WE THE PEOPLE VERY PROBLEMATIC CONSTITUTIONAL ORIGINS

 Although I had taken a different interpretation, below, re Palmer's discussion, my view now is that technically a federalist unionist position, either way, either regarding the right of one or more states to secede, or the right of any federalist unionist government to split itself into two or more regional unionist states, whether all existing states were to agree to do so or not, by federal legislation, all such federal, or state, initiatives are inconsistent with the constitution's underlying source of authority in what it calls we the people.

If you look at Jefferson's late remarks in the blog below excerpt set out down below, you can see that he failed to see the problem "we the people" had created.

H welcomed with aplomb the ideas of either state secessions, and or the creation of regional blocs (presumably by federal decision either with or without component state and or territory agreement, by a territory, or by subsequent state composition.

 Sunday, March 12, 2017

JEFFERSON AND SECESSION BLOG QUOTATIONS

Sunday, March 26, 2017

RE THE CONSTITUTION FALLACIES

Robert Palmer discussed the way in which the proposed Constitution was drafted, at the Convention in Philadelphia.

 

He pointed out that the Convention's delegates' own actions were themselves a species of political revolution, in that they violated the specific instructions which all delegates to the convention had been given by their respective state assemblies, and which they knew they were legally bound to obey at the Convention.

 

Be that as it may, they developed the draft constitution, and also a way to conceptualize how it might be interpreted and put into place by later ratification by each state assembly.

 

One problem is that the method conceals an inherent chicken or egg dilemma, in terms of authority.

I haven't read enough Rawls to know that he commits the fallacy, but bet he does. Goes back to Locke, at least, really. 

The Philadelphia convention, not we the people.

Going back to the states, not themselves created by we the people in the first instance, for ratification of the constitution, a conceptual no no.

Here, I am reading this into Palmer's account, or reading between the lines, perhaps.

It is hard to see how one could ever get, in the first instance, after the state of nature, to a ' we the people '. One could not even get to a conceptually flawed  "original position", in anything other than a tiny city state, or better yet, a village. The city state, or a village, are, of course, not an original state of nature position.

See Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution, The Challenge, the section entitled "A Word on the Constitution of the United States", pb, p. 228.

Dual state federal citizenship creates another layer of conceptual inconsistency.

Does the federal we the people trump an individual state's, or even collective, states', we the people? I doubt whether Jefferson thought it would, if he even saw the problem at all. It seems certain that Lincoln did.

Friday, October 21, 2016

THE UNITED STATES CAN NEITHER CONSOLIDATE FURTHER NOR BREAK BACK INTO STATES OR SMALLER POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS

Professor Kaiser mentioned secession fears.

Let me put your hearts at rest, if that is what you want to call it....

Founding Fathers' principles created a we the people political monster.

The way the Constitution was enacted, no state, or political subdivision thereof, could ever secede without the consent of all of the people of the United States first agreeing, not just state governments themselves in every single state, itself an impossibility, because mere state governments themselves are not the full, underlying, ' we the people ' envisioned by the framers.

We the people, all of us, would have to decide, if some of us, who assert they no longer wish to be part of us, want to separate from us.

In this sense, the United States is sort of a constitutionally beached whale, permanently.

Asian civilizations, of course, all know this, and have been feasting on our beached carcass, first the Japanese, since 1945.

The Japanese themselves even called this feasting process the ' hollowing out ' of the American economy.

It has continued heavily, especially since the Nixon Shock in 1971, and accelerating after 1980, by China.

What was left of the beached America carcass, after our politicians feebly brushed Japan away and invited China to the table instead, has been almost completely hollowed out by China.

Monday, October 19, 2020

ARTICLE III DK EXCERPT JUDICIAL POWER

"...The Supreme Court's power to test both state and federal laws against the text of our Constitution, and to strike down laws it finds in conflict with that text, was, I think, inherent in the text of the Constitution itself... " DK

"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."  Constitution, Art. III.

Other sections of the Constitution deal with judicial courts of other federal branches. 

The relations between these Articles is not made clear. Various different interpretations have been made. Bobbitt cites to Crosskey's interpretation. Constitutional Fate. It does not jive with the text of the Constitution. They are William Crosskey's erroneous inferences.

It is obvious that if Congress never acted, or later revoked authority, as it well might in years to come, there would be only a single federal supreme court. 

The scope and extent of its powers and authority were not spelled out in the Constitution Art III, but the authority to overturn acts of Congress is very unlikely to have been a judicial power of the supreme court. 

It is not at all clear that inferior federal courts, ordained and established, by Congress rather than by the supreme court, and terminable thereby, are accountable or jurisprudentially subordinate either administratively or decisionally to the supreme court rather than to Congress itself. 

