Our Republic On a Slippery Slope

Radiofree West Hartford ^ | August 23, 2003 | Christopher G. Adamo

[CtPoliticsGuy]

The ability of a nation to peaceably govern itself is entirely dependent on its willingness to abide by previously stipulated agreements wherein limits of governmental action are established. Most importantly, such rules must define the method by which authority transitions from one leader to another. The alternative to this approach can only be violent revolution.

For more than two centuries, the United States has, with the notable exception of the Civil War, operated in an orderly manner in which the rights of citizens have been generally regarded as paramount. However, in the past decade or so, an emerging pattern of overt contempt for the American political process has presented the potential to completely destroy those qualities of the Republic that once moved Thomas Jefferson to describe it as a "near perfect" form of government. Consider some events of recent decades. Though they are neither the first nor the only such incidents, the increasing regularity with which they are occurring should be cause for great alarm.

In 1963, the Supreme Court effectively countermanded an inarguable pretext of the Bill of Rights by substituting a phrase "separation of church and state," for the free expression of religion unambiguously stated in the First Amendment. A decade later, "Roe v. Wade" established as constitutional a "right to privacy" nowhere alluded to in the Constitution, but instead fabricated from thin air, as shamelessly explained by Justice Blackmun. Clearly the Supreme Court simply determined to ignore any Constitutional boundaries to its authority and instead asserted itself as the ultimate legislative body. Since that time, its pattern of activism has only worsened.

However, the determined efforts of governing individuals to subvert the law and thus destroy its restraining effect on those in power did not reach their present, dangerous form until the advent of the Clinton administration in 1993. Though Richard Nixon could rightly be labeled as a chief executive who exceeded his authority, he was clearly held to accountability, and would undoubtedly have been removed from office had he not resigned first.

Continued

[.cnI redruM]

There is some validity to that theory. I don't see the blodd-letting in the streets quite yet, but there is less and less civility in our political debate and more of what seems to be chicanery every year.

I could see us up against a major constitutinal crisis.

[Thane_Banquo]

Minnesota Democrats similarly bypassed the law, placing Walter Mondale on the ballot following the untimely death of Senator Paul Wellstone.

From what I remember of the case, this was actually provided for by Minnesota law, and thus the rule of law was indeed upheld.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

[Avoiding_Sulla]

A constitution places limits upon the governing body it legitimizes and of whose powers it defines. What do you have after the words of the constitution of a constitutional republic has been rendered meaningless?

[tahiti]

"A decade later, "Roe v. Wade" established as constitutional a "right to privacy" nowhere alluded to in the Constitution, but instead fabricated from thin air, as shamelessly explained by Justice Blackmun."

Once I read this sentence, I could not read the rest of the article.

This sentence is the reason I quit calling myself a conservative.

I thought conservatism was defined as conserving the principles and convenants of the U.S. Constitution.

The "right to privacy" emanates from the Ninth Amedment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, SHALL NOT be construed to DENY OR DISPARAGE others (rights) retained by the people."

You have the right to be alone. You have a right to privacy.

The flaw in Justice Blackmun's Roe v Wade majority opinion is two fold:

--that the "right to privacy" emanates from the Fourteenth Amendment

--that an embryo is not a human being until it reaches "viability."

Both pronouncements by Justice Blackmun are unambigously and profoundly wrong.

And that is quite simply why Roe v Wade is a flawed decision and not that the "right to privacy" is not enumerated in the Constitution.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

We're 30 years into the leftist revolution. They took over without a shot fired.

[GrandEagle]

Excellent Article! I must point out though that the Democrats are not the only ones who view our Constitution as an obstacle to good government. I personally don't believe that we will recover from the last 10 years of extra constitutional behavior by our elected officials.

[Tench_Coxe]

I'm counting the posts until you're labeled a 'subversive' or 'Communist'.
BTW, I agree with you.

[Nam Vet]

Yes, the Law provided for that event, however, the Law also provided a TIME DATE CERTAIN, which was completely ignored!

Nam Vet

[Thane_Banquo]

As I recall, the Dems were within the time allowed by Minnesota law. NJ was a different matter altogether.

[Nowhere Man]

There is some validity to that theory. I don't see the blodd-letting in the streets quite yet, but there is less and less civility in our political debate and more of what seems to be chicanery every year.

I could see us up against a major constitutinal crisis.

I think you're right. Maybe I've done too much gaming in role playing games like The Morrow Project, Gamma World, and Twilight: 2000, basically, "after The Bomb" genre, but I do forsee a time when the United States will most likely shatter into autonomous, semi-autonomous, or even sovereign nations each set up to their own flavor. Being an alternate history junkie, I did a search on the term "Balkanized America Map" and I got this link: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/misc/balkanus.htm

It's sort of a "what-if" the Constitutional Convention of 1787 fell apart. I can see something like this in our future although you might have different nations because I foresee this happening in the future whereas the "point of divergence" was in 1787 here.

