Posted on 09/30/2007 3:05:43 PM PDT by tpaine
Power, Legitimacy, and the 14th Amendment
by Joseph E. Fallon
The justification for the vast, intrusive, and coercive powers employed by the government of the United States against its citizens from affirmative action to hate-crimes legislation, from multilingualism to multiculturalism, from Waco to Ruby Ridge is the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution adopted in 1868, or, more specifically, the authority conferred upon Washington, explicitly or implicitly, by the privileges and immunities and equal protection clauses of that amendment.
The government of the United States, as established by the U.S. Constitution in 1789, was effectively abolished by the 14th Amendment.
In its place was substituted a regime that resembles the absolutist centralized state envisioned by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. It is the type of political system Patrick Henry and other Founding Fathers had warned against; a consolidated government ruled by demagogues for the benefit of special interests.
It was natural for the post-14th Amendment government of the United States to expand from a continental empire, in which the states of the Union had been effectively reduced to mere administrative units of the federal government, to one whose reach would be, in the words of neoconservative ideologues William Kristol and Robert Kagan, nothing less than benevolent global hegemony.
And it was a relatively simple matter, then, for the government of the United States to go from inflicting death and destruction at Waco to inflecting death and destruction on Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan.
Washington emulates Imperial Rome, of whom it was said, "They create a desert and call it peace."
Thanks to folly, hubris, and the 14th Amendment, the government of the United States is faithfully following in the footsteps of ancient Rome: from republic to empire to oblivion.
Joseph E. Fallon writes from Rye, New York.
I prefer to call it Pax Americana.
I guess you're right. The supposed ratification of the 14th Amendment only codified Lincoln's rape of the government intended by Jefferson and Madison.
ML/NJ
IBTZ. Even FR is PC when it comes to the Confederacy.
I think there was a little thing called the War Between the States which may have had just a bit of impact here...
If the South had not rebelled, constitutional government would not have been lost.
Well, that's a start. Can you tell me why it has been lost for those of us who live in the north?
ML/NJ
The South did not rebel. Lincoln did. Presidents are not allowed to make war on their own. Nor are they allowed to suspend habeas corpus. Only congress can do those things. But Lincoln refused to call congress for six weeks after the crises began so he could provoke a war.
In 1831, long before the War between the States, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun said, "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail." The War between the States answered that question and produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day.
Today’s federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Thomas J. DiLorenzo gives an account of how this came about in The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War.
As DiLorenzo documents – contrary to conventional wisdom, books about Lincoln, and the lessons taught in schools and colleges – the War between the States was not fought to end slavery; Even if it were, a natural question arises: Why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it. Dozens of countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countries such as Venezuela and Colombia experienced conflict because slave emancipation was simply a ruse for revolutionaries who were seeking state power and were not motivated by emancipation per se.
Abraham Lincoln’s direct statements indicated his support for slavery; He defended slave owners’ right to own their property, saying that "when they remind us of their constitutional rights [to own slaves], I acknowledge them, not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the claiming of their fugitives" (in indicating support for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850).
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was little more than a political gimmick, and he admitted so in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase: "The original proclamation has no...legal justification, except as a military measure." Secretary of State William Seward said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free. " Seward was acknowledging the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to slaves in states in rebellion against the United States and not to slaves in states not in rebellion.
The true costs of the War between the States were not the 620,000 battlefield-related deaths, out of a national population of 30 million (were we to control for population growth, that would be equivalent to roughly 5 million battlefield deaths today). The true costs were a change in the character of our government into one feared by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Calhoun – one where states lost most of their sovereignty to the central government. Thomas Jefferson saw as the most important safeguard of the liberties of the people "the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies."
If the federal government makes encroachments on the constitutional rights of the people and the states, what are their options? In a word, their right to secede. Most of today’s Americans believe, as did Abraham Lincoln, that states do not have a right to secession, but that is false. DiLorenzo marshals numerous proofs that from the very founding of our nation the right of secession was seen as a natural right of the people and a last check on abuse by the central government. For example, at Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates affirmed "that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to injury or oppression." In Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (1801), he declared, "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Jefferson was defending the rights of free speech and of secession. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, "The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disapprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right." The right to secession was popularly held as well. DiLorenzo lists newspaper after newspaper editorial arguing the right of secession. Most significantly, these were Northern newspapers. In fact, the first secession movement started in the North, long before shots were fired at Fort Sumter. The New England states debated the idea of secession during the Hartford Convention of 1814–1815.
Lincoln’s intentions, as well as those of many Northern politicians, were summarized by Stephen Douglas during the senatorial debates. Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to "impose on the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by the central government" that would "place at defiance the intentions of the republic’s founders." Douglas was right, and Lincoln’s vision for our nation has now been accomplished beyond anything he could have possibly dreamed.