My suggestion to Democrats, supposing they gain control of Congress, is to summarily wind up, and disband, all inferior federal courts, lock, stock, and barrel, and slam the remaining supreme court with whatever it can then deal with, rather than engage in this ridiculous court packing further judicial inflation arms race.

State courts can succeed to lower federal case loads by whatever methods Congress deems appropriate. Lower federal courts are creatures of Congress, after all, not of the supreme court.

Think if this as my little suggestion for the problems DK outlines in this extended excerpt below from his current post:

"...The modern era of legislative jurisprudence, as one might call it, began after the Civil War, when conservative justices (and they were all conservative for much of the late 19th century) began using the 14th Amendment's guarantee of due process to outlaw state attempts to regulate their economy, including wages and hours legislation.  Such rulings continued through the first four years of the New Deal, when they took down major New Deal laws, and they led to FDR's court packing plan, which failed dismally in Congress but convinced some moderate justices, led by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, to help affirm the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act to forestall a greater constitutional crisis.

"The broadening of the court's power entered a new phase, however, in Brown vs. Board of Education, when in 1954 the Warren Court ruled that school desegregation was an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.  While the definitive work on that case, Richard Kluger's Simple Justice, showed pretty clearly that the authors of that amendment had not intended to outlaw segregated schools, the decision certainly reflected the broader purpose of that amendment, namely, to secure truly equal status for former slaves, which it defined specifically as citizens.  In addition, Kluger showed that Chief Justice Warren, recognizing the gravity of the decision and the enormous impact that it would have, worked very hard, and successfully, to insure that the decision would be unanimous, even though the court at that time included several white southerners.  The subsequent history of school desegregation in this country, however, shows how hard it is to impose such a change by judicial fiat.  After decades of litigation, including 1970s decisions that approved school busing in some cases to promote integration, 69% of black children attend schools that are predominantly nonwhite.  In parts of the Deep South, integration led almost immediately to the creation of a separate system of private "Christian" schools for white students, leaving the public schools almost completely segregated, and often underfunded as a result.

"During the next 15 years, the Warren Court issued a series of decisions that extended the reach of judicial power to try to transform various aspects of American life along more liberal lines.  Several were based on the relatively new idea that all state legislation might be tested against the Bill of Rights, and at least one critical decision, on reapportionment, relied on relatively abstract ideas of justice.  In the realm of criminal justice, Mapp vs. Ohio (1961) excluded evidence that had been seized without a warrant, Gideon vs. Wainwright guaranteed every defendant a lawyer, and Miranda vs. Arizona forced law enforcement agencies to inform defendants of their right to counsel and protection against self-incrimination.  Reynolds vs. Sims and Baker v. Carr ordered states to apportion all their legislative districts according to population, rather than to favor rural districts against urban ones.  Engel vs. Vitale (1962) outlawed organized prayer in public schools.  New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) made it almost impossible for public figures to win libel suits in state court.  While I certainly agree with the goals of all these decisions, every of them aroused considerable resentment against the courts because they bypassed or overruled the political process within states, and started the Republican assault upon the independence of the judiciary.  These precedents had another impact.  By continuing to test various specific state laws and practices against broad provisions of the U.S. Constitution, they encouraged a whole new style of litigation to which several generations of activist lawyers have devoted their lives.  Rather than organize politically or run for office to try to achieve worthy goals, they look for ways to secure them in the federal courts, and thereby weaken our democratic processes.

"The expansion of judicial power took a new step forward in 1973, when the court handed down Roe v. Wade, making abortion legal all around the country.  I personally regard that decision as tragic, even though I agree with its goal, because, when it happened, the political process was already attacking this issue with some success. The nation's two most populous states, New York and California, had already legalized abortion.  That was beginning to trigger a nationwide political fight over the issue, but I think it's very likely that they would have maintained that right and that other states would have followed suit.  Instead, Roe v. Wade made abortion advocates complacent, energized at least three generations of opponents to an extraordinary extent, and turned abortion into a critical national political issue that has distorted our politics ever since. Furthermore, new state laws and new federal court decisions have narrowed the right it decreed to such an extent that in much of the country it is almost impossible to secure a legal abortion, and a market for back-alley abortions has been created once again.

"By the time of Roe v. Wade, Richard Nixon, who in 1968 had campaigned explicitly against many of the Warren Court's decisions, had appointed four new members of the Supreme Court.  By 1976, a conservative majority was using the Bill of Rights to invalidate major liberal legislation.  In that year, Buckley v. Valeo held that the federal government could restrict a candidate's use of his own money in his election campaign, and two years later, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the court struck down a Massachusetts law designed to keep corporate money out of politics. These decisions laid the foundation for even more sweeping ones down the road.

