Posted on 02/18/2012 11:09:23 AM PST by HMS Surprise
There is nothing more irritating to a warrior-poet than an unwillingness to debate. If speech is troubling, or blatantly false, or amateurish, then it will fall of its own weight. I don’t need, and I suspect a majority of truthseekers don’t want, an administrator hovering above the public forum deciding which issues are too controversial for polite company.
The Civil War has become untouchable, unless you agree with the standard arguments. 1. Lincoln was a god among men. 2. The South was evil. 3. Union is the ultimate goal of the American experiment. 4. The Federal government’s design trumps the rights of the People, and the States. 5. Political bands are eternal, and must be preserved at all costs. 6. The ends justify the means.
The arguments for the necessity of the War between the States are considered unassailable, and I have noticed lately that the political-correctness has reached such a high level that even purportedly conservative blogs are beginning to remove threads that stray into pro-rebellion territory.
I understand the temptation to ignore this issue for political expediency, but the goal of individual liberty (personal freedom), as well as State sovereignty (political freedom), can never be accomplished unless we acknowledge and understand that the Civil War planted the seeds of the eventual unconstitutional federal takeover of every aspect of American life.
Some basics that are undeniable, albiet censorable, follows.
(Excerpt) Read more at teapartytribune.com ...
“Trying to point out weakness in an established fact...”
We disagree that your position is the same as an established fact.
“A historically recognized legal work shows the States do have and always have had the ability to leave the Compact at will.”
That contains the assumption the point in contention is true.
“If a State is bound by its own voluntary act, it can be unbound by it.”
Do your voluntary acts mean nothing? Does your voluntary word, promise or agreement mean nothing? If you habitually voluntarily unbind yourself from them at whim, then they don’t.
How does that work when you sign a contract or other legal paper? If you were about to take the witness stand in court and you voluntarily took the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth do you think you could voluntarily unbind yourself from that oath as soon as you sat down? Do you think nothing could happen if you did so?
“Otherwise, the association is no longer ‘voluntary’, but compulsory.”
Well, maybe yes. When you break a contract made voluntarily, some sort of compulsion may be in order.
“...Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union...”
There you go.
“...and the States seceded from it at will...”
Seceded from what? The change from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was a change in the form of the general government established by the States in Union.
They were the United States before, during and after the change.
“Then do please show me the part of the Constitution...”
The United States predates the Constitution, established it, and could replace it. It’s relevance to the States as a Union is limited.
Everyone is free to pursue Tucker's work and draw their own conclusion. He was quite clear in his statement. If you don't consider the writings of “America’s Blackstone” to create an established fact, that's your opinion.
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How does that work when you sign a contract or other legal paper?
We're not talking about 'other legal papers' , we're talking about the Constitution.
Source please.
While I’m not opposed to your point of view here, the United States does predate the Constitution. The United States existed under the Articles of Confederation from the end of the Revolutionary War until ratification of the Constitution, nearly a decade.
Which is, in and of itself, true.
The point I'm trying to make is that neither the Articles nor current compact create the supremacy espoused by those who tend to believe that the Constitution is some kind of suicide pact.
“We’re not talking about ‘other legal papers’ , we’re talking about the Constitution.”
If that’s what you think, then we’re not talking about the same thing. I’ve been discussing a broader picture than you have.
“Source please.”
Later. Real Life is demanding my attention.
Some States specified via their own constitutions, the means to dissolve the compact. Others didn’t. It’s a very old debate that predates our country, with well-known factions battling before, after and ever since ratification. The southern States which seceded clearly believed themselves to have possessed that right. They were not alone, and were not the first to have threatened to do so.
Also Jackson threatened to send troops into South Carolina over “nullification”. If I remember this correctly South Carolina wanted lower tariffs, the Federal government wanted higher. So the South Carolina legislature nullified the federal law. Jackson threatened to send in troops to enforce federal law and hang those talking secession.
Sort of puts the cries of union forever in a different perspective, doesn’t it?
Odd, since in your very first post to me you felt free to edit an excerpt from Tucker's View of the Constitution.
In fact, the word Constitution has appeared in pretty much every one of my posts.
Now you decide that's not even the topic of the conversation?
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I’ve been discussing a broader picture than you have.
No, your trying to reconcile the laws governing the civil States with the rules governing the administrative actions of the federal government.
You've also danced, spun and tossed out enough straw-men to populate the cornfields of Iowa, yet you never answer the simple question -
Where in the Constitution does it stipulate payment or terms required for a State leaving the Union?
I always thought that an odd phrase, "believe that the Constitution is some kind of suicide pact". By it I presume that you mean those of us who understand the union, under both the Articles of confederation and the United States Constitution to be perpetual, but I see nothing suicidal in it whatsoever.
Now take a poster like central-va - by his rhetoric he does believe it to be a suicide pact and can't wait for it to fail (as do many Lost Causers).
Rather it was the act of a politician who wanted some good to come out of the war that was started by the slavers.
By contrast, the rebels slashed the fire hoses in Richmond and set the town afire.
And the confederate pretended general Hood set fire to Atlanta, to deny it to Sherman.
Oddly, Lincoln’s call for 75,000 came after Davis’ call for 100,000 volunteers. Once again the southern partisans see the 100,000 as defensive, justified, and inoffensive, and Lincoln’s call for 75,000 as offensive. But that is because they are awful liars.
Article 3 stipulates that controversies between the states or the federal government will be resolved at the Supreme Court. Accordingly, state pretensions to unilaterally leave are unconstitutional, and void.
See Texas v. White.
No doubt it could have been avoided, if the rebels had not fought so hard. After they stopped fighting, the conquering Yankee army didn’t murder them all.
I wrote: The United States predates the Constitution, established it, and could replace it.
You wrote: Source please.
As to “predates the Constitution:
1. 1776. Declaration of Independence
“IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America...”
(Note the reference to the united States of America in 1776, 11 years before the US Constitution. Admittedly a small “u”, but a beginning.)
2. 1777-1781 The Articles of Confederation.
Preamble
First sentence, second paragraph: “Whereas the Delegates of the United States of America in Congress assembled did on the fifteenth day of November in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy seven, and in the Second Year of the Independence of America, agree to certain articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States...”
(Note the reference to the existence of the United States in the year 1777, the second year of independence, 10-11 years before the US Constitution.)
Third paragraph: “Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States...”
Note the reference to the existence of “Union between the States” in the year 1777, 10 years before the US Constitution.
Article I. “The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America.’”
(Note the reference to the existence of the United States in the year 1777, 10 years before the US Constitution.)
3. 1787. From Letter of the President of the Federal Convention, Dated September 17, 1787, to the President of Congress, Transmitting the Constitution.
First sentence: We have now the honor to submit to the consideration of the United States in Congress assembled, that Constitution which has appeared to us the most adviseable.
(Note that he writes Of the United States as being currently in existence.)
First sentence, fourth paragraph: In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence.
(Note that he writes of “the consolidation of our Union”, not of disbanding it and forming a new one.)
4. 1787. Constitution for the United States of America
Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
(Note that “we the people” (of the presently existing) United States in order to form a more perfect Union, (of the presently existing United States) establish this Constitution for the United States of America (which presently exists and is expected to continue to exist), and that the Constitution hasn’t been ratified at this time.
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As to “established it”, I refer you to the Constitutional Convention and the ratification process.
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As to “replace it”, I refer you to the Declaration of Independence mention of the right of the people to alter or abolish government, which they could do through the States, and the replacement of the Articles of Confederation by the Constitution, which kind of thing could be done again.
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