Posted on 02/11/2009 6:06:39 PM PST by Kaslin
This is the 200th birthday of the first Republican to win a national election, Abraham Lincoln. It is good for Republicans today to remember Lincoln, not to be antiquarians, but to learn from his principled defense of the Constitution.
By becoming students of Lincoln, Republicans can win elections and would deserve to win by helping America recover its constitutional source of strength and vitality.
The greatest political crisis America faces today is neither the recession nor Islamic terrorism; it's not health care, education, immigration or abortion. It is that the United States Constitution has become largely irrelevant to our politics and policies.
All three branches of government routinely ignore or twist the meaning of the Constitution, while many of our problems today are symptoms of policies that have no constitutional foundation.
If we are to recover the authority of the Constitution and the many ways it restrains and channels government power, someone or some party must offer a principled defense of the cause of constitutional government.
They must understand not only the Constitution, but also the principles that informed its original purposes and aspirations, principles found in the Declaration of Independence among other places.
No one understood that better than Lincoln.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Secession.
T admit a State, yes. To create a State, no. The territory organized as a State...
Organized as a territory by Congress.
...and Congress says we recognize your statehood, and admit you to the Union.
No. Congress is the deciding factor, not the people of the territory. They can petition for years, as Colorado did, and not be admitted. They can approve Constitution after Constitution and not be admitted, as Kansas did. Unless Congress decides to admit them, in effect create the state to begin with, then the territory remains the territory.
No, by insinuation it would, but we're not taking about implication, we're talking about the original intent of the Constitution.
The original intent is clearly to give Congress the power to create states and approve changes in their status.
Believe as you wish.
Just following your arguements.
That sort of thing happens when you have a consolidation of government's powers.
Or when you have the government acquiring foreign territory to begin with.
That's right...it's called exercise of an unconstitutional authority, and one Lincoln supported wholeheartedly.
No it's called challenging a badly flawed decision and using the legal system to return powers to Congress reserved to it by the Constitution in the first place.
Since the Constitution is not a suicide pact, the South decided to leave. Better a chance at survival than none at all.
The suicidal act on the South's part was deciding on war to further their aims.
The terms of the Northwest Ordinance were reaffirmed unanimously by the 1st Congress, which included 16 of the 39 signers of the Constitution, and was signed into law by George Washington. But what did they know, huh?
Are you really going to defend Dred Scott as correctly decided?
No, only that congress could only be as equal in its laws for the territories as that in any of the States.
And what’s the difference?
Amusing, but you silence on the subject implies consent that the word does not appear in the Constitutional compact.
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No it's called challenging a badly flawed decision and using the legal system to return powers to Congress reserved to it by the Constitution in the first place.
LOL! The authority concerning anything other than importation of slaves into the country is the only one given to Congress on the subject.
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The suicidal act on the South's part was deciding on war to further their aims.
Secession is not war. The federal government decided to begin the War of Aggression.
As the decision was made before the Constitutional Republic was changed to a democracy by the force of arms, yes Dred Scott was correctly decided.
Not true. The Court has never said who can suspend it.
If you can't understand the implications of your own beliefs, I don't know if I can make it simple enough for you, but start right here:
Your post 108:
The legal right to own slaves in this country was a fact before the Constitution was even conceived, so the federal government had no say-so on the issue of slavery in the states where it existed.
After the election of Lincoln, the South's choice was to leave the Union, or stay and let the federal government collapse their agriculturally driven economies.
Some choice.
It is clear that you are saying that the federal government had no right to eliminate slavery. Even if the states passed a Constitutional amendment that eliminated slavery, your position is that southern states had no obligation to accept that result.
Not only that, but your comment shows without a doubt that you believe that slavery was necessary to the Southern states, such that the North's effort to eliminate it over decades would "collapse their agriculturally driven economies". Based on that necessity, you say that the South had no choice but to fight. The mere chance that someday in the future the Federal government would restrict in some way the institution of slavery forced the south into the civil war.
Being forced to fight implies that they had a just cause, in your addled mind. Their cause was the maintenance of the institution of slavery. Ergo, you believe in the year 2009 that the South in 1861 should have been allowed to continue its practice of slavery, and not just that, but that it should have been guaranteed somehow that its institution could never be interfered with by the Feds or the other states. Thus, you support the continuation of the institution of slavery by the south after 1861, and continuing indefinitely into the future, until those states decided to change their own laws on slaves. In your view, no one could change those laws but the individual state.
This further leads to the conclusion that you accept that it would be entirely appropriate and perhaps even desirable that slavery continue into the decades and centuries after 1861, for as long as the free white people of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Texas or whatever slave state you name, wanted it to. Knowing people from those states and growing up a long time ago, and being from a family of confederate soldiers, I can tell you that left to their own devices, the people from those states would have been happy to maintain slavery to the present day. I can tell you sure wouldn't mind. The natural implication and result of your contentions here, therefore, is that slavery today, in 2009, would be fine and dandy. By now, we'd have whole oil installations and manufacturing plants staffed with Negro slaves, and it would destroy the southern economy to change that. Can't have that, can we?
The end result of your beliefs is the justification and perpetuation of evil. That you believe these things and walk among us is scary, but that you don't realize the implications of your beliefs is scarier. Such failures of intellect are how small immoralities, self-delusions, turn into larger ones, leading to acceptance of fascism, communism or slave states. In this age when we are going to have to begin fighting to prevent imposition of a new form of slavery, we need to recognize the evil of an old one.