"In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the court struck down laws against sexual relations between gay people, and twelve years later, in Oberkfell v. Hodges, it established a right of gay marriage in every state.  The former decision strikes me as a straightforward application of the equal protection clause, allowing consenting adults to choose their sexual partners.  The latter, while just in my opinion, remains open to the same criticism as Roe v. Wade.  By the time it was handed down the political processes in many states had already legalized gay marriage and that would have continued.  As it is, gay marriage, as we shall see, is now under attack from another Constitutional angle.

"The appointment of two members of a new generation of conservative justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, by George W. Bush--who was forced by his own party to abandon what would probably have been a more moderate appointment--allowed the court to move three critical areas of policy in a conservative direction, each time by a 5-4 vote.  In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court overruled more than two centuries of precedent and almost completely eliminated a state's right to regulate the possession of firearms.  Citizens United v. FEC (2010) essentially ended any restrictions on corporate spending on election campaigns, overturning a century of federal laws.  And in Shelby County v. Holder(2013), the same 5-4 majority invalidated the key preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act--perhaps the most obvious judicial usurpation of legislative power in the history of the Republic.  The 15th Amendment explicitly gave Congress the right to enforce itself by appropriate legislation, and the Voting Rights Act had repeatedly been renewed by large Congressional majorities.  The court majority threw out the provision simply because they, in contrast to Congress, did not regard as fair or necessary any longer.  Numerous states have passed legislation attempting to reduce voting in response.

"No one, really, should be surprised that both political powers have tried to bend the enormous power of the Supreme Court as it has evolved since the Second World War to their own purposes.  Democrats are especially frustrated at this moment, first, because luck as well as electoral politics have given Republicans so many more court appointments than Democrats over the last 50 years, and secondly, because the Republican Senate majority shamelessly used its power four years ago to deny President Obama an appointment that rightfully belonged to him, and having made sure then that Justice Scalia would be replaced by another conservative, they are making sure now that Justice Ginsburg will be, as well.  The situation we are in, however--in which the appointment and confirmation of federal justices may well have become the single most important thing that the President and the Senate do--reflects a long deterioration of American democracy, which has taken so many decisions out of the voters' hands.  

"Eleven years ago, the political scientist James MacGregor Burns--then 92 years old--published a remarkable history of the politics of the Supreme Court, Packing the Court, which I reviewed at the time.  Burns as a college student had lived through the battle between the Court and the New Deal, and that had left him with a firm belief that the Court should not be allowed to invalidate acts of Congress. That book railed against the enormous role of the Court in our political life, and looked forward to the day when a President might defy its attempt to invalidate a law. That, it seems to me, might be a more effective step for a new President Biden to take than a new attempt to add justices to the Court, if the Roberts Court, as seems fairly likely, does confirm the argument that Roberts himself made when the ACA first came before it, and tries to invalidate the ACA on the grounds that without the tax that went along with the individual mandate, it is now unconstitutional." DK  

Friday, May 4, 2018

RANDALL COLLINS GUN CULTS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2018

GUN CULTS

Arguments about gun control have raged ever since the wave of school shootings and other rampage massacres started in the 1980s. The striking thing is that no one is convinced by the arguments of the opposing side.

Opponents of gun control rest their case on the Second Amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."..................................

Thursday, May 28, 2020

THE 1619 PROJECT GOT SOME THINGS RIGHT Did a Fear of Slave Revolts Drive American Independence?

See the article, in the NYT, of all places, July 4, 2016, Robert Parkinson.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/opinion/did-a-fear-of-slave-revolts-drive-american-independence.html

I would go with him, over Jake Silverstein's 1619 Project equivocations.

The colonists blamed the King, specifically Jefferson blamed the King, in drafting the Declaration, for originally foisting slavery on the unwitting colonists, though it didn't make the cut. 

What a bunch of utter reeking bullshit. The colonists themselves had taken into ports, and trafficked in, slaves from slave traders, and from pirate prizes, whether the King had allowed them to or not.

Yellow Creek Massacre, Wikipedia, is also fun reading, re indians; 'America's "Heart of Darkness"', Parkinson.

Ethiopian Regiment, Wikipedia; Battle of Kemp's Landing; Battle of Great Bridge; Colonel Tye; Black Pioneers; African Americans in the Revolutionary War; Franco-American Alliance


Take a look at Allison, Before 1776. The Teaching Company. The fricking colonists had been supposed to keep their sorry asses within colonial areas. They tended never to do that. It wasn't, of course, a guarantee of their safety, but what was the alternative.

