Who’s doing it?
That might take a really long time.
I’ll wait here.
The majority of the country answered my call. They have no damn clue why you think the 17th Amednment has anything to do with the electoral college.
We all await an explaination of how you got these concepts so fucked up.
States rights was never used to justify slavery. Seceding states explicitly complained that some states were using states rights to nullify the fugitive slave law. Your history is broken and in need of rehabilitation since 1960s era “Civics Class”.
You want an argument on the constitutionality of secession. I wasn’t making claims on those grounds but since you are begging for it here goes:
I’ll make this quick. When Virginia, New York and other states ratified the Constitution, in their articles of ratification they clarified that the ability of a state to leave the Union was retained under the Constitution. James Madison stated that the articles of ratification and the debates on their adoption are the sources from which we interpret the Constitution. The articles of ratification for these states were accepted, and all states retain the same rights under the Constitution. The same terms apply to all states under the Constitution ( it says that somewhere).
In Texas V. White the government declared that the states do not have this right.
So at some moment between the ratification of the Constitution and Texas V. White, the constitutionality of secession changed. The original poster implied it was with the Civil War that the change took place.
Unless you think that Supreme Court decisions are constitutionally pure and divorced from obvious political considerations, I’m having a hard time understanding why you’re having a hard time. Under your line of argument, is it true that the constitutionality of all government actions had remained the same, but some powers were “discovered” later on?
I agree but even the tyrannical actions of cops(local usually, though some state and federal) is small potatoes compared to US government actions.
Tyrannies usurp power and use it in cruel ways.
I think we can just leave that there for all to see.
Yes that was the purpose of my posting the sentence. It hasn’t been refuted, or even challenged. Your post doesn’t change that.
Unfortunately for you, your peculiar Constitutional Law theory is still displayed.
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/states-rights-but-to-what/
*It’s true, then, that South Carolina seceded over states’ rights: though, as neo-confederates are loath to admit, the specific right in question concerned the ownership of human chattel. One of the South’s persistent complaints was the northern states would not vigorously cooperate in the return of fugitive slaves and that the free states allowed antislavery organizations to flourish.
In other words, for South Carolina, slavery and states’ rights were not mutually exclusive; in fact, they were the same thing. Today too few people understand the intricate legal history that connects slavery to states’ rights — and as a result a needless debate continues, 150 years after secession began.*
You’re referring to the language of Article V (which governs amending the Constitution) that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
Unless there’s some hidden meaning in here that I can’t see, that means that each state must have the same number of voting Senators. That’s it. Could be one Senator per state, could be twenty. Probably can’t be zero (which abolishing the Senate entirely would accomplish) because you’d be depriving each state of its suffrage there altogether.
However, the Constitution could be amended to turn the Senate into a House of Lords-type body with no role in actual legislation. There’s nothing that says the role of the Senate can’t be amended, so long as each state still has the same number of Senators as every other state.
Mind you, I wouldn’t want to see such an amendment until after another amendment was ratified that minimized the extent to which the House could be gerrymandered. As long as House districts can be drawn every which way, the Senate is a necessary check on the consequences of gerrymandering.
Which I also suggested, in the very next sentence after the one you quoted.
On the matter of tyrannical governments: The state level is not the most tyrannical. Most local governments are even more so. But many conservatives aren’t even satisfied with that level of tyranny, and so create yet another level of government in the form of HOAs.
On the matter of states’ rights: The fiction of states’ rights has indeed been used, many times, as a justification for the Civil War and for slavery. Such use was, of course, a lie, but that hasn’t stopped many people from telling it.
I want some of what you’re smoking. Have you ever read a book on the history of the United States?
Not to mention the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which was proposed specifically to make sure slavery could never be abolished. The text reads:
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State
Yeah, I’m sure “domestic institutions of a state” has no relation whatever to “state’s rights.” That would just be insane!
That’s what I get for skimming too fast. My apologies.