If you are referring to the Tenth Amendment (which might as well not be there, as it has never been the basis for any important case of constitutional law), it does not give the states any power over the federal government. It only says the states (or the people, and there’s no basis provided for deciding which) retain any powers not expressly granted the federal government – which is really nothing but a needless reaffirmation of the delegation-of-powers clause in Article 2. The only way the states, as states, have ever had any power over the federal government was in the power of state legislatures to choose their senators, which practice was abolished by the 17th Amendment.
I’ve often read news stories about “EU elections” in the UK. It’s even been mentioned as a significant issue that EP members are elected by proportional representation while Westminster MPs are elected by the winner-take-all single member-district system, a difference giving minority parties a more prominent role in EU politics than in UK politics. Did none of this ever happen?
My point still stands. Satisfying that sort of body of our justifications for performing some military action in the larger world I am against. If we have the overwhelming mandate of our citizens to do something, we must do it, regardless. If this is against the will of the international community, then it is up to the leaders (i.e. the President) to explain that to the populace in a way they will understand and support.
For example, say someone did attack us with some form of biological weapon, the order of events should be:
- Find out who did it
- Prove they did it
- Tell the US general public who did it
- Find out what the people’s representatives are willing to do about it (go to the House and Senate)
- Take that action, and go to the international community and TELL THEM what we will do in response.
- If our response was met with international outrage for being over the top (nuking cities when we could simply invade would be an example of this), then the job of the President is to bring that information back to the representatives of the people and propose an alternate plan.
I wouldn’t want to see that order of events changed in any way. It is one of the benefits of being a US citizen (and coincidentally why I won’t give mine up, in spite of living abroad) is the the US government MUST tell it’s people what it is doing, at least to the point of telling our directly elected representatives what is being planned and getting their approval.
And yes, I know, there are exceptions to this (such as the President’s right to wage war for 90 days without Congress) but the actuality is that this would never happen without Congress’s say so unless the missiles were actually flying and that was the only response (and I kinda doubt it would happen even then).
On our other topic,
There was a general election to join the EU and there will be another to accept the EU constitution (if they ever write the bloody thing!) but the individual representatives to the EU from the UK are selected by the Government and subject to approval during an EU hearing, not elected. This just recently occured, with the former spin-meister for Downing Street (can’t recall his name) being recalled from ‘spending time with his family’ to be one of the EU representatives for the UK based on a direct request from Tony Blair.
There is no direct representation of the people at the EU level, which is why some people find it so problematic to be a member state of the EU.
Whoa! Now that’s just plain wrong! This kind of decision belongs to the president and Congress, not the citizenry! Their job is not to act as proxy agents doing the will of the people. Their job is to do what they think is best for the people (and, WRT decisions on military action, also to at least consider what is best for the peoples of other countries), in their own independent judgment, regardless of whether the people like it or not – always on notice, of course, that if the people really don’t like it, they risk getting turned out next election. That’s how republican government is supposed to work!
From the Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament:
If I’m reading that right, the mode of selection is not required by the EU treaties, it’s a “local option” thing – meaning the House of Commons could mandate direct election of the UK’s EP delegation. If it chose.
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election%2C_2004:
Not a word about Westminster playing any role in the process. Is the Wikipedia simply wrong?
Regarding the EU stuff: There was a great article in Wired magazine sometime in the last year or so that invloved this. They basically make a case that one of the great strengths of the EU is that it uses the existing power structure in the member countries.
It’s precisely that it does not take sovereignty over the member countries and works within their existing legal and political systems that is it’s great strength.
I’ve been looking and I can’t find the article, though.
Look, mom - I’m arguing two points simultaneously! Look how smart I am getting here on the Straight Dope! 
Let me apologize for not being more clear; when I said the people before, I meant their representatives. Clearly it’s not up to the individual citizens to support military action, but is is up to their directly elected representatives. And if the people don’t support that decision, it is their right to elect different representatives.
Right. And the UK chooses to not do this. The rules created by the EU are voted on by their council What you’re refering to are major referenda, such as the choice to allow new member states into the union, or to adopt a EU constitution, in which case the people do have a voice and a vote.
