklahoma legislature to refuse any federal funds coming from any federal agency not specifically sanctioned by the Constitution, wouldn’t you? Funds from Education Department. Funds from Department of Transportation. Funds from Health and Human Services, Interior, you name it. In 2005, for every dollar Oklahoma sent to Washington, it got $1.35 back in federal largess. Unless and until the Oklahoma legislature says it’s willing to start shipping money back to D.C. then it’s impossible to take this stunt seriously.
Actually the later would be more correctly called a rebellion, which Merriam-Webster defines as "open, armed, and usually unsuccessfull defiance of or resistence to an established government". That's an accurate description of the confederate effort, especially the 'unsuccessful' part.
Can someone help me out here? I'm trying to find where the word 'specifically' occurs in the Constitution. Am I looking at the wrong version?
Check your punctuation. The larger quote is part of a proposed resolution.
It just sets your hair on fire for a state to assert sovereign rights doesn't it?
Considering the function of the court, an actual understanding of the law helps. There has never been a justice who was not also a lawyer. I can't see starting with Walter Williams.
If one of those rights is the right to suck at the federal teat all it wants, then yeah.
Not sure exactly what you mean, Stainless.
Oklahoma’s about the last place I would’ve expected this kind of movement to start. Texas, maybe...
Well, good for you Oklahomans! And good for America if more states follow your lead.
“Federal Funds” are nothing more than money which has been stolen from taxpayers in individual States by the ridiculously large and bloated federal government.
Them's hangin' words around these parts, Cowboy.
And I don't believe that the federal system under our Constitution makes provision for revolutionary chaos in the name of state sovereignty. Had there been severe constitutional violations by the US government, revolution would have been justified in 1861 just as it had been in 1776, but there was no provocation except a lost election. A constitutional republic presupposes a degree of civic maturity that the plantation crowd lacked in the 1860s.
Perhaps. But in the case of Oklahoma, for every dollar the ridiculously large and bloated federal government stole from the people of Oklahoma in 2005 it returned $1.35. I don't see where the legislature is claiming their state's right to exclude themselves from that.
Dang girl, good luck. I was so impressed by the photos I failed to take notice of what you are runnin for but good luck.
No Constitutionally you don't have to have any qualifications at all to be on the Supreme Court. But it does help.
Not required, though. As I recall there have been SCOTUS judges that weren’t lawyers. Not in a long time, though.
I think you're wrong on that. There have been a lot of justices without prior judicial experience but I believe that all have been lawyers.
Good point. The numbers I've seen show that a lot of the more GOP-friendly states get a lot more back than they put in to the Federal kitty, while Dem strongholds like NY and NJ get back less than what they put it. Go figure.
Ha! We used to shoot Buffalo, for their skins . . . until the commie environmentalists got Congress to stop us.
My ancestors and their independence from the Northern states of the old voluntary union.
There was [sic] no Constitutional rights being denied to any southern citizen.
The constitutional bargain over the return of fugitive slaves (US Constitution, Article IV, Section 2) was being obstructed in a number of Northern states. Even the Supreme Court ruled in Prigg v Pennsylvania [my emphasis below]:
The clause manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control or restrain. The slave is not to be discharged from service or labor, in consequence of any state law or regulation. Now certainly, without indulging in any nicety of criticism upon words, it may be fairly said, that any state law or state regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the right of the owner of the slave to the immediate possession of the slave, and the immediate command of his service and labor, operates, pro tanto, a discharge of the slave therefrom.
The secession was merely a power grab by a power mad gang who wanted to be able to take their human property anyplace they wished over the objections of the rest of the nation and in opposition to the old precedent of the Northwest Ordinance.
Some gang. The secession vote in Texas was 46,129 for to 14,697 against. (My numbers come from Lone Star by T. R. Fehrenbach.) Speaking of territories where slaves might be taken -- the Arizona Territory (the Southern half of Arizona and New Mexico) also voted to secede (kind of like children in a divorce saying which parent they wanted to live with).
Oklahoma, should keep the $1.00 and forgo the .35 . Self respect is worth more than money.
I guarantee you that there are not more than a handful of politicans in the country, if not the world, who would give up this money to stand on principle.
Oh Contrare, Le Colonel!
I would lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Abe Lincoln. Regardless of the motives of the Secessionist group, (your opinion, or otherwise), Lincoln used the war as an excuse to emasculate State Sovereignty........
Are you suggesting that the Northern states should have been required to assist in apprehending fugitive slaves? I guess state's rights didn't apply to them, did it?
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