My free book: Liberation Day: Our Nation Empowered by the Constitution

[EricMartin]

I wrote this book, and I'd love to hear your questions and comments. Ron Paul (through a friend, who told me that I should check him out) got me into the liberty movement and on the libertarian path. I hope Dr. Paul would agree with all of this book.


Here's where you can get it for free (at least for now):


https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/900010


It's available as a pdf, epub, mobi (Kindle), and as an online version.


The book contains a concrete plan to restore the Constitution in the United States according to the founders' original intent. It also contains the justification for that plan. You can read the first 3 chapters to get much of the heart of the book. Also, you can read the table of contents to see the major points of the concrete plan. If you love reading, feel free to read the whole thing!


Thank you, Eric Martin

[Swordsmyth]

The Air Force is an army, the Constitution empowers Congress to create armies.

[EricMartin]

Good point and thank you for your comment. But the original intent of the term "army" was not airplanes. Airplanes didn't exist for the founders. The original air force in the U.S. was the Army Air Force... so they perhaps tried to get around the limitations of having an Air Force according to the Constitution by lumping it into the Army. But either way, it wasn't the founders' original intent. That's why, in the book, I recommend what I believe the founders would have generally recommend if they were in this situation: we simply amend the Constitution to give Congress the power to have an air force, similar to how Congress has the power to have a navy. We must remember that if we allow the definitions of words to change from the original intents of the founders, then what we are doing is saying that the Constitution can mean anything as long as Webster's or some other "authority" defines a particular word or set of words that are contained in the Constitution a certain way. We don't want the Constitution to be able to be interpreted flexibibly, because then ultimately it has no true meaning. But the Constitution is inherently very flexible because it allows for itself to be amended. But its interpretation should not be flexible. The founders stated intent was for the Constitution to be interpreted based on what they meant with the words when they wrote them. Anything that might make us want to deviate from this original intent, such as the things that would make it outdated: such as the advent of airplane-based war, could easily be incorporated into the Constitution through an amendment. Please let me know if you don't agree or have any comments. Thank you!

[Swordsmyth]

Good point and thank you for your comment. But the original intent of the term "army" was not airplanes. Airplanes didn't exist for the founders. The original air force in the U.S. was the Army Air Force... so they perhaps tried to get around the limitations of having an Air Force according to the Constitution by lumping it into the Army. But either way, it wasn't the founders' original intent. That's why, in the book, I recommend what I believe the founders would have generally recommend if they were in this situation: we simply amend the Constitution to give Congress the power to have an air force, similar to how Congress has the power to have a navy. We must remember that if we allow the definitions of words to change from the original intents of the founders, then what we are doing is saying that the Constitution can mean anything as long as Webster's or some other "authority" defines a particular word or set of words that are contained in the Constitution a certain way. We don't want the Constitution to be able to be interpreted flexibibly, because then ultimately it has no true meaning. But the Constitution is inherently very flexible because it allows for itself to be amended. But its interpretation should not be flexible. The founders stated intent was for the Constitution to be interpreted based on what they meant with the words when they wrote them. Anything that might make us want to deviate from this original intent, such as the things that would make it outdated: such as the advent of airplane-based war, could easily be incorporated into the Constitution through an amendment. Please let me know if you don't agree or have any comments. Thank you!
I understand your desire for conservatism in the interpretation of the Constitution but since airplanes weren't even invented in the founders' day I think there is room for a little generosity, airplanes are not fundamentally different from other forms of military equipment known to the founders like cavalry equipment or artillery.

To say that an Air Force is not an army would give our enemies license to argue that freedom of the press doesn't include radio, TV or the internet or that the 2ndA only covers muskets.

[EricMartin]

To say that an Air Force is not an army would give our enemies license to argue that freedom of the press doesn't include radio, TV or the internet or that the 2ndA only covers muskets.

Consistency is key. If we are consistent in the original interpretation of the Constitution, then we would hold that 99% of the Bill of Rights was already included in the original intent of the Constitution before the Bill of Rights came into existence. They can argue all they want, but they would be utterly wrong.

[Swordsmyth]

Consistency is key. If we are consistent in the original interpretation of the Constitution, then we would hold that 99% of the Bill of Rights was already included in the original intent of the Constitution before the Bill of Rights came into existence. They can argue all they want, but they would be utterly wrong.
True, but as I said I don't see an Air Force as being fundamentally different than if Congress had in the 1800's decided to make a separate cavalry army for rapid responses to invasions and raiding behind enemy lines.

P.S. I believe that the Air Force should have remained the Army Air Corps and that it should be put back under the Army but that is a policy issue not a Constitutional issue.

[EricMartin]

Good stuff. How about this paradigm shift: how about we interpret the Constitution as constrictive as possible upon are government according the the original intent of the founders, and work from that as our starting point? Amending for an Air Force would be worth it, I think. I don't want to give our enemies an inch.

[Swordsmyth]

International Investment Office - Unconstitutional. Now called the Office of Investment Security. They keep foreign people or entities from investing too much in certain U.S. businesses so that foreigners can’t control those businesses. EricMartin

How is it not Constitutional?

