“Furthermore, the reconstruction southern governments who ratified it were legitimate governments . . . ”

The Southern people who stood right next to armed U.S. Army soldiers – who were of course intervening in the process of a state’s consideration of a U.S. Constitutional amendment – while in the lines to the voting booths, would say otherwise.

You are on to something in your half-correct assumption about my preferences. I would prefer the Articles over the Constitution. But thank you, yes, in fact, I AM quite loyal to the document ratified and consented to by the people of the United States.

Not going to ask me for quotes and statements from the men in Philadelphia during that Convention, or from the state ratification documents, like I offered? Again, I don’t enjoy hunting for quotes from 2,000 pages’ worth of Debates on the Constitution, but it seems the situation calls for it. Are you scared that your views will be refuted?

i have some news for you, sweetie, the Articles of Confederacy are dead and gone. The Fourteenth Amendment was added legally in accordance with the Constitution – the Confederate states admitted defeat and wanted to rejoin the union and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was one of the conditions that the legitimate governmeny of the United States set – almost all of the former Confederates voluntarily renounced sessession and reaffirmed allegiance to the United States. Furthermore, the reconstruction southern governments who ratified it were legitimate governments and were supported by many former Confederates. Many former Confederates later became public officials in the U.S. pledging an allegiance to the U.S. In fact, under the Constituion, state officials are required to pledge an oath to support the U.S. Constiution.

Of course, back to your opposition of judicial review which is about the most ludicrous thing i’ve ever heard.

So if i understand you correctly, if Congres would pass a blatantly unconstitutional law – say that “Brock Henderson is declared guilty of Treason Against the United States and is wanted dead or alive with a $10,000,000 reward – and furthermore, if caught alive will be excecuted by being drawn and quartered” and that it would become law that the court system would not be able to stop it – and in fact, there would be nothing which could be done but to kill you.

In fact, i have a feeling that if that law was passed, you would be immediately looking to hire someone like me to go into court and say “Your Honor, the Brock Henderson Act is unconstitutional as a Bill of Attainder and violates the Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment” – and you would say “thank you your honor for protecting the Constitution” when he properly held that law to be unconstiutional.

At least you would unless you are even stupider than i thought – good thing for you that Congress would never ever pass such a law :)

The first shot fired doth not a war start. It starts combat, yes, but not a war.

Any credibility you once (never) had has just flown out the window.

(And remember which side started the Civil War: it wasn’t the Federals.)

The act of a court – a branch of the government! – in striking down a law made by the legislative branch, is therefore an expansion of the government’s power, Madame Mensa. It’s just one out of three, but the court is part of the government. What law school did you go to? Good God. However you slice it concerning the question of the expansion or limitation of the government’s power, Marbury vs. Madison was the beginning of the end of Constitutional government for the simple reason that under the Constitution that was ratified by the people through their state legislatures from 1787-90, the Supreme Court does NOT have the right to review an act of Congress. I’m not an inconsistent double-talking right-winger, you know. I fully affirm that this means that unconstitutional legislation that I hate which comes from Congress must stand just as much as legislation I support. New Deal legislation, the Immigration Act of 1965, the Affordable Care Act, things like that.

No, nobody “mainstream” agrees with me. The reason is because an imperial government which is not limited in any meaningful way in the scope and reach of its power is what we wake up to in an American morning today. Clarence and Antonin no more adhere to that document which has not been the law of the land in America for a century and a half, anymore than you do.

Must you throw about silly little self-glorifying jabs like I haven’t actually read all those documents? Let’s get this out of the way right now, little chick. You have read the Constitution, and those other aforementioned documents, I’m sure, and so have I. I don’t like pulling out any tomes from my shelf for the one purpose of scanning them for certain passages or quotes, but just ask me to, and I will. Madison’s statement about the intentions of the writers of a constitutional document being totally secondary to those of the parties who RATIFIED it is the most important one, methinks.