But as to the day-to-day running of the EU, that’s down to the representatives from the member states, represented in numbers that relate to the population of that state. In the UK, those members are selected by the government and sent to Brussels to be confirmed.
Not wrong, but talking about different things.
BTW - if I ignore this forum for a while, it’s not cause I am ignoring you, just that it’s time for me to do some real work and to drive home here in the UK…
Short version: After I grew disaffected from libertarianism (for reasons described above) I went back to being an ordinary love-me-I’m-a-liberal like my parents. But I encountered Martin Gardner’s WHYS of a Philosophical Scrivener, and the chapters, “Why I Am Not an Anarchist,” “Why I Am Not a Smithian,” and “Why I Am Not a Marxist” were real eye-openers. Gardner more or less made a case for non-Marxist democratic socialism (though he wasn’t married to he name – much as Gardner is a “philosophical theist” who believes in a personal God while rejecting each and every religious tradition). I figured, if a guy as famously skeptical and hard-head as Gardner (who is best known for his work in debunking pseudosciences, New Age crap, and claims of the paranormal) takes socialism seriously, there just might be something in it. And before I read Gardner I was not really aware of the existence of a rich tradition of democratic-socialist politics, entirely separate from and opposed to the Communists, in America and (even more so) in most other industrialized countries. So I gradually grew more interested. And then I went to law school in Baltimore – the school is located downtown, where you never have to step over empty crack vials but you often have to step over empty liquor bottles. Living among our society’s forgotten and neglected ones really changed my outlook – seeing all those pitiful, hopeless, broken, defeated-looking people (most of them black) in the streets day after day. I concluded, “Capitalism has a lot of advantages, but for these people it’s just not working. Something Must Be Done.” Also while in law school, I became intimate friends with an unreconstructed old Marxist – a guy who really believed in proletarian revolution but, for the time being, was content to organize for creation of a city-owned auto insurance company, to make cars more affordable to poor people. (I tried to get the Baltimore Greens to back him on that but, as environmentalists, they couldn’t get behind anything that makes it easier for anybody to own a car; things are never simple.) And I read a lot of socialist writers, like Michael Harrington. And George Orwell – Orwell was a big influence on me (and not just politically). Everybody remembers him for writing Animal Farm and 1984 to lambaste Soviet Communism, and fewer remember that Orwell was a socialist to the end of his life. I started making a habit of reading magazines like The Nation and In These Times and found that very, very enlightening. I was also heavily influenced by Michael Lind’s The Next American Nation. Lind, a onetime National Review editor, is not a socialist of any kind, but some of analyses (e.g., identifying and describing in detail the “White Overclass”) and his specific policy proposals (like redistributive taxation, vigorous color-blind government programs to lift up the poor, proportional representation, and vigorous campaign-finance reform) reflect the kind of thinking I like to see.
For all of that, it was only a couple of years ago that I got around to joining the Socialist Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. Also the Labor Party. (But I’m still a registered Democrat – why not? Socialists can’t vote in the primaries.) In the mid-'90s I was active for a while in the left-progressive New Party, but its organizing efforts sputtered out in most states and it no longer exists as a national organization. (Some state branches of it survive, e.g., the Working Families Party in New York. If I lived in New York, that party would be my political home.)
You don’t want the long version.
Just out of curiosity, where is it? (I’m a college student in Baltimore.)
When I was registering to vote in New York, that was one of the 5 parties listed on the form–I had to write in “Libertarian.”
I went to the University of Maryland School of Law, part of the University of Maryland at Baltimore – located right downtown, close to the Camden Yards Stadium. (I lived in Ridgely’s Delight while they were building it – the construction noise woke me up more than once.) It’s the campus that includes an old church (now used as the school’s assembly hall) with an attached churchyard where Edgar Allan Poe is buried under a white marble obelisk. (Hence the name of B’more’s football team, the Ravens. IMO, better they should have called it by an equally distinctively Maryland name: The Crabs! “Yes, the Crabs were all over the Cowboys today, Bill!” (Thanx to George Carlin for that one!))