I will say a prayer for your soul tonight, and thank the Lord that your view was defeated 144 years ago.
It does not, and I have never said it did. And as I've said on numerous occasions I don't believe secession is prohibited. I just disagree with you that it can be done unilaterally.
The authority concerning anything other than importation of slaves into the country is the only one given to Congress on the subject.
The authority to make the laws governing the territories is. Slavery is not specifically prohibited by the Constitution but is is not specifically protected either. Congress can regulate it in the areas it has sole authority over. Or ban it entirely if it wanted to. And an overturning of Dred Scott would have led to that.
Secession is not war.
Bombarding a federal fort is. More specifically it is armed rebellion.
Aside from the fact that the Constitution required the new government to respect all laws enacted under the Articles, the Northwest Ordinance was considered so important that it was adopted in its entirety by the 1st Congress, with only minor word changes to conform to the terminology used in the Constitution. It was among the first laws enacted under the US Constitution, and it passed unanimously!
By himself, the Chief Justice is only a Circuit Court judge. No more and no less. He does not represent the Supreme Court until he is sitting with the other members of The Court!
True.
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The mere chance that someday in the future the Federal government would restrict in some way the institution of slavery forced the south into the civil war.
As it would be unconstitutional to do so, yes.
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This further leads to the conclusion that you accept that it would be entirely appropriate and perhaps even desirable that slavery continue into the decades and centuries after 1861, for as long as the free white people of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Texas or whatever slave state you name, wanted it to.
Pure conjecture on your part.
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The end result of your beliefs is the justification and perpetuation of evil.
Facts are not evil...they just are.
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I will say a prayer for your soul tonight, and thank the Lord that your view was defeated 144 years ago.
If you truly feel the need to pray for someone because they attempt to show WHERE the 'law' we live under to day became twisted to make us all slaves to the federal government, by all means, do so.
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As you've felt so free to place me under the microscopic view of your narrow little world, let me ask you a simple question;
Do you believe the Constitution is a living document?
Let me ask you another question: Do you believe that states had the power to abolish slavery within their own borders? To forbid slave owners from bringing their slaves in from other states and establishing residency there with them?
No, absolutely not. Antonin Scalia and I are in exact agreement on the nature of interpretation of the Constitution and why any method of interpretation except original intent leads to judicial tyranny.
That is why I believe that it would have required a Constitutional amendment to eliminate slavery in the southern states. That would not have been politically possible for decades, if ever, but it needed to be pursued.
Your position that an Amendment would have been invalid is untenable. Your position that the south's secession was necessary so they could preserve their slavery is evil. Your belief that perpetuating evil because it was economically expedient is fatuous. That you would be comfortable with slavery continuing indefinitely into the future after 1861 shows how far you are prepared to go to accommodate evil.
That southerners might think that way in 1861 is somewhat understandable, although wrong and immoral. That someone thinks it today is inexcusable. You may think it's cute, and principled and revisionist and therefore cutting edge, but it's not. It's just a failure of intellect and logic. As Jamie Lee Curtis said, when Kevin Kline said that "apes don't read Nietzsche":
"Yes they do, they just don't understand it."
So goeth your interpretation of the historical facts and our constitution. I will grant that you have read extensively and are passionate.
When I got into law school, Clarence Thomas wrote me a letter of recommendation. I worked with him when he was a Senate aide. He was head of the EEOC at the time, under Reagan. If I looked at him like TexasMama does, he would not be the great justice on the Supreme Court, he'd just be stolen property to be returned to the state of Georgia. I look at him and I see a man. A great man.
Thomas also believes in original intent. I don't think he believes that the 13th Amendment was invalid. I'll go by what he says, and not by TexasMama.
As slaves are a specie of property, yes it is.
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Congress can regulate it in the areas it has sole authority over. Or ban it entirely if it wanted to.
No, it may not. I've given you sources stating such.
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Bombarding a federal fort is.
As of MONDAY, December 24, 1860, South Carolina again became a sovereign State. Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States
Upon due delivery of notification, Ft Sumter became the property of South Carolina.
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More specifically it is armed rebellion.
Nope, armed rebellion would be only if the People acted against the State.
It is up to the State to notify the federal government if they need assistance for a domestic situation.
Article 4 section 4
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
And on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive means the STATE governments, not the federal one.
At the same time it is properly provided, in order that such interference may not wantonly or arbitrarily take place; that it shall only be on the request of the state authorities:otherwise the self-government of the state might be encroached upon at the pleasure of the Union, and a small state might fear or feel the effects of a combination of larger states against it under colour of constitutional authority;
William Rawle
And it was later struck down as unconstitutional, just as the father of the Constitution said it was.
No, and I find the question rather asinine.
To point out and say "HERE! This is where it all went wrong and our Republic was lost" seems to confuse people into believeing I somehow support slavery.
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Do you believe that states had the power to abolish slavery within their own borders? To forbid slave owners from bringing their slaves in from other states and establishing residency there with them?
Yes. And to be honest, I believe the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 is unconstitutional as well.
The federal government had the authority to sanction States not in compliance, but it had no authority to authorize a physical presence in those States without the consent of the States in question.
The question isn’t whether or not you support slavery, which is why I added the parenthetical, but whether you believe that the federal government had no authority to end slavery, even by constitutional amendment.
And while your emotionalized and judgmental rants are amusing, you've not contributed a single concrete source or made a single point of Constitutional debate.
As far as your continued derogatory remarks as to my character or compassion are concerned....
I've been called worse by better.
Have a nice day.
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