It is quite telling how your ultimate justification for the American Empire is the successful prosecution of a war AGAINST ITS OWN FELLOW CITIZENS, followed by an amendment which was never at any time ratified by the due and free consent, without intervention from outside parties, that is, of the requisite number of states. The war waged against its own citizens places your precious empire into a notorious little crowd including the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China, by the way.

You can read all you want – and frankly, i do not believe that you actually have because then you would know about the Supremacy Clause, that the Bill of Rights protects people and not states, and that the Fourteenth Amendment put a definitive end to any notion (which was wrongheaded from the start) that the Constitution was a union of states and not a union of people. i believe that you have simply been listening to conmen like Glenn Beck and David Barton who are not historians but are proven liars.

Nobody mainstream agrees with you – not even Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia (who is at least honest enough to admit that “original intent” like The Bible can be used to prove almost anything – seriously, he admitted that “original intent” really means “what Antonin Scalia thinks” in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission). That should tell you something. The best way to tell intent is through the original document and the Supremacy Clause – as well as the creation of a Supreme Court who can review state court decisions – clearly makes it clear that the intended result of that sauage making in Philadelphia was to create a federal system where the federal government is supreme.

And btw, genius, having actually read Marbury v. Madison, i can also tell you that it actually limited the power of the federal government by striking down an Act of Congress as being unconstitutional. That you do not realize that makes me seriously question whether you have actually read anything. Well, maybe Glenn Beck’s book or one of those “Politically Incorrect Guides” which obviously contain a misprint in that they included an extra word in the title – it should have been “Incorrect Guide” (and if you are a fan of irony, one can note that they actually contain the Politically Correct view according to right wingers).

Erika, no, I did not say that the Feds NEVER intervened in the economy prior to the Civil War. I simply said you have to go back that far in order to find periods of time free of the type of regulations and interventions the American economy has since seen in the corporatist postbellum era. First I should clarify that I mean regulations and interventions stronger and more intrusive than the original system of tariffs and excise taxes. Of course there were always those, as there is no such thing as a completely free market of goods and services.

I have read the Declaration, Articles, Constitution, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, and all the debates and state ratification statements. What we can glean from these documents meshes quite finely with logic: No state fought to be free of an imperial government just a few years earlier just to turn right around and give it up to a new one they would be tricked into consenting to. The type of radical Federalist Party interpretation you are advancing makes the Constitution into a document paving the way for an American Empire, not a federal constitutional republic created by consent of several independent states. The monster grandfathered by that party in Wisconsin in 1854, the Republican Party, gave you what you wanted when it captured the presidency a few years afterward, though, so the Convention in Philly in 1787 was only a total loss for your ideological ancestors for three quarters of a century.

Yes, I bet you’d like to assert that the text on its face is the key to knowing what it means, since the most wiley and sneaky authoritarian Federalists, the rats that Patrick Henry smelled, wrote it. But I’m sorry, dear Erika. James Madison, the most principled Federalist at the Convention, stated what simple logic dictates on that subject, that the only true meaning of the Constitution adopted by the United States is what the people represented in their individual statehouses RATIFIED, not what Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison WROTE. The verdict from such documents does not favor you and your ideological kind, Erika. The statements of ratification from most of the individual statehouses affirm the Anti-Federalist standpoint and make it plain that the people sent their representatives FROM THEIR RESPECTIVE STATES to ratify a document which would reserve to their newly independent state governments a plenary list of rights of self-government which did not conflict with the rights they knowingly gave up to the new federal government. They were tricked into sending delegates to debate a whole new constitution, anyway, rather than what they were under the impression was going to be debated – just a few minor changes to the Articles of Confederation.

Marbury vs. Madison started the downward spiral from republic to empire on the judicial front. Therefore the names of each and every one of those jurists and their silly fulminations and prevarications are useless for the purpose of a true understanding of the American Constitutional system of government. Thank you.

i also wonder whether Brock has actually ever read the Constitution – i would recommend that he do so – its not very long, a quick read (be sure to read the Amendments – hint, the due process and equal protections clauses of Amendment XIV are very important) and you are sure to learn something.