A1S8:
The Congress shall have Power To...regulate Commerce with foreign Nations

[Swordsmyth]

Good stuff. How about this paradigm shift: how about we interpret the Constitution as constrictive as possible upon are government according the the original intent of the founders, and work from that as our starting point? Amending for an Air Force would be worth it, I think. I don't want to give our enemies an inch.
Perhaps we could say that government should be given the minimum benefit of any doubts and that the people should be given the maximum benefit of any doubts but in that case I would recommend putting the Air Force back under Army control instead of or until creating it by amendment.

[Swordsmyth]

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences - Unconstitutional. Created in 1972, educating people in medicine is not a Constitutional role of government.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Since our military needs doctors and nurses how is this necessarily unconstitutional?
If it educates people who don't serve in the military that might be unconstitutional and if there are plenty of doctors and nurses who are willing to enlist it might be unnecessary though.

[Swordsmyth]

Executive Office for Immigration Review – Unconstitutional. Immigration is a State’s Rights issue. In our nation’s early history, states had immigration laws.56 It wasn’t until 1882 that the first major Federal immigration law was passed, without any constitutional amendment giving that power to the Federal Government.57 Naturalization is in the hands of the Federal Government because it’s listed in the Constitution. Naturalization is rules for and the granting of citizenship into the United States. Immigration is not listed in the Constitution, and so it rests with the states and the people according to the 10th Amendment.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Here I strongly disagree, Immigration is part of the Law of Nations Clause in Article I, Section 8, Clause 10.

See this article: https://i2i.org/where-congresss-powe...on-comes-from/ (https://i2i.org/where-congresss-power-to-regulate-immigration-comes-from/)

And: https://www.constitution.org/cmt/law_of_nations.htm

The meaning of "Offenses against the Law of Nations"

Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 10 of the Constitution for the United States delegates the power to Congress to "define and punish ... Offenses against the Law of Nations". It is important to understand what is and is not included in the term of art "law of nations", and not confuse it with "international law". They are not the same thing. The phrase "law of nations" is a direct translation of the Latin jus gentium, which means the underlying principles of right and justice among nations, and during the founding era was not considered the same as the "laws", that is, the body of treaties and conventions between nations, the jus inter gentes, which, combined with jus gentium, comprise the field of "international law". The distinction goes back to ancient Roman Law.

Briefly, the Law of Nations at the point of ratification in 1788 included the following general elements, taken from Blackstone's Commentaries, and prosecution of those who might violate them:

(1) No attacks on foreign nations, their citizens, or shipping, without either a declaration of war or letters of marque and reprisal.

(2) Honoring of the flag of truce, peace treaties, and boundary treaties. No entry across national borders without permission of national authorities.

(3) Protection of wrecked ships, their passengers and crew, and their cargo, from depredation by those who might find them.

(4) Prosecution of piracy by whomever might be able to capture the pirates, even if those making the capture or their nations had not been victims.

(5) Care and decent treatment of prisoners of war.

(6) Protection of foreign embassies, ambassadors, and diplomats, and of foreign ships and their passengers, crew, and cargo while in domestic waters or in port.

(7) Honoring of extradition treaties for criminals who committed crimes in a nation with whom one has such a treaty who escape to one's territory or are found on the high seas established with all nations in 1788,

(8) Prohibition of enslavement of foreign nationals and international trading in slaves.



For a more detailed debate see this thread:

Article 1 Section 9 (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?513274-Article-1-Section-9/page3)

[Swordsmyth]

International Trade Administration - Its goals are: “1. Provide practical information to help Americans select markets and products. 2. Ensure that Americans have access to international markets as required by the U.S. trade agreements. 3. Safeguard Americans from unfair competition from dumped and subsidized imports.” Only goal 2 is Constitutional. Information and ensuring competition are not.84

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

How is goal 3 not constitutional?

The Constitution doesn't limit the purposes that foreign commerce may be regulated for.

[Swordsmyth]

Transportation Department Why can’t we trust the states and the people to finance and build their own roads, bridges, airports, and seaports? They can, and that’s what the founders intended when they wrote the Constitution. We know that commerce among the states does not include building roads or other public works like that.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Roads are mentioned:

A1S8:
The Congress shall have Power To...establish Post Offices and post Roads;

[Swordsmyth]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Roads are mentioned:

A1S8:
The Congress shall have Power To...establish Post Offices and post Roads;

Federal Highway Administration - This is unconstitutional. Highways are a state’s right. Think of how much fairer it is for the states and people to allocate money to this than the Federal Government. Right now, people taxed across the nation have to pay for up to 95% of the cost of some interstate highways, and the states only pay 5%.101 That means that a politically powerful state in the Federal Congress could get much better roads that another state. I see this all of the time. It seems like Maryland’s interstate highways are much nicer that Pennsylvania’s (my home state), and the state of Maryland is probably only paying 10% of that cost, whereas the nation at large is footing 90% of the bill. I don’t want to pay Maryland’s road building bill, and it makes no sense for me to do so.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

As I pointed out above roads are authorized so you would need a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of federal involvement with at least some of them.

[Swordsmyth]

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services - This is somewhat Constitutional, as rules for citizenship are clearly delegated to the Congress in the Constitution as the “Rule of Naturalization”; however, immigration is not a power given to Congress and must be left to the states and the people. The name of this agency should be changed to “U.S. Citizenship Services,” and it should be moved under the State Department.



