Posted on 03/21/2002 9:58:54 AM PST by TEXICAN II
How Might Makes Right March 7, 2002
by Joe Sobran
Whatever they may say, most people assume that might makes right. Abstractly, they may consider this is shocking and cynical doctrine; yet in practice they live by it. In plain language, they go with the winners.
They take it for granted, for example, that the Civil War proved that the North was right and the South wrong: no state may constitutionally secede from the Union. All the war really proved was what wise men knew at the outset: that Northern industrial superiority was overwhelming. (If the South had won, most people would, with equal illogic, accept that as proof that the South was right.)
In ratifying the Constitution, the states voluntarily joined a confederated Union; they didn't give up the "sovereignty, freedom, and independence" they had retained under the Articles of Confederation. Such a radical change would have had to be explicit.
If secession was to be unconstitutional, the Constitution would have had to forbid it. It would also have had to provide some method of dealing with it if a state seceded anyway. It did neither.
Abraham Lincoln, in arguing against secession, had to invoke what he claimed as implied powers of the presidency. And in practice, he had to exercise clearly unconstitutional powers, such as making war without the consent of Congress. And when he won the war, he had to install puppet governments in the defeated states, in flagrant violation of the Federal Government's duty to guarantee each state a "republican form of government."
Lincoln himself all but admitted this. Contrary to his insistence that the Union cause was that of self- government -- "of the people, by the people, for the people," et cetera -- his actual postwar policy was to rig the situation in the South to prevent "the rebellious populations from overwhelming and outvoting the loyal minority."
So "the people" could have self-government, all right -- as long as they voted his way. Otherwise he would see to it that the minority was not outvoted. This was a novel idea of democracy. To such contortions was Lincoln driven by the principle that secession is unconstitutional.
The Constitution also requires the Federal Government to "protect [the states] against invasion"; it doesn't authorize it to invade them itself! Such a power would surely have been mentioned if the Framers had meant to prevent secession. Again Lincoln was forced to invent Federal authority -- and presidential authority -- where there was none.
The Constitution sounds great on paper. But how is the Federal Government to be prevented from exceeding its allotted powers?
Originally there were three safeguards.
First, there was the right of secession. Just as the states had seceded from the British Empire, a state could revoke the Federal Government's legal authority within its own borders. Lincoln's war crushed this right.
Second, the Senate of the United States represented the states, and would oppose any usurpation of the rights reserved to the states and denied to the Federal Government. But the Seventeenth Amendment virtually abolished the Senate by requiring the popular election of senators, ending their selection by the state legislatures. By being democratized, the Senate became a redundant institution, with no special constitutional function.
Third, of course, there were elections. The people could insist on constitutional government through the ballot box. They can still do this, in theory -- unless they are too ignorant, corrupt, or apathetic to demand that the Constitution be honored. Which, alas, has long been the case. Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
Yes, in this old world might has always made right, but might often needs the assistance of plausible sophistry, of which Lincoln was a master. His awesome eloquence was matched by his willingness to suppress critics of his administration, and we easily forget that his four years in office were the darkest period for civil liberties in American history -- far worse than the so-called McCarthy Era.
How could a man who spoke so beautifully of "a new birth of freedom" be an enemy of freedom? In the same way, I suppose, that so many "freedom fighters," after they overthrow tyrants, turn out to be tyrants themselves.
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Read this column on-line at "http://www.sobran.com/columns/020307.shtml".
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Constitution of the Confederate States, Article I.:
The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
It's right there in black and white. The importation of slaves from the United States was specifically protected. At the time this was written there were 8 states in the United States that allowed slavery. Ending it in the U.S. would have been almost as difficult as ending it in the confederacy.
You are as a stray dog, wandering a neighborhood where your behavior makes you unwelcome, constantly barking insult. You suggest that I would justify or desire the system perptrated 200 years ago should have been continued. The implication is a false and cowardly attempt at insult. I really wonder what is the source of your displeasure-but only a little. It passes immediatly, when I regard your rudeness.
I do not wish to 'silence you'-I only wish to explain how I see you ( and as others may also )-as a rude, ignorant, and antagonistic pest, that seeks only to offend and aggravate people who have done you no harm, threatened none, ask you nothing, and were having a civil and pleasant conversation, not a contest of insult. I think it you who wishes to stifle and interrupt. Your sort seeks only to disrupt & distract, cause unpleasantness where ever you choose. So bark on-but be known for what you are-a petty twit whose only manner of discourse is that of an uncivilized boor. Your antics will gain no more of my attention.
I don't know how America is going to go, but there is a potentially rocky future ahead.
Blacks kill four whites every day, and these numbers were recorded from 1964. This amounts to over 1,000 whites per year killed by blacks. If you use 1965 as a starting point, you can easily see how over 40,000 whites were killed by blacks. This can be connsidered ethnic warfare.
This kind of ethnic warfare pales in comparison to potential ethnic warfare twenty years from now. This is why I feel that there is a strong possiblity that America may break apart, like the Soviet Union has done.
As did Stalin. They might be able to do what they like but it will never be right, no matter how many spinmeisters and so on they have. Right and wrong are moral absolutes.
BTTT for later reading.
The boy sure needs the name. He would have starved without it.
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