Brock somehow also thinks that the Bill of Rights were designed to protect the states or that the Constitution is nothing but a Confederation of essentially independent states. That is clearly wrong. Again, he really needs to read the Constitution – in this case, he could stop after the first line “We the People of the United States of America in order to establish a more perfect union.”

The rest of his comments about history are quite strange – including the fact that he believes that the federal government did not intervene in the economy prior to the Civil War (odd since most Neo-Confederates and States Rights people argue that the “War of Northern Aggression” was fought due to tariffs and not slavery) – as the note should suggest this is clearly wrong. The federal government was relatively small at that point because there was relatively little interstate and foreign commerce. However, more rational historians would note that prior to the Civil War there were already major changes taking place due to improved transportation due to steam power.

Steam power was also leading to more industrialization primarily in the north (in the south only Richmond, Virginia had significant private industry) which essentially transformed the country.

The Constitution was completely transformed after the Civil War with the Fourteenth Amendment destroying any argument that the Constitution is a allignment of independent states – quite simply, the Fourteenth Amendment requires the states to protect the rights protected in the Bill of Rights through the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. It also requires the states to recognize all people born in the United States or Naturalized thereof as citizens. The states under the Fourthteenth Amendment are also required to obey federal law.

Another factor which shows that your view is wrong is the 1824 decision in Gibbons v. Odgen which created the basis for what is legally known as the “negative commerce clause” which states that states are not allowed to interfere with interstate commerce. That decision was written by John Marshall who was of course a Federalist (appointed by Federalist President John Adams who was one of the leading Federalists along with Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison (primary authors of The Federalist Papers along with John Jay) – George Washington, btw was also a leading Federalist so that should tell you which side won the debate over the Constitution).

While it is doubtful that the founding fathers would recognize the country, that is due to technological changes in communication and transportation. The governmental structure has with some amendments (the Civil War Amendments and the Progressive Era Amendments are the most important but neither altered the fundamental relationship between the federal governments and the states and to the extent that they altered the relationship between the states and the people it was to provide more power and protections of the people).

But quite simply, anyone who thinks that hte Bill of Rights was intended to protect the states has obviously never read the actual Constitution. Hint, you are better off learning what the Constitution says from actually reading it rather than listening to a snake oil salesman like Glenn Beck. Or you can read some judges – in my opinion the best to read are Justice Cardozo (maybe the best judicial writer ever), Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit (both for his excellent judicial opinions which probably more than any other judge explains legal theory and his books but beware that some of his opinions are extremely kooky but he’s a great writer and will always make you think even (especially?) as you are ready to throw the book), Justice Scalia (beware that Scalia sometimes just makes things up as he admitted in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission but he’s a truly a great writer and best explains the modern conservative view of the judiciary), Justice Stevens (the last great traditional conservative jurist – his opinions are often truly awesome in their respect for judicial restraint and individual rights – naturally by the time he retired, he was considered a liberal because of the rise of modern judicial conservativism), Justice Ginsburg (she is extremely underrated as a writer and a very good explainer of the law from a traditional judicial liberal/moderate viewpoint), Justice Breyer (former law professor at Harvard and a very good legal writer), Justice Brennen (look here or Chief Justice Warren for judicial liberalism), Justice John Marshall (for the 19th Century view), and Justice Black (the greatest textualist in American judicial history – what to know what the Constitution really says, read Justice Hugo Black’s opinions).

Here is the difference between the slaves and the Irish immigrants: Firstly, they CHOSE to immigrate, hence the term “Immigrant”.