It seems like as time goes on, the discussions get less civil and more of a warlike flavor and there are many times I think that Walter Williams' article in 2000 on secession is becoming more attractive as time goes on. In short, I think we need a divorce. If the left wants homosexual marriage, rip out religion, and other sundry things they believe in, let them, but they should just have their own country while we have ours. I really don't feel comfortable talking about this, but I think this idea may have to be discussed otherwise I do feel we are headed to a huge loggerhead here.

[StriperSniper]

Bump for later

[Nowhere Man]

Here is the rest to that "what-if" site.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/what-if.htm

Very interesting "what-ifs" there.

[ASA.Ranger]

Ref: >>>In short, I think we need a divorce.

…..but they should just have their own country while we have ours <<<


I agree with you. My family fought for the Confederacy. The attempted divorce failed. The baby killers and homosexuals will win. They skillfully market their perversions to the soccer moms. The Supreme Court is lost. The Executive Branch wants to open the borders while its State Department commits treason. The Legislative Branch is filled with egotistical losers that soccer moms and the minorities put in power due to their combined voting block power (approx 41%). I wish I knew the solution but my average IQ does not have enough juice. Good luck to you my friend!

[Nowhere Man]

I agree with you. My family fought for the Confederacy. The attempted divorce failed. The baby killers and homosexuals will win. They skillfully market their perversions to the soccer moms. The Supreme Court is lost. The Executive Branch wants to open the borders while its State Department commits treason. The Legislative Branch is filled with egotistical losers that soccer moms and the minorities put in power due to their combined voting block power (approx 41%). I wish I knew the solution but my average IQ does not have enough juice. Good luck to you my friend!

Yeah, I seem to think that is the only solution that I can think up. I know to many, it might not seem that way but it looks a lot better when other ideas look poor in comparision. Heck it could be a peaceful divide, maybe all the spin off nations could still be trading partners, part of NATO, and so on, but it will just affirm that we are so far apart in our viewpoints, we can't live together so we decided to separate into different houses. I do think all or most of the "liberal countries" would fall apart sooner or later, then once they learn, we can welcome them back into the fold and have a whole USA again.

[dixie sass]

Excellent. All said in one picture

[RaceBannon]

gotta read this

[GatekeeperBookman]

The Texas Demoncats have shown their willingness to destroy the political system by refusing to participate. They tear the fabric to shreds, in order to attempt to hold power.

This is a very frightening thing. We are at a precipice.

I fully expect to see physical force employed by the Left in the near future-all the more reason for Mr. Bush to amend his policies & act like he really cares-close the borders, cut the size of government, talk & act like a conservative.

He will need all the support he can find when social constraint fails-and it already shows signs of weakness.

[NCSteve]

This sentence is the reason I quit calling myself a conservative.

I won't label you a subversive or a communist, but I will submit that if this is so, then you probably should never have called yourself a conservative in the first place.

I will agree that Blackmun's attribution of this mythological "right to privacy" to the fourteenth amendament is spurious and without basis. However, your attribution to the ninth is no less so. You make two errors: First, most of the Bill of Rights is targeted at guaranteeing our rights to be secure in our persons and our property. However, that does not imply any so-called right to be left alone. All it implies is that the government may not invade your person or property without due cause, due process, and without fully protecting your other rights. The second error you make is, like Blackmun, in attriuting the origin of any rights to the U.S. Constitution. Over and over again, it is pointed out to all who will listen. Your rights are given to you by God, the creator. The Constitution is a document that expressly limits the power of the government to subvert, contravene, or otherwise deprive you of your God-given rights. It grants nothing, it is intended to protect all.

Sadly, as this article points out, the Constitution seems to be rapidly losing the absolute authority it once held. I attribute this to two causes. First, the erosion of original intent through onerous amendment, the fourteenth being the earliest and most egregious, followed closely by the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twenty-second. Second, also as the article points out, the self-appointment of the Supreme Court to the ultimate legislative body and the ultimate arbiter of its own legislation. This, as Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin would tell us, is no less than tyrany.

[GatekeeperBookman]

Thank you for detailing some of what's wrong.

[Hostage]

>>>The "right to privacy" emanates from the Ninth Amedment:

Nowhere in the 9th Amendment does it say people have a right to privacy in the context of killing their unborn child (or whatever word, e.g. fetus, chosen to avoid conviction.

It does affirm that the killing-abortion-murder of an unborn child-being-clump of tissue should not be denied as a right IF indeed it is a right.

The history of the ninth has quite a different context than the one you have stretched to fit your principles.

Roe vs. Wade presented the simple naked question of whether the killing of an unborn child was a right granted under the Constitution. By clever distraction it was cast into an argument concerning privacy.

Obviously the simple naked question is not a right under the Constitution but it may be a right under for example a State Constitution. If it were such a right then it would be protected under the U.S. Constitution by the 9th Amendment.