U.S. Customs and Border Protection - This is similar to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services entity in that the Customs part is Constitutional. It should be called “U.S. Customs” and be moved under the Commerce Department. The “Border Protection” part should be dissolved as this is unconstitutional and is a right of the states and the people.


U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement - The Customs part is Constitutional, but the Immigration part is not. This should be moved to the Department of Commerce and anything unconstitutional dissolved.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

These are Constitutional.
See above where I discussed Immigration.

Also: A4S4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;

[Bryan]

I wrote this book, and I'd love to hear your questions and comments. Ron Paul (through a friend, who told me that I should check him out) got me into the liberty movement and on the libertarian path. I hope Dr. Paul would agree with all of this book.


Here's where you can get it for free (at least for now):


https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/900010


It's available as a pdf, epub, mobi (Kindle), and as an online version.


The book contains a concrete plan to restore the Constitution in the United States according to the founders' original intent. It also contains the justification for that plan. You can read the first 3 chapters to get much of the heart of the book. Also, you can read the table of contents to see the major points of the concrete plan. If you love reading, feel free to read the whole thing!


Thank you, Eric Martin

Nice! Welcome to the site, Eric. I put this on the front page / our twitter for more exposure.

[Danke]

ARMY

late 14c., "armed expedition," from Old French armée "armed troop, armed expedition" (14c.), from Medieval Latin armata "armed force," from Latin armata, fem. of armatus "armed, equipped, in arms," as a noun, "armed men, soldiers," past participle of armare "to arm," literally "act of arming," related to arma "tools, arms" (see arm (https://www.etymonline.com/word/arm?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_170 01) (n.2)).

[Swordsmyth]

ARMY

late 14c., "armed expedition," from Old French armée "armed troop, armed expedition" (14c.), from Medieval Latin armata "armed force," from Latin armata, fem. of armatus "armed, equipped, in arms," as a noun, "armed men, soldiers," past participle of armare "to arm," literally "act of arming," related to arma "tools, arms" (see arm (https://www.etymonline.com/word/arm?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_170 01) (n.2)).

That is my position but I still think the Air Farce should have remained the Army Air Corps and that it should be put back under the Army.

[Danke]

That is my position but I still think the Air Farce should have remained the Army Air Corps and that it should be put back under the Army.


"Air Farce"

https://memegenerator.net/img/images/300x300/6497269.jpg
wow never heard that one before. you're so creative. did you make that up by yourself? laugh out loud

[Danke]

That is my position but I still think the Air Farce should have remained the Army Air Corps and that it should be put back under the Army.

Maybe it would work, but I'd rather I have my leadership be a combat pilot.

[Swordsmyth]

Maybe it would work, but I'd rather I have my leadership be a combat pilot.
They could be semi-independent like the Marine Corps is in the Navy but they need to be under the army so that their primary focus is to serve the needs of the army instead of the strategic focus they wanted.

[Swordsmyth]

"Air Farce"

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That picture doesn't show for me.

[Swordsmyth]

"Air Farce"

https://memegenerator.net/img/images/300x300/6497269.jpg
wow never heard that one before. you're so creative. did you make that up by yourself? laugh out loud


May the Farce be with you.

[oyarde]

Maybe it would work, but I'd rather I have my leadership be a combat pilot.

In current warfare pilots roles are pretty much just providing close air support for combat troops . The Army Forward Observers pretty well need to control the battle field and have all fire control , mortars , artillery , close air support and naval gunnery .

[Danke]

In current warfare pilots roles are pretty much just providing close air support for combat troops . The Army Forward Observers pretty well need to control the battle field and have all fire control , mortars , artillery , close air support and naval gunnery .

We call the FACs (forward air controller). Fighter pilots assigned with ground units because of their knowledge of capabilities. An assignment many try to avoid.

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

How is it not Constitutional?

A1S8:
The Congress shall have Power To...regulate Commerce with foreign Nations
It's a power of the state. Investment is not equal to commerce. By the way, I may be wrong on some of these interpretations, so please give me some other interpretation based on the founders words, or people close to the founders, if you have it.

[EricMartin]

Responding to this: Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences - Unconstitutional. Created in 1972, educating people in medicine is not a Constitutional role of government.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Since our military needs doctors and nurses how is this necessarily unconstitutional?
If it educates people who don't serve in the military that might be unconstitutional and if there are plenty of doctors and nurses who are willing to enlist it might be unnecessary though.

Our military needs a lot of things, perhaps an exception could be made for people learning specifically to help others in the military. But I don't think it's necessary.

[Swordsmyth]

It's a power of the state. Investment is not equal to commerce. By the way, I may be wrong on some of these interpretations, so please give me some other interpretation based on the founders words, or people close to the founders, if you have it.
I don't have words from the founders right now, I don't know if they ever discussed a difference between commerce and investment.

I don't see any difference between commerce and investment, trading money for possession of a company which owns hard assets isn't any different than trading money for hard assets.

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Here I strongly disagree, Immigration is part of the Law of Nations Clause in Article I, Section 8, Clause 10.