Secondly, they were not kept in centuries of slavery in order to pick this cotton, work the land, and perform other tasks. No one went to Ireland, looked for Irish, brought them here piled up in boats like wood, haggled over them like livestock, separated their families, punished attempts at education or independence, nor did the U.S. use terror to erase any cultural connection to their homelands. The Irish did not have their ethnicity used to define “blackness” in order to make sure that they, and their descendants would be owned by their masters indefinitely. They were not the targets of anti-north backlash and force to live in slavery-like conditions after being “freed”, laws were not put in place that would decide their “humanity” or “lack of it”. They were not kept in an apartheid until the modern era and then told to “move on” once that apartheid wasn’t profitable or “attractive” to their oppressors anymore.

. The Irish were NOT slaves, and the anti-Irish oppression they faced was manipulated and gradually reduced when it was deemed profitable to promote them to “white” at the expense of black people. For you to imply that the prejudice the Irish experienced somehow negates the severity of chattel slavery and it’s impact on future generations is just ridiculous, and frankly rather offensive.

What happened to the Native Americans in-masse was not related to the institution of slavery (except for those occasions where nations offered shelter to escaped slaves), nor should the genocide inflicted upon them be used so that you can make a rather nonsensical argument
And the genocide of the indigenous people of America was not a “war”. It was a genocide. It would do you well to learn the difference before you attempt to justify such horrible things so nonchalantly.

For someone who strives to ‘remain humble before the god you serve, by striving not to think himself too intelligent,’ you sure do exhibit an extraordinary amount of smugness.

I remember reading something about pride going before the fall. But I could just be imagining that.

And for now, I shall put my arguments in the able hands of dear Erika, who will use her lawyerly wisdom to pulverize your arguments far better than I, a mere historian of military technology could hope to do in this field.

Ruslan definitely didn’t major in U.S. History. The states that ratified the U.S. Constitution WERE THEMSELVES independent constitutional republics! Read each of their individual constitutions they had on their books at the time of ratification. They gave up only the powers spelled out in the original 7 articles of the new Federal Constitution.

“Yeah see we tried this back in the so-called Gilded Age. It didn’t work out too well.”

Since Day 1 of its existence, the GOP has been the party big corporations have gone to for government subsidies in order to get rich at the expense of the common folk and eliminate competition from them. They ruled the government with the exception of a couple of Cleveland presidencies during the Gilded Age. That does not equate to “getting government out of the way.” You have to go back to the Antebellum period to really observe an American economy without government intervention.

“We’ve been trying it again since the 1980s, and it’s not working out.”

Wrong.

“America got rich off of stolen land and cotton picked by slaves.”

Whites and Native Americans picked cotton, too. Is land stolen by one nation of people when it successfully fights a war for it against another? Nope! No more than the Normans stole England from the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, or the Ottoman Empire stole Turkey from the Byzantines in 1453!

” . . . the “white” phenotype, which has been defined and redefined numerous times since the late 17th century isn’t going extinct.”

The boundaries of our solar system, galaxy, and the universe have been rediscovered and redefined over the centuries also. Is it impossible for those to go extinct, even though countless stars and their systems have done just that over the eons?

“But they’re not alive, and it doesn’t matter what they think. They lived in the 18th century. If you think we should run things strictly according to the ideas of men from the 18th century then there’s no reason not to run things according to the ideas of men from the 16th century, or the 15th, or so on. We can start by getting rid of this Internet thing. I’m sure the Founding Fathers wouldn’t approve of it.”

Yes, tell us how much you hate the American definition of freedom and liberty. I do enjoy it when a leftist finally quits beating around the bush and just says flat-out that it’s time to forget Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Adams, and that pesky and outdated Constitution they devised which enshrines that definition into law.

Methods of government and technological innovations/inventions are two very different things. They wouldn’t have “disapproved” of the internet any more than they would the microwave, light bulb, phone, or internal combustion engine.

“Yes, of course. That’s why you fight to ban abortion, restrict birth control, and deny gay people their civil rights. It’s because you care so deeply about freedom.”