Say, did they ever finish the Harborwalk project? The one that was supposed to provide a continuous broad brick-paved walkway along the waterfront, all the way from the Inner Harbor to Fell’s Point? And what did they do with the old Memorial Stadium? (I left after I graduated in 1992.)
The old Memorial Stadium was demolished, although, from what I understand, parts of it were brought over to Camden Yards. I don’t know about the Harborwalk as I’m just a freshman and have only lived here for a couple of months. My dorm is near Charles Village, which I consider the midtown area, although I might be conflating the 34th street of New York with the one here.
Do you go to Johns Hopkins, or the University of Baltimore? (Only two I recall in the city other than UMAB, which is a grad-schools-only campus.)
Hopkins.
Much nicer neighborhood. But then, as I remember it, Baltimore isn’t a city with a “good side” and a “bad side,” but kind of a random socioeconomic patchwork – you could walk along the street and find yourself transitioning from a really nice neighborhood to a really poor and dangerous neighborhood in a couple of blocks. Enjoy yourself, but be careful! 
Oh, and check out Fells Point the first chance you get! It’s really funky and lots of fun!
Heh, I’ve been noticing that. It also seems to have its share of…eccentric individuals. (A couple of weeks ago, I was walking home from Normal’s (an indepedent used book store in the area), when I was approached by a man who wanted to know if I’d like to have his dog. When I politely declined, he became rather upset and insisted that I take it.) But the city wouldn’t be the same without them. 
I was initially dissuaded from going to Inner Harbor by my upperclassmen friends, but I just looked Fells Point up online and it looks really cool. Thanks for the tip!
FWIW, all leftists and progressives should be aware that The Nation has decided to endorse Kerry (as opposed to, say, Nader). From http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=editors:
Thanks fo posting that, BrainGlutton. It was quite informative.
I always try to do in life exactly the opposite of what the Nation recommends. This has served me and my country well.
My course, now, is clear, thanks to their endorsement. 
No, just you.
Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative magazine doesn’t know which way to turn. Their 11/8/04 issue has an article endorsing Bush, another for Kerry, Badnarik, Peroutka (two articles), even Nader, plus an article touting the option of not voting at all.
There’s no pleasing some people
I haven’t really made my contribution yet. You should vote for Kerry because:
-
His approach to foreign policy is not reckless. He might not get us out of Iraq right away – his attitude is, “you break it, you own it,” meaning it would be irresponsible for us to destroy Hussein’s government and then pull out under circumstances that would result in a civil war. OTOH, he probably will not invade Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba. Bush, if he got a second term, might, in disregard of the facts that our military strength is already overextended and that any more military action might touch off a general regional conflict that could quickly spin out of contro. Highly placed neocons in the Administration have been laying plans to regime-change Iran for some time – I’ve run a thread on that.
-
Kerry is not a unilateralist. He can mend fences with all the foreign countries Bush has alienated.
-
Kerry is a Washington insider – he’s been in the Senate for 20 years. That makes for an easy transition, and it means he will know how to get things done even if both houses of Congress remain in Republican hands.
-
Kerry will give us, if not universal single-payer health care, at least something nearer than we’ve got now.
-
Kerry will put an end to Bush’s unconstitutional “faith-based initiatives” and public funding of religious-conservative political organizations – which might have died out by now without such funding; see http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041101&s=kaplan.
-
Kerry will appoint Supreme Court justices who are pro-choice and who will respect civil liberties.
-
Kerry will roll back Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, which have done nothing significant to stimulate the economy and have given us nothing but a whopping budget deficit. (Bush is probably the first president in American history, in fact so far as I know the first national leader in any country’s history, to cut taxes right at the start of a war.)
-
Kerry will enforce the environmental-protection laws, which Bush has not. He might even sign on to the Kyoto Protocol.
-
Kerry will shut down your churches, confiscate your Bibles, herd Republicans into re-education camps, force all white gentile women to have abortions, and make your teenage sons marry pedophiles – oh, wait, we’re keeping a lid on that part until after the election!