So the proper venue for Roe vs. Wade was with the State not the Constitution. The Supreme Court should have refused to hear it.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Excellent. All said in one picture

Thank you. You're my second public fan. Registered is the other one.

If you see someplace where it fits, try posting it. Here's the html :
img ismap="ISMAP" src="http://www.pascalfervor.com/Cartoons/RepublicRats.jpg"

[Helix]

"You're my second public fan. "

Allow me to be the third. :)

[lawdog]

I think we are already there...post Constitutional America. Look up the below titled post.

How Tyranny Came to America

[lawdog]

I think we are already there...post Constitutional America. Look up the below titled post.

How Tyranny Came to America

[Rockitz]

Ultimately, the flagrant abuses of power regularly perpetrated by the Clinton White House never resulted in the punitive responses that were warranted, primarily because his political opposition was so often stunned into relative silence by both the audacity of the deeds and the public indifference to them.

The repercussions of Filegate continue to emasculate the GOP leadership.

[.cnI redruM]

I've felt so disgusted with leftisits sometimes that I agree. It's not a good way for me to feel, but there are some on the fringe that disgust me to the point where they no longer seem to be decent human beings. I would prefer never to be in their presence.

[.cnI redruM]

Yes, this really is a scary scenario. They feel like the end justifies the means. They also seem to believe the acquisition and maintenance of their power is more important than the process from which that power is derived. The small-mindedness of this approach ultimately threatens the destruction of our country.

[happygrl]

Much to think about.

Walter Williams profoundly captured the mood and inclinations of many of us when he wrote his succession essay at the time of the attempted election stealing campaign during the 2000 elections.

I felt then that the Democrats did not love this country, only power, when they pulled the stunts they did and put the country through hell, rather than nobly concede as Nixon did in 1960.

A line was drawn then that I'm not certain has been erased. I saw the Leftist Democrats for what they were: authoritarians bent on power, and representing something alien to this political and spiritual culture.

I am not hopeful in maintaining the Union, as it is now composed of two antithical world views.

I've since wondered if this was how it felt to those who lived through the 1850s when the issues that were to result in the Civil war were simmering and unresolved.

[GatekeeperBookman]

We shall continue see more dramatic demonstrations of the gravity of our circumstance.

Morality is all that matters.

[GatekeeperBookman]

The Left will dictate the tactics. They will soon employ the use of physical force as political action. They have long done so, in past circumstances. This is the real end of their argument. Man over law, not law over man. It agrees with their rejection of God.

[hocndoc]

I read this over on the Washington Dispatch page
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_6450.shtml
and had to come over here to see whether anyone had posted it.
This man is saying what so many have said in the last few months, what some of us, my husband and I included, have been fearing.
I don't want to see the USofA balkanized by the "diversity" crowd or by revolution.

Is there a possibility of pruning the Government's powers?

[BlackbirdSST]

What do you have after the words of the constitution of a constitutional republic has been rendered meaningless?

A Democracy, yuk! Blackbird.

[tahiti]

"Nowhere in the 9th Amendment does it say people have a right to privacy in the context of killing their unborn child (or whatever word, e.g. fetus, chosen to avoid conviction."

I agree 100% with your remark above and do not know how you deduced from my comments that I advocated a constitutional justification for killing unborn children.

I was actually advocating quite the opposite.

[tahiti]

"Your rights are given to you by God, the creator. The Constitution is a document that expressly limits the power of the government to subvert, contravene, or otherwise deprive you of your God-given rights. It grants nothing, it is intended to protect all."

I agree with your remark stated above.

And so did James Madison, the author of the 9th amendment, to satisfy the concerns of the anti-federalist who would not ratify the U.S. Constitution as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation until it was inserted into the Bill of Rights.

It behooves all, who believe in liberty, to expand the scope of the 9th amendment as far as possible, to, as you state, "...expressly limit(s) the power of the government..."

Two quick examples that come to my mind are, mandatory seat belt laws/helmet laws and cigarette/cigar prohibition laws, especially enforced on private property.

I hope we would agree.

[NCSteve]

The kind of laws you cite are states' legislation and, in the original context of the Constitution, exempt from the kind of limits placed on the Congress and the Federal Government by both the ninth and tenth amendments. Only in the context of the corrupt and liberal judiciary's interpretation of the fourteenth amendment can they act upon those laws using the ninth and tenth amendments.

This is the grave error just committed by the Supreme Court in the sodomy law case. However we may feel about states' sodomy laws, their applicability is not subject to the jurisprudence of the Federal Bench. So, in short, I cannot agree that the interpretation of the ninth amendment must be expanded in scope "as far as possible" since a liberal interpretation then permits many frightening side-effects. Someone already mentioned use of the ninth amendment to justify the court's ruling on abortion.

I am no more fond of seat-belt or anti-smoking laws than anyone else. However, I do not believe the Federal Bench is the proper venue for fighting these laws. They are best handled in the local legislature and in the state courts.