See this article: https://i2i.org/where-congresss-powe...on-comes-from/ (https://i2i.org/where-congresss-power-to-regulate-immigration-comes-from/)

And: https://www.constitution.org/cmt/law_of_nations.htm

The meaning of "Offenses against the Law of Nations"

Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 10 of the Constitution for the United States delegates the power to Congress to "define and punish ... Offenses against the Law of Nations". It is important to understand what is and is not included in the term of art "law of nations", and not confuse it with "international law". They are not the same thing. The phrase "law of nations" is a direct translation of the Latin jus gentium, which means the underlying principles of right and justice among nations, and during the founding era was not considered the same as the "laws", that is, the body of treaties and conventions between nations, the jus inter gentes, which, combined with jus gentium, comprise the field of "international law". The distinction goes back to ancient Roman Law.

Briefly, the Law of Nations at the point of ratification in 1788 included the following general elements, taken from Blackstone's Commentaries, and prosecution of those who might violate them:

(1) No attacks on foreign nations, their citizens, or shipping, without either a declaration of war or letters of marque and reprisal.

(2) Honoring of the flag of truce, peace treaties, and boundary treaties. No entry across national borders without permission of national authorities.

(3) Protection of wrecked ships, their passengers and crew, and their cargo, from depredation by those who might find them.

(4) Prosecution of piracy by whomever might be able to capture the pirates, even if those making the capture or their nations had not been victims.

(5) Care and decent treatment of prisoners of war.

(6) Protection of foreign embassies, ambassadors, and diplomats, and of foreign ships and their passengers, crew, and cargo while in domestic waters or in port.

(7) Honoring of extradition treaties for criminals who committed crimes in a nation with whom one has such a treaty who escape to one's territory or are found on the high seas established with all nations in 1788,

(8) Prohibition of enslavement of foreign nationals and international trading in slaves.



For a more detailed debate see this thread:

Article 1 Section 9 (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?513274-Article-1-Section-9/page3)

The question is, what was the founders' intent? My reasoning for this is that it looks as if many states had there own systems for allowing people to immigrate or not after the Constitution was ratified. So I see it as a state's right. But if you have some source that shows otherwise from the founders' understanding, I'd be interested. I think at the very least this might be a dual sovereignty area where states and the Feds should be able to protect their own borders at will, if not totally in the hands of the states.

[Swordsmyth]

Responding to this: Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences - Unconstitutional. Created in 1972, educating people in medicine is not a Constitutional role of government.
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Since our military needs doctors and nurses how is this necessarily unconstitutional?
If it educates people who don't serve in the military that might be unconstitutional and if there are plenty of doctors and nurses who are willing to enlist it might be unnecessary though.

Our military needs a lot of things, perhaps an exception could be made for people learning specifically to help others in the military. But I don't think it's necessary.
It may not be necessary, there are things that aren't necessary but are/would be constitutional, but since our military trains people to do many things that the military needs done and that is a natural function of the military I don't think it is unconstitutional if they are training service members who will serve as doctors and nurses.

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

How is goal 3 not constitutional?

The Constitution doesn't limit the purposes that foreign commerce may be regulated for.
Good point. Thanks!

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Roads are mentioned:

A1S8:
The Congress shall have Power To...establish Post Offices and post Roads;
I know, but not in conjunction with general commerce, only for the "post".

[EricMartin]

Nice! Welcome to the site, Eric. I put this on the front page / our twitter for more exposure.

Thank you for the welcome! Glad to be here. Thank you for the exposure! :)

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

As I pointed out above roads are authorized so you would need a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of federal involvement with at least some of them.

But was the original intent of the founders' to build roads for postal service? Also, you mention something which I think brings up a very common confusion about the Constitution. You said, "roads are authorized so you would need a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of federal involvement with at least some of them."

You would not need a Constitutional amendment to get rid of involvement with roads, even if it is Constitutional. All you would need is a law from Congress that gets rid of the involvement. In the Constitution the phrase is "Congress shall have the Power to". I hope everyone knows that almost every power that Congress is handed is optional. Congress can choose not to exercise those powers. And Congress didn't exercise some of its powers at first.

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

These are Constitutional.
See above where I discussed Immigration.

Also: A4S4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;
Good point. I think invasion is referring to military invasion.

[Swordsmyth]

The question is, what was the founders' intent? My reasoning for this is that it looks as if many states had there own systems for allowing people to immigrate or not after the Constitution was ratified. So I see it as a state's right. But if you have some source that shows otherwise from the founders' understanding, I'd be interested. I think at the very least this might be a dual sovereignty area where states and the Feds should be able to protect their own borders at will, if not totally in the hands of the states.
I absolutely agree that states should be able to have immigration policies, that is even referenced in A1S9:

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight

But I believe that it is also a necessary and intended federal power, historically the states have had loose or non-existent intrastate immigration policies which is generally a good and desirable thing but if the federal government isn't allowed to have an immigration policy then the state with the loosest immigration policy will serve as a gateway and force its policy on all the others, the only alternative would be for the states to make harsh intrastate immigration policies which would reduce the efficiency of interstate commerce and possibly result in the breakup of the union.


Here are some relevant quotes:

"Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease." --Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816. ME 15:28

But some of the States were not only anxious for a Constitutional provision against the introduction of slaves. They had scruples against admitting the term "slaves" into the Instrument. Hence the descriptive phrase, "migration or importation of persons;" the term migration allowing those who were scrupulous of acknowledging expressly a property in human beings, to view imported persons as a species of emigrants, while others might apply the term to foreign malefactors sent or coming into the country. It is possible tho' not recollected, that some might have had an eye to the case of freed blacks, as well as malefactors.