Yes, because there IS a broad array of these things called “civil rights” which have all been COMPLETELY AGREED UPON by the American people, and codified into law in strict accordance with the methods required by the Constitution of the U.S. Oh, wait, no there isn’t and no they haven’t! And yes, contraception and abortion have everything to do with freedom. Oh, wait – nah, never mind, sarcasm gets tiresome after awhile.

“Technically it’s not entirely your money since you didn’t print it,”

A believer in totalitarian statist government, on the SPLC blog roll, imagine that! Then again, sarcasm doesn’t bore me too easily.

” . . . and you don’t do all the necessary labor which is required to maintain the dollar as a stable currency.”

Uh, what could the American middle class buy with its wages, say, a century ago, as opposed to now? Yeah . . . stable currency . . . right.

An AMERICA that ceased to exist? Please specify. That brush stroke is way too broad. A nation of people, whether real or just pretending to be (Here’s a hint to help you out: The American “nation” falls into the latter category, and always has), does not change from one form into another by way of somebody’s signature. Is that what you were talking about when you said “America” – all of its people from New England to Georgia? Well, then the reality of the situation is quite simple: No, in fact it did not, any more than it will change at the moment when Barack Obama is sworn in for a second term next month. Now, as for changes in, say, technology, which truly do have a direct felt effect on all the people when they reach them, like the mass production of the automobile, those are a different story. The America of the 19th century definitely ceased to exist when Ford started producing the Models A and T.

Of course, if you are one of those types who believes that the government is inextricably tied to the people it governs, that the government is the people and the people are the government, then I understand where you’re coming from – the viewpoint of totalitarian statism.

As for The Articles of Confederation’s replacement with the Constitution, yes, there were changes which gave the new Federal Constitutional Republic more powers over the handful of several constitutional republics which created it, more than the Confederation had, that is. They are listed amongst the original 7 articles of the Constitution. The Anti-Federalists who were the driving force behind The Bill of Rights made sure those few necessary powers were kept in check and that the rest of the rights inherent in autonomous and mostly-independent government remained with the States.

For the purpose of remaining humble before the God I serve, I strive everyday to not think myself overly smart, thank you for your concern. How are you in that department?

Quite simply, if the federal government was a weak allignment of states, those clauses would not have been added. i’m also pretty sure that Article I, Section 8 would be much shorter :)

As far as the Bill of Rights, actually try reading them to see who the Bill of Rights protects – hint, its not the state. Its the people who are the people who the Constitution was an agreement of. Only the “reserved powers” clause of the Tenth Amendment mentions states at all and even that says “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people” which places the people as the ultimate sovereign power

In any case, the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment following the Civil War absolutely ended any doubt that the Constitution places the people as the sovereign.

You are also simply clueless in that the primary defense against tyranny in the Constitution (and state constitutions from the period) was placed in separation of powers and checks and balances. The second check was the Bill of Rights – however, you are wrong and in fact totally nuts if you think that hte Bill of Rights was designed to protect states. It was designed to protect people. That reflects the period state Constitutions such as Virginia.

The fact is that the document created at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 is remarkable in that a document crafted for a purely agricultural country (the industrial revolution was just beginning in England in 1787 – industrialization in New England didn’t really start until around 1830 or so and heavy industrialization really only occurred after the Civil War) has survived essentially intact.

That is because of a combination – first, the federal government was given what have turned out to be very large powers. No one could have possibly anticipated how big interstate and international power would have become one transportation and comunications improvements made international travel, business, and movement of goods easy. However, even Justice Clarence Thomas who even Antonin Scalia thinks is a radical nutcase about the Interstate Commerce clause admits that the Commerce clause gives extraordinarily large power to the federal government. It is also undisputable that the Constitution intends that the federal government have that power.

The second is that the focus on the Constiutution is a rights focus and the Constitution created a workable government. The fact is that in a country of 312,000,0000 people (Approximately) there might be a few unsatisfied people – such as the modern neo-confederates who want to leave – however, that is a very small number. Most people whether conservative, liberal, or moderate are very happy with the system. What fights there are are fights within the Constitutional system. Even modern “state’s rights” people often acknowledge the obvious – thus, a person who argues that states should be able to legalize marijuana will point out that its obvious that the federal government can make marijuna illegal under federal law, they just think it is not a prudent policy.