Jefferson's rough draft:

INTRODUCTION

Nowhere were the novel, and transcendental, implications of the Declaration so visible as in Jefferson’s attempt to include a denunciation of slavery. The Second Continental Congress received a draft of the Declaration from Jefferson that made the British rejection of the petition submitted by the First Continental Congress to end the slave trade one of the grounds for severing ties. However, in order not to offend the sensibilities of the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, the Congress elected to omit Jefferson’s denunciation of slavery from the final declaration. As Jefferson’s notes (below) report, northern delegates also smarted under the censure of slavery because “tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.” We suggest that the inclusion of such an indictment would have had a profound impact on the continuing American conversation about rights.

In Jefferson’s notes on the debate in Congress over the Declaration, he gives a short account of how his draft of the Declaration was amended, afterwards recopying that first draft to show what he originally proposed. This memoir is found in the nine-volume collection, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by H. A. Washington (New York: John C. Riker, 1853), which was authorized for publication in 1853 by Congress. We have relied on that edition here, including Jefferson’s explanatory note, and underlining, as Jefferson did, the parts of the Declaration deleted by Congress. While Jefferson’s original draft relegated the parts inserted by Congress to the margin, we italicize them and place them within brackets in the body of the text.

---

THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, EDITED BY H. A. WASHINGTON (NEW YORK: JOHN C. RIKER, 1853).

---

Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported and lain on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to[1] South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, in the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson.[2] As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the Declaration as originally reported. The parts struck out by Congress shall be distinguished by a black line drawn under them; and those inserted by them shall be placed in the margin or in a concurrent column(s).

A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled

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}
inherent and inalienable 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 that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to {alter}
expunge their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of [repeated]
unremitting injuries and usurpations,
among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest but all have [all having] in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world
for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to the tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly
and continually for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has {obstructed}
suffered the administration of justice
totally to cease in some of these states {by} refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made
our judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices
by a self assumed power and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat our their substance.

He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies
and ships of war without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us [in many cases] of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province,[3] establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these [colonies]
states; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here {by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.}
withdrawing his governors, and declaring us our of his allegiance and protection.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy {scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally} unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has {excited domestic insurrections among us, and has} endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of
existence.

He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die,[4] he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a [free] people
who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principle of freedom.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend {an unwarrantable} a jurisdiction over {us}
these our states. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here,
no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and, we {have} appealed to their native justice and magnanimity and {we have conjured them by}
as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which {would inevitably}
were likely to interrupt our connection and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity,
 and when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have, by their free election, re-established them in power. At this very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We might have been a free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to happiness and to glory is open to us too. We will tread it apart from them, and {We must therefore} acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our
eternal separation {and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.}
!

EDITOR: THE TWO FINAL PARAGRAPHS, IN THEIR ORIGINAL AND AMENDED FORMS, WERE PLACED NEXT TO EACH OTHER IN H. A. WASHINGTON’S EDITION: THE ORIGINAL DRAFT APPEARED IN A LEFT HAND COLUMN, AND THE AMENDED AND FINAL VERSION WERE PLACED IN A RIGHT HAND COLUMN.

Jefferson’s Original Draft:

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, do in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these
states reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain and all others who may hereafter claim by, through or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us and the people or parliament of Great Britain: and finally we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independent states, and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

The Amended and Final Version:

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

JEFFERSON AND SECESSION BLOG QUOTATIONS

"I’ve come to the conclusion that Jefferson’s clearly unconstitutional Lousiana purchase was one of his great miscalculations. It legitimized state-sponsored Western expansion and gave the federal government primacy in the administration of vast tracts of land. Naturally, this is one of his legacies that most everyone thinks is just super.

 

 

"Nevertheless, Jefferson states that should the inhabitants of the new territory wish to secede form the Union at some poimnt in the future, he was perfectly fine with that(see letter to John C. Breckinridge,Aug. 12, 1803):

 

“…Besides, if it should become the great interest of those nations to separate from this, if their happiness should depend on it so strongly as to induce them to go through that convulsion, why should the Atlantic States dread it? But especially why should we, their present inhabitants, take side in such a question?…The future inhabitants of the Atlantic & Missipi [sic] States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, & we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Missipi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.”

 

"And again in a letter to To Dr. Joseph Priestley, Jan. 29, 1804

 

“Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.” "  Ryan McMaken, July 17, 2007

Thomas Di Lorenzo:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure.”

–Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Nov 13, 1787

Thomas Jefferson, the author of America’s July 4, 1776 Declaration of Secession from the British empire, was a lifelong advocate of both the voluntary union of the free, independent, and sovereign states, and of the right of secession.  “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form,” he said in his first inaugural address in 1801, “let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.”
In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph priestly, who had ask Jefferson his opinion of the New England secession movement that was gaining momentum, he wrote:  “Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, believe not very important to the happiness of either part.  Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern . . . and did I now foresee a separation at some future day,, yet should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family . . .”  Jefferson offered the same opinion to John C. Breckenridge on August 12 1803 when New Englanders were threatening secession after the Louisiana purchase.  If there were a “separation,” he wrote, “God bless them both & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.”Documents Relating To ...Best Price: $29.90Buy New $29.96


Everyone understood that the union of the states was voluntary and that, as Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York stated in their constitutional ratification documents, each state had a right to withdraw from the union at some future date if that union became harmful to its interests.  So when New Englanders began plotting secession barely twenty years after the end of the American Revolution, their leader, Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering (who was also George Washington’s secretary of war and secretary of state) stated that “the principles of our Revolution point to the remedy – a separation.  That this can be accomplished without spilling one drop of blood, I have little doubt” (In Henry Adams, editor, Documents Relating to New-England Federalism, 1800-1815, p. 338).  The New England plot to secede from the union culminated in the Hartford Secession Convention of 1814, where they ultimately decided to remain in the union and to try to dominate it politically instead.  (They of course succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, beginning in April of 1865 up to the present day).
John Quincy Adams, the quintessential New England Yankee, echoed these Jeffersonian sentiments in an 1839 speech in which he said that if different states or groups of states came into irrepressible conflict, then that “will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts toJubilee of the Constit...John Quincy Adams Best Price: $10.50 be reunited by the law of political gravitation . . .” (John Quincy Adams, The Jubilee of the Constitution, 1939, pp. 66-69).

There is a long history of American newspapers endorsing the Jeffersonian secessionist tradition.  The following are just a few examples.

The Bangor, Maine Daily Union once editorialized that the union of Maine with the other states “rests and depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each.  When that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone, and no power exterior to the withdrawing [state] can ever restore it.”  Moreover, a state can never be a true equal member of the American union if forced into it by military aggression, the Maine editorialists wrote.
“A war . . . is a thousand times worse evil than the loss of a State, or a dozen States” the Indianapolis Daily Journal once wrote.  “The very freedom claimed by every individual citizen, precludes the idea of compulsory association, as individuals, as communities, or as States,” wrote the Kenosha, Wisconsin Democrat.  “The very germ of liberty is the right of forming our own governments, enacting our own laws, and choosing or own political associates . . . .  The right of secession inheres to the people of every sovereign state.”
The Real Lincoln: A Ne...Thomas DiLorenzoBest Price: $3.08Buy New $7.62Using violence to force any state to remain in the union, once said the New York Journal of Commerce, would “change our government from a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism” where one part of the people are “slaves.”  The Washington (D.C.) Constitution concurred, calling a coerced union held together at gunpoint (like the Soviet Union, for instance) “the extreme of wickedness and the acme of folly.”
“The great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the New York Daily Tribune once wrote, “is sound and just,” so that if any state wanted to secede peacefully from the union, it has “a clear moral right to do so.”
A union maintained by military force, Soviet style, would be “mad and Quixotic” as well as “tyrannical and unjust” and “worse than a mockery,” editorialized the Trenton (N.J.) True American.  Echoing Jefferson’s letter to John C. Breckenridge, the Cincinnati Daily Commercial once editorialized that “there is room for several flourishing nations on this continent; and the sun will shine brightly and the rivers run as clear” if one or more states were to peacefully secede.Hamilton's Curse: How ...Thomas DiLorenzoBest Price: $8.19Buy New $41.98

All of these Northern state editorials were published in the first three months of 1861 and are published in Howard Cecil Perkins, editor, Northern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, Mass.: 1964).  They illustrate how the truths penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence – that the states were considered to be free, independent, and sovereign in the same sense that England and Francewere; that the union was voluntary; that using invasion, bloodshed, and mass murder to force a state into the union would be an abomination and a universal moral outrage; and that a free society is required to revere freedom of association – were still alive and well until April of 1865 when the Lincoln regime invented and adopted the novel new theory that: 1) the states were never sovereign; 2) the union was not voluntary; and 3) the federal government had the “right” to prove that propositions 1 and 2 are right by means murdering hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens by waging total war on the entire civilian population of the Southern states, bombing and burning its cities and towns into a smoldering ruin, and calling it all “the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Happy Fourth of July!