James Madison Letter to Robert Walsh, November 27, 1819 (emphasis added)

In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Jefferson reflects:





"It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possi- ble in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.








"Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English Constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of abso- lute monarchies. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of emi- grants." (3)



Jefferson warns, nearly prophetically:





"They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an un- bounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In pro- portion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, in- coherent, distracted mass." (4)



There is theory; and then there is reality. Jefferson was schooled in both. He knew that, to every liberal law, there were some reasonable limits.
We need artisans, he admitted, but not enemies. We want true freedom seekers to come, but without "extraordinary encouragements." (5)
What would Thomas Jefferson, therefore, think of an immigration policy today that, with flashing lights invites the non-working masses of the world to come--to come from countries that hate us, to a feast of "free" food, "free" health care, "free" education, "free" social security benefits, and free and instant voter registration cards? It is hard to see Jefferson calling it anything but extraordinarily unwise, and extraordinarily rev- olutionary. Jefferson would have proposed something better--a policy liberal in its ex- tension of the blessings of liberty to those who desired it, and conservative in its eco- nomic and political common sense.
Footnotes:
1. Bergh, Albert Ellery, Editor. "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson," Volume 3, p. 338.
2. Ibid., pgs. 338-339.
3. Bergh, Volume 2, p. 120.
4. Ibid., p. 121. 5. Ibid.



More at: http://proconservative.net/PCVol5Is2...security.shtml (http://proconservative.net/PCVol5Is272FarrellImmigrationInsecurity.shtml)



And from Ron Paul:

Well, I start off with saying that it`s a big problem. I don`t like to get involved with the Federal Government very much, (http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=deskbar&q=site%3Alewrockwell.com+ron+paul+federal) but I do think it is a federal responsibility (http://www.vdare.com/archives/2007/09/06/republican-debate-giuliani-claims-his-sanctuary-policies-were-in-response-to-federal-failure/)to protect our borders....And that`s why I don`t think our border guards should be sent to Iraq, like we`ve done. I think we need more border guards. But to have the money and the personnel, we have to bring our troops home from Iraq. Ron Paul


More at: http://www.vdare.com/articles/ron-pa...al-sovereignty (http://www.vdare.com/articles/ron-paul-i-believe-in-national-sovereignty)

[EricMartin]

I don't have words from the founders right now, I don't know if they ever discussed a difference between commerce and investment.

I don't see any difference between commerce and investment, trading money for possession of a company which owns hard assets isn't any different than trading money for hard assets.
I don't think that's the issue. When they said "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations", I think that commerce was the movement of goods to those nations or from those nations to the U.S. That's the context I see, but please let me know if you see something else.

[EricMartin]

It may not be necessary, there are things that aren't necessary but are/would be constitutional, but since our military trains people to do many things that the military needs done and that is a natural function of the military I don't think it is unconstitutional if they are training service members who will serve as doctors and nurses.

You might be right on this one, great point.

[Swordsmyth]

But was the original intent of the founders' to build roads for postal service? Also, you mention something which I think brings up a very common confusion about the Constitution. You said, "roads are authorized so you would need a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of federal involvement with at least some of them."

You would not need a Constitutional amendment to get rid of involvement with roads, even if it is Constitutional. All you would need is a law from Congress that gets rid of the involvement. In the Constitution the phrase is "Congress shall have the Power to". I hope everyone knows that almost every power that Congress is handed is optional. Congress can choose not to exercise those powers. And Congress didn't exercise some of its powers at first.
You are right but your book is about what a President could do by executive order based on things being unconstitutional, in order to take that approach to get around congress you would need an amendment.

[Swordsmyth]

I don't think that's the issue. When they said "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations", I think that commerce was the movement of goods to those nations or from those nations to the U.S. That's the context I see, but please let me know if you see something else.
Money is a good and control of the companies can be thought of as a good and the information that ownership gives the foreigners access to is also a good.

[EricMartin]

I absolutely agree that states should be able to have immigration policies, that is even referenced in A1S9:

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight

But I believe that it is also a necessary and intended federal power, historically the states have had loose or non-existent intrastate immigration policies which is generally a good and desirable thing but if the federal government isn't allowed to have an immigration policy then the state with the loosest immigration policy will serve as a gateway and force its policy on all the others, the only alternative would be for the states to make harsh intrastate immigration policies which would reduce the efficiency of interstate commerce and possibly result in the breakup of the union.


Here are some relevant quotes:

"Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease." --Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816. ME 15:28

But some of the States were not only anxious for a Constitutional provision against the introduction of slaves. They had scruples against admitting the term "slaves" into the Instrument. Hence the descriptive phrase, "migration or importation of persons;" the term migration allowing those who were scrupulous of acknowledging expressly a property in human beings, to view imported persons as a species of emigrants, while others might apply the term to foreign malefactors sent or coming into the country. It is possible tho' not recollected, that some might have had an eye to the case of freed blacks, as well as malefactors.

James Madison Letter to Robert Walsh, November 27, 1819 (emphasis added)

In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Jefferson reflects:





"It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possi- ble in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.








"Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English Constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of abso- lute monarchies. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of emi- grants." (3)



Jefferson warns, nearly prophetically:





"They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an un- bounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In pro- portion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, in- coherent, distracted mass." (4)



There is theory; and then there is reality. Jefferson was schooled in both. He knew that, to every liberal law, there were some reasonable limits.
We need artisans, he admitted, but not enemies. We want true freedom seekers to come, but without "extraordinary encouragements." (5)
What would Thomas Jefferson, therefore, think of an immigration policy today that, with flashing lights invites the non-working masses of the world to come--to come from countries that hate us, to a feast of "free" food, "free" health care, "free" education, "free" social security benefits, and free and instant voter registration cards? It is hard to see Jefferson calling it anything but extraordinarily unwise, and extraordinarily rev- olutionary. Jefferson would have proposed something better--a policy liberal in its ex- tension of the blessings of liberty to those who desired it, and conservative in its eco- nomic and political common sense.
Footnotes:
1. Bergh, Albert Ellery, Editor. "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson," Volume 3, p. 338.
2. Ibid., pgs. 338-339.
3. Bergh, Volume 2, p. 120.
4. Ibid., p. 121. 5. Ibid.



More at: http://proconservative.net/PCVol5Is2...security.shtml (http://proconservative.net/PCVol5Is272FarrellImmigrationInsecurity.shtml)



And from Ron Paul:

Well, I start off with saying that it`s a big problem. I don`t like to get involved with the Federal Government very much, (http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=deskbar&q=site%3Alewrockwell.com+ron+paul+federal) but I do think it is a federal responsibility (http://www.vdare.com/archives/2007/09/06/republican-debate-giuliani-claims-his-sanctuary-policies-were-in-response-to-federal-failure/)to protect our borders....And that`s why I don`t think our border guards should be sent to Iraq, like we`ve done. I think we need more border guards. But to have the money and the personnel, we have to bring our troops home from Iraq. Ron Paul


More at: http://www.vdare.com/articles/ron-pa...al-sovereignty (http://www.vdare.com/articles/ron-paul-i-believe-in-national-sovereignty)

You're starting to sway me to make me think I made a mistake on this one. I may have. The book is not perfect, but I would prefer more research before changing this point.

[Swordsmyth]

Good point. I think invasion is referring to military invasion.
The line between a military invasion and a civilian invasion is an arbitrary creation of modern civilization, civilian invasions are potential existential threats when combined with birthright citizenship and the fact that we are a republic ruled by voters. (not to mention the possibility of an armed uprising like how Mexico lost Texas)

[EricMartin]

You are right but your book is about what a President could do by executive order based on things being unconstitutional, in order to take that approach to get around congress you would need an amendment.

Gotcha, yes... or a law passed by Congress.

[Swordsmyth]

You're starting to sway me to make me think I made a mistake on this one. I may have. The book is not perfect, but I would prefer more research before changing this point.
Fair enough.

[EricMartin]

Money is a good and control of the companies can be thought of as a good and the information that ownership gives the foreigners access to is also a good.
But the question is, what did the founders think of as a good?

[Swordsmyth]

I know, but not in conjunction with general commerce, only for the "post".
Could not the citizens be allowed to use the "Post Roads" after they were built for the Post Office?
I think almost any road could be justified as a "Post Road" and I also think that it was mistake to grant Congress the power to build "Post Roads", the founders never used that power because it wasn't necessary.

[Swordsmyth]

But the question is, what did the founders think of as a good?
I would be interested to find out if they ever discussed the question.
I think they would have considered money a good since it was gold and silver in their time.

If they never discussed what was a good and what wasn't then aren't we under the necessity of making that determination ourselves?

[EricMartin]

Could not the citizens be allowed to use the "Post Roads" after they were built for the Post Office?
I think almost any road could be justified as a "Post Road" and I also think that it was mistake to grant Congress the power to build "Post Roads", the founders never used that power because it wasn't necessary.
Perhaps. Or we could argue that the founders did not use it and years later when Congress tried to use it people said it was unconstitutional, at least at first. Establishing post roads could be argued as a way to establish postal routes, and not actually build roads.

[Swordsmyth]

Perhaps. Or we could argue that the founders did not use it and years later when Congress tried to use it people said it was unconstitutional, at least at first. Establishing post roads could be argued as a way to establish postal routes, and not actually build roads.
True, establishing Post Offices is potentially different than "building needful buildings" which allows their construction, the classic country store post office being an example of establishing an office without building it.

Madison certainly didn't believe that the federal government had the power to build roads as the quote in your book shows.

[EricMartin]

I would be interested to find out if they ever discussed the question.
I think they would have considered money a good since it was gold and silver in their time.

If they never discussed what was a good and what wasn't then aren't we under the necessity of making that determination ourselves?
I don't think we need to make the determination for ourselves. I think we need to determine what their determination was, if possible.

[EricMartin]

True, establishing Post Offices is potentially different than "building needful buildings" which allows their construction, the classic country store post office being an example of establishing an office without building it.

Madison certainly didn't believe that the federal government had the power to build roads as the quote in your book shows.

Nice reference! :)

[Swordsmyth]

I don't think we need to make the determination for ourselves. I think we need to determine what their determination was, if possible.
That would be best but I said "IF they never discussed [it]", perhaps there was a common law legal definition that was accepted at the time that we could use to determine the question.