That is the same type of disagreement within the margins of our Constitutional system that people have had since 1787 – that still does not ignore the fact that the Federalists won. Try actually reading the Constiuttion and Amendments and that becomes clear.

For the love of all that is holy, please use paragraph breaks. Aside from the fact that you are longing for an America that ceased to exist after the Articles of Confederation were replaced, your writing is entirely unreadable.

And you are NOWHERE near as smart as you think you are.

As such, states do not have the right to secede because this was never an agreement of states.”

Just so that you know, Infantryman, all the above totalitarian and collectivist memes emanating from our cute little propagandist friend Erika were thoroughly refuted by the majority of the parties who ratified the Constitution of the United States. The Debates on the Constitution state plainly that it was the Anti-Federalists who prevailed in their quest to stymie the potential for unlimited totalitarian power centered in the new government. Besides, only the few most radical big-government Federalist Party members at the Convention shared Erika’s desires to wield unlimited Napoleonic power over the American people, thus destroying the States. That being said, it’s Question Time, Erika-dear! Why would a handful of states fight a war to throw off the chains and shackles of an imperial mother country, whose purpose was to gain INDEPENDENCE from said country, and then turn right back around and agree to the full surrender of their freedom to a new government to be shared in one big collective mass with all of their fellow states? Keep in mind this includes the industrialized manufacturing empire of the New England states, full of Anglo-Saxon Puritans, on one extreme end of the cultural spectrum, and the Anglo-Celtic and Scots-Irish cotton-and-tobacco Anglican and Presbyterian kingdom south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Most of the people of those respective regions had never even met each other. All of the states had constitutional republican governments in the summer of 1787. It was each individual state legislature which duly and freely ratified the Constitution of their own consent, without direct intervention by any outside parties. Where’s the big polyglot mass-union of stateless people, from Massaginialinayorksylvania, you know, inherent in THAT process? The Anti-Federalist parties responsible for ratification made it explicitly clear that they would never give up all they had just worked so hard for several years previously and just throw their sovereignty into the fire of a Federalist Party Constitution, and they stated that they, the representatives of their independent STATES, were retaining all powers for themselves as the mostly independent states they were, which they did not consensually give to the new federal government. As such, there were these last 2 amendments which created the finale of the Constitution and Bill of Rights package, Numbers IX and X. Sorry, my dear Erika, the Debates on the Constitution are on the public library shelves, where anybody can read the info you don’t want us to know, and we can find out the truth about the American system of government. Only a government created exclusively by the Federalist Parrty and thus devoid of a Bill of Rights, would fall under the silly description you gave.

Thanks for shoving out the Divide and Conquer Rhetoric that keeps the ‘” neo nazis” running the show. WTF

“… all the radical Leftists that don’t want Big Bad Biggots in dey towns.”

1. Learn to spell. There’s only one G in bigot.

2. What is this “dey” thing? If you’re mocking someone else’s ungrammatical speech or slang, you really need to make sure your own speech is above reproach (see No. 1).

3. Do you really mean to say that only “radical Leftists” oppose bigotry? If so, it would seem to imply that you believe bigotry is good, which in turn must imply that you don’t know what the word means. Let me help you:

“Bigot – a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.” (Merriam-Webster)

Who – left, right or indifferent – could find anything to like about that?

Nota bene, the word “infantry” derives from the roots “not speaking”. Let’s make good on the promise and spare us the weasel words, shall we?

1. Blacks in America and black people in Africa are not the same, in the same way you are not European.

2. Whatever happened or happens in Africa has nothing to do with the issue of reparations. Reparations are paid because one party profited from the unpaid labor of another. Africa did not benefit from the slave trade; in fact it was detrimental to Africans.