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To: TexConfederate1861
If it is done by popular vote, I suppose they will have to move.

Nope, rights protected under the constitution cannot be taken away by popular vote. You can't censor a newspaper or outlaw a religion just because the majority votes to do so.

458 posted on 01/11/2006 5:13:58 PM PST by Casloy
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To: Casloy

If a sovereign state of the Union secedes by an act of the Legislature, and a popular referendum, then it happens.

Now friend: I won't debate the right of secession with you. I like my forefathers believe it to be a fundemental right.

I respect your opinion, however if you disagree :)


462 posted on 01/11/2006 5:39:20 PM PST by TexConfederate1861
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To: Casloy
Nope, rights protected under the constitution cannot be taken away by popular vote.

Not legally no, but the whole problem with democracy is its tendency towards absolute majoritarianism. After all, since the Constitution was authorized by delegates representing a majority and thus drawing its power and authority from the people, there is no philosophical bar to dissolving it if the people so chose. There is a fatal flaw in the system which justifies itself on a philosophical principle incongruent with the power of its legal apparati. And not to put to fine a point on it, but resistance to the forced will of a majority, even an small majority, was the proclaimed reason for the Souths secession. Compulsory democracy is evil, since it is inherently inimical to liberty. Thus the only protection against majoritarianiusm and all the evils that flow from it, is the principal of free democracy; that is voluntary democracy. Voluntary, but absolute unanimity is a medieval idea attached to medieval notions of democracy, but it's also the only just form of democracy. Compulsory democracy has no more justification for being than the worst form of tyranny.

How can a government, deriving its authority from the consent of the people, philosophically justify the forced compulsion of the people against their consent? If the Constitution does not draw its authority from the people, from where does it come?

467 posted on 01/11/2006 7:18:03 PM PST by Pelayo
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