[EricMartin]

That would be best but I said "IF they never discussed [it]", perhaps there was a common law legal definition that was accepted at the time that we could use to determine the question.
Yup, I think that would be the next best route. :)

[oyarde]

We call the FACs (forward air controller). Fighter pilots assigned with ground units because of their knowledge of capabilities. An assignment many try to avoid.

I feel a little bad now , I thought that FAC guy was there to make my coffee .

[Danke]

I feel a little bad now , I thought that FAC guy was there to make my coffee .


Ya, officers are known to do that for the grunts.

[Swordsmyth]

Ya, officers are known to do that for the grunts.
I think Oyarde assumes that about everyone.

[osan]

I wrote this book, and I'd love to hear your questions and comments. Ron Paul (through a friend, who told me that I should check him out) got me into the liberty movement and on the libertarian path. I hope Dr. Paul would agree with all of this book.


Here's where you can get it for free (at least for now):


https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/900010


It's available as a pdf, epub, mobi (Kindle), and as an online version.


The book contains a concrete plan to restore the Constitution in the United States according to the founders' original intent. It also contains the justification for that plan. You can read the first 3 chapters to get much of the heart of the book. Also, you can read the table of contents to see the major points of the concrete plan. If you love reading, feel free to read the whole thing!


Thank you, Eric Martin

OK, I've started and immediately came to the old Sam Adams quote:


“It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
―Samuel Adams

I'm on page one and it may take me 41.3 years to finish, as I read slowly, but I thought I would point out for the sake of conversation and perhaps some clarity that an equally true version of that quote could go like this:


“It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of tyranny and fear in the minds of men.”
―Samuel Adams

The latter is precisely what Theye and their useful idiots have been doing. Lately, BLM and Antifa come to mind, along with the rest of the "leftist" progressive weaklings who have been praying to the god of tyranny their entire lives. They may be despicable for their cowardice, ignorance, and blind avarice, but we must give credit even unto such creatures when they show virtue, however little and misapplied it may be: they get out there and ACT. They act abhorrently, but they act, which is a whole lot more than most of the rest of us do. And that is why they stand a good chance of leading those for whom they serve as useful idiots to eventual victory over the vast remainder. It's a sad thought, but there you have it. Those who would lord over you are winning in a big way as the rest of us sit idly, moaning about it while doing nothing of substance to stop it.

Humans.



Update:


How can these legislators expect us to follow the rules that they (or their special interests and career regulators) write when they are not following their law, the U.S. Constitution?

Because when they violate, we sit idly by and allow it. Words have come to mean nearly nothing in terms of acting as levers against official political vermin. Nor, in the absence of such effect, do we lynch them from street lamps. Therefore, there are no effective consequences for their felonious acts. Given this, what incentive have Theye to behave in accord with the Constitution? Answer: there is none and so here we find ourselves. No rocket surgery there.



Update:


The Bill of Rights is a set of prohibitions on the federal government, but those prohibitions are merely unnecessary reiterations of the prohibitions on the federal government that are already built into the Constitution.

Ooooo... in a world of better men, I might agree, but not in this one. The mean human being is not in fact a human being but a mere simulacrum - a beast in human clothing. He is imbued through deep marination with what I have come to call The Four Necessities (https://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-four-necessities.html), which abbreviate to the convenient acronym "FAIL": Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, Lassitude.

Not to piss on your Constitutional parade, but the document is a cluster copulation of semantic and structural insufficiency. It was written for FREE men and not for those of lesser cloth. Sadly, America is now people with a strong majority of the latter and very few of the former. I might argue that America is a land with vanishingly few free men, but that's another discussion entirely.

The average man is a beast whose mental orientation comports strongly with Bastiat's quote on page 1. That is observable truth that no man of honesty and integrity may credibly deny, barring brain lesions or some other deep organic cognitive impairment. Because of this, a constitution, if we must insist on having such a document for free men - the apparent necessity of which, I will point out, pretty well proves my assertions about the nature of mean humanity - it must be far better conceived and executed than that under which we currently suffer, and I mean suffer.

As I have mentioned in this forum more than once in the past, I wrote such a constitution about 30 years ago as an academic exercise to see whether I could do it. I could and I did and it vastly outstrips what we now have in terms of structure, semantic clarity, and overall utility in terms of the reasons for which such a document ostensibly is contrived: the protection and guaranty of the rights of free men against the predations, violations, and other trespasses of their fellows.

And in so doing, my contrivances taught me a lesson I shall never forsake: no document can protect a man, for it is naught but words on paper. Without the rightful mind, a man is just another beast, immune to the higher reasoning of men, and uncaring that it is so. The righteously free man has little to no protection against the mob of mean men who, regardless of intentions good or nefarious, would strip a man of his innate freedoms and feed him to the wolves for no other reason than he has asserted his valid claims to life in apparent violation of the broader and perhaps even tacit edict that he "share" that which is rightly his with his "brothers".

We live in a world lousy with mental decay and filth where the majority is quite content to see men with guns vent their rage upon those who serve as reminders to that majority of just how less-than they are; what cowards; what grasping children; what ignorants; what loafers. The mean man hates the superior man precisely because the latter serves as the sorest reminder to the former of just what a low and vile creature is; something less than quite human.