The War between the States settled by force whether states could secede. Once it was established that states cannot secede, the federal government, abetted by a Supreme Court unwilling to hold it to its constitutional restraints, was able to run amok over states’ rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today. Not only did the war lay the foundation for eventual nullification or weakening of basic constitutional protections against central government abuses, but it also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The Real Lincoln contains irrefutable evidence that a more appropriate title for Abraham Lincoln is not the Great Emancipator, but the Great Centralizer.
Foreword to The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War by Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Copyright © 2002 by Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Reprinted with permission.
March 22, 2005
Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/w-williams1.html
The supposed ratification of the 14th Amendment only codified Lincoln's rape of the government intended by Jefferson and Madison.
Weird reasoning. Jefferson And Madison intended a union based on fed and State governments who honored our Law of the Land. [see Article VI]
When States refused to do so, Lincoln's response was not "rape", nor was the 14th.
The 14th simply reiterated that States had to abide by the individual liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights.
Some States are still fighting that concept with prohibitions on guns. Do you approve ML/NJ?
ML/NJ
Thanks for reviving a wonderful old thread that points out that our form of government was radically altered unconstitutionally.
What laws of the United States did the southern states refuse to honor?
Did you know that Illinois passed a law prohibiting Negroes from moving to that state?
Maybe you mean the northern states that were upset that slaves counted as part of a person for reapportionment purposes; the northerners did not want to count them at all because it gave the southern states too many representatives innorthern opinion.
It's called escaping the enumerated jurisdiction of the Constitution of the Unites States. Once it escaped constituional bounderies, why would an ocean stop it?
----
14. To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district not exceeding ten miles square, as may by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of congress, become the seat of government of the United States; and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by consent of the legislature in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.
The exclusive power of legislating in all cases whatsoever, except within the precincts of the seat of government, not exceeding ten miles square; and except within the precincts of such forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other such needful buildings, as may be erected by congress with the consent of the state, in which the same shall be, being reserved to the states, respectively.
George Tucker
BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES : WITH NOTES OF REFERENCE, TO THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS, OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES; AND OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
NOTE E
It’s very simple, during and after the war between the states, the federal government greatly increased its strength over all the states—what had been “these” united States became “the” United States. Governments always increase its grip during crises or wars, and so it was then—and now too (been to an airport lately?).
Roosevelt’s serious socialism only happened because the crises of the Depression seemed to make it desirable, then WWII also consolidated such control—and was in reality what ended the Depression. In the North too, particularly the North East, the influx of European immigrants in the later 19th and 20th centuries—made greater government control there more acceptable—as these persons were used to stronger governments back in Europe.
Up through the middle of the 20th Century too, various kinds of socialisms, especially communism became fashionable to the intellectual elites as the way to end poverty—and bring in a golden age. National socialism in Italy and Germany—where the government uses the market to consolidate power, instead of taking capital completely over a la communism, seemed the way to modern society to those involved....those who had always known heavy-handed governance. Democratic socialism—really the system of the modern “democracies” today, including our beloved USA, gradually came to be more and more assumed as the best way to go—and our courts made it easier, as they too expanded their power—letting the politicians also inexorably increase their power as well. In Europe of course the control was more, and the liberty less—as it always has been, and still, persons look to government on both continents to solve various problems which their great-grandparents never would have dreamed of.
In my opinion, it comes down to this: When people reject God as their ultimate provider, they look to the next biggest entity in their lives—usually government. This explains why places with the highest degrees of atheism or agnosticism also tend to have the most controlling socialistic governments.
Christian religion brings internal individual governance (self control), the lack of it makes for a demand for more external public governance, i.e. big government.
The only time the 3/5 rule seems to have made a difference in the outcome of a Presidential election was in 1800, when otherwise John Adams might have defeated Thomas Jefferson. The biggest accomplishment of Jefferson's first term was the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory. Would Adams have accepted Napoleon's offer?
If only the New England states had seceded in 1815, as they were fixing to do if the war hadn't ended when it did, the Civil War wouldn't happened.
Reading some history would help. Google: Kentucky Virgina Reolutions. (Mr. Jefferson wrote the Kentucky one; Madison wrote the other.)
The 14th simply reiterated that States had to abide by the individual liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights. Some States are still fighting that concept with prohibitions on guns. Do you approve ML/NJ?
You need some help with the English language. The first amendment starts out with the words, "Congress shall make no law ..." The second amendment does not. Do you think that this was an accident, or that it the framers just forgot the words in case but not the other? What do you think the intent was of including these words in the first but not the second?
ML/NJ
I believe Joseph Fallon’s side LOST the war. Sorry, Joseph Fallon, the winners get to decide.
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