From [Marc Abrams (2005.11.03.0027)]
In a message dated 11/2/2005 11:27:09 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, bryanth@SOLTEC.NET writes:
···
[From Bryan Thalhammer (2005.11.02.1951)]
Regarding State governments. I cannot vouch for this,
Good, because if you did you would be wrong.
but I do believe that many state governments orignally set up after 1789
have changed constitutions several times since their incorporations.
No, lets review the time line and a bit of history
On July 4, 1776 a congress was convened by representatives of the 13 colonies and they declared their declaration of independence. At this point each state had its own constitution which were basically nothing more than the original land grants given by the King.
The type of governments varied from state to state as well as the laws. For all intents and purposes these were 13 individual countries.
In 1777 Congress agreed to our first Constitution, which was called the Articles of Confederation. http://www.usconstitution.net/articles.html
These Articles went into effect March 1, 1781, and at this point the individual states started amending their Constitutions, but certainly not on a wholesale basis.
In 1787 a Constitutional Convention was convened because the original Articles were just not working well. There was a great deal of apathy and representatives for Rhode Island didn’t even show up.
The original intent was to modify the existing Articles but instead an entirely new document was drafted.
This document was based on the 10 years of experience each of the states had with the Articles in force and their own governments, and the signing was no cakewalk.
You had the Federalists and anti-Federalists going at each other and it wasn’t until Sept 1787 that the Constitution was signed and only after the bill of Rights was included. On March 1, 1789 the Constitution as we know it was ratified, and in actuality it was an illegal ratification.
Under the rules of the Articles of Confederation you needed 100% agreement to change the Articles and Rhode Island did not ratify the Constitution until 1790, with Vermont coming into the Union in 1791
As for the 13 colonies/states, which existed
before the Federal Government, they signed to be limited by the
Federal Government and have since modified their constitutions
accordingly.
Not quite, they united for defense and trade.
Once a State becomes part of the United States,
there is no going back, and there is no dissolving the Federal
Government as spelled out by the Constitution.
This is not a settled point of law. Many believe the Civil war was illegal and the states had a right to secede. In fact most state Constitution’s explicitly stated that any time they didn’t care for the arrangements they could take their toys and go home.
Lincoln, the first Republican, btw, decided that once and for all.
(Recall, Lincoln was a progressive in his era, even a liberal on
some issues when Southern Democrats were bigots.
Sorry, you are a bit off the mark here. Lincoln was no ‘progressive’, and in fact by today’s standards you would call him a ‘racist’. He believed the Negro was inferior and said so publicly. But he was no more a ‘racist’ than Martin Luther King was. When talking about historical events you must place things in the context of the times.
Lincoln’s ideas were commonly held.
He did not care one way or the other about slavery. He simply wanted to save the Union and he would have done anything including retaining slavery to do so.
He was a great politician and when he gave the Emancipation Proclamation it was a political stroke of genius. First, he ‘freed’ only the slaves in the states that seceded. He did not free them in the entire country, and by doing so he kept Europe and especially England out of the war at a crucial time and coming in on the side of the Confederacy.
Most of the poor northerners had no desire to see the slaves freed because they represented a threat to them for jobs. In actuality poor northerners had it no better, and in most cases worse than the slaves did, because the slaves represented an investment and needed to be protected. Poor white trash (most new immigrants) had no such value.
In fact, on the Levee’s of New Orleans it was the poor Irish immigrants who stood down in the ship holds catching 500 lb bales of cotton. The slave owners would never risk losing there ‘investments’ to injury like that.
This of course is not to condone slavery, and pooh-pooh it, but every culture and nationality has been forced to endure it. Slavery was never a black/white problem. It was, and still is a control problem.
The descendants of these Southern Democrats became dissatified with the events of the 60s, and became Dixiecrats then Republicans to hijack Lincoln’s legacy. He was a conservative, of course, when it came to pre-/con-serving the Union.)
Do you mean like the Democratic KKK chief Byrd from W. Virginia, a ‘northern’ state that broke off from Virginia right after the war started. Do you know that more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights act in 1965 than Democrats?
Neither is PCT in the Constitution. Does that make it a wrong
idea? You touted that “God” is NOT found in the Federal
Constitution. That’s right, just the Creator is referenced
there.PCT is about control of perception. But it is not invalidated
since it is not referenced by the Constitution at all, as
electricity, radio, TV, genetic research, astrophysics… etc.
are not referenced, and they are not invalidated.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.table.html#amendments
That was Kenny’s point.
Re: reading the Constitution with second-source interpretations.
Kitzke: “This is personally insulting. It is not scholarly or respectful.”
Many people read second-source writing called “glosses” of the
Constitution, and presume that those words are in the US
Constitution, for example that “Creator” is in when it is not.
Quibble, Quibble, it was written in the Declaration of Independence, which was the basis for our uniting in the first place, and is the foundation upon which the Constitution was written (highlighting mine);
*** WHEN in the Course of human Events,***
it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by *** their Creator*** with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate…
Therefore it is entirely possible to import some gloss of the
Constitution (from a book or sermon) that takes material from
other sources to suggest that the government is the PEOPLE (the
way many dictatorships like to conduct things), rather than LAW
(the way we are bound to by our Constitution to conduct things).
The easiest seconds-source to reach these days is Wikipedia, but
the main source about the Constitution should be the Document itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss
Why second source? Something about the English you have a difficult time with?
Sorry for the history lesson, but I’m getting a bit tired of the nonsense tossed around here as ‘facts’ and supposed second source ‘authorities’.
Maybe, maybe not. “Once and for all” is a very long time, and nothing is forever.
Regards,
Marc
.