In case you were wondering about my own Frankenstein's Monster, my constitution was constructed of two parts which I called the Nucleus and the Orbit. The Nucleus was immutable, containing the principles of proper human relations and the various derivatives used as the basis of authority. It would include a dictionary of all terms used therein, as well as the ENTIRE body of Law (note the capitalization, vis-a-vis "law"), which was VERY small. It included the fundamental criteria that must be satisfied in order to determine whether an act is a crime. Because none of those things can conceivably change with time and circumstance, they are sacrosanct and immutable. This, of course, would lead many to freak out because they are not free men, but something else. A truly free man accepts the risks of freedom, which can be high - even terminally so. Lesser men, whom I call Weakmen, seek to hedge their bets by placing constraints and other limitations and exceptions upon actual, proper human freedom. The worst of the beasts are those who most closely simulate Freemen and therefore hold the unearned credibility of the Freeman and are thereby so often successful in gaining the acceptance of their corruptions of the landscape of true liberty by the vast legions of Weakmen. THAT is the precise reason for declaring the Nucleus untouchable, because men will by small degrees alter what is immutably correct to better serve their corrupted ends.

The Orbit contained all that was of a changeable nature, with the proviso that nothing therein could in any way violate the protections of the Nucleus, any such violation being null, void, without force of Law, and authorizing any Freeman to take any steps he deems fit to protect himself from trespass by anyone attempting to foist or otherwise enforce such invalid mandates upon him, up to and including killing every individual so acting against him.

Orbital law, or "statute" as I would prefer to label it for the purposes of distinguishing it from Law, might treat things of a privileged nature such as the formation of corporations, again were we to insist on continuing to employ such legal fictions. The way I see it, if one seeks to enjoy some special privilege, and I strongly question the validity of such things, they may also be required to toe a line concomitant with such. If, for example, you choose the protections of the "corporate veil", you may be required to waive certain other basic rights under what might be very specific circumstances, such as the prima facie case of criminal negligence such that your corporate right to privacy is thereby annulled by order of a judge, whose ass would be on the line in the case he were to issue such an order without valid basis.

Under my constitution, "government" would quake in its boots in minute by minute fashion at the very thought of violating the sovereign rights of Freemen with treble sentencing and damages compared with the same crimes committed by non-governmental individuals. There would be no qualified immunities for anyone, at any time, for any reason. You violate, you face the music, circumstance notwithstanding such as "we were at war". If you want to presume to govern, you bear all the attendant risks. That alone would keep "government" tiny. It would keep corruption low because ANY many would be empowered to hold any government official accountable, with the understanding that any false charge brought against a government official would earn one the same treble penalties.

Yes sir, under my constitution, the nation would be a far quieter and more prosperous place, all the while those committing violations of trespass upon their fellows being held their feet to the fire. Conditions would be such that it would so deeply behoove all men to adopt a posture of great caution and circumspection where his treatment of others was concerned. Mannerliness would rapidly become abidingly fashionable and most men would not dare bring injury of any palpable form to his fellows.

That constitution and the social order it would engender might succeed because I believe there are enough people of such cloth to make it so, but there are no guarantees. It could go all wildly wrong, but those are the risks one must accept if he is serious about breaking free from the bonds of pretty slavery (https://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com/2013/04/pretty-slavery-what-it-is-and-how-to.html), which is the worst form of that vile institution and the one into which Americans appear to be so hopelessly locked.

Update:


That growth of debt is not sustainable,

Actually, it is. By all appearances, it is indefinitely sustainable so long as certain conditions hold.

[EricMartin]

Actually, it is. By all appearances, it is indefinitely sustainable so long as certain conditions hold.

Sorry, I still need to check all of this out, but this immediately stood out to me. The growth rate is just over 8%, compounded annually. I don't see how that's possibly sustainable without massive inflation or a default on the debt, as long as economic growth plus inflation combined are less than 8%. That compounds quickly and in not too long we'll be an economy with a debt twice the size of our yearly economic output. Soon enough 3, 4, 5, 10x the size of our economy. Do you have a reason that this is sustainable? I think with our current conditions holding we simply won't have enough money to pay off even the interest on our debt in decades at longest.

[osan]

Sorry, I still need to check all of this out, but this immediately stood out to me. The growth rate is just over 8%, compounded annually. I don't see how that's possibly sustainable without massive inflation or a default on the debt, as long as economic growth plus inflation combined are less than 8%. That compounds quickly and in not too long we'll be an economy with a debt twice the size of our yearly economic output. Soon enough 3, 4, 5, 10x the size of our economy. Do you have a reason that this is sustainable? I think with our current conditions holding we simply won't have enough money to pay off even the interest on our debt in decades at longest.

Inflation is the bit that makes it sustainable. Were there no inflation, naturally it would come crashing down once REAL and ACTUAL money ran out. This bullshit currency, ones and zeros resident on a disk somewhere, is what makes the current system infinitely sustainable in principle. Issue more money, inflate prices. Rinse and repeat. So long as conditions hold sufficiently, one may inflate his way to infinity and beyond with no overly negative impact on economies and so forth. People with savings, of course, will likely take it in the neck in the absence of interest dividends commensurate with inflation.

So long as purchasing power remains within some vaguely defined ballpark, the system trudges on, intact.

This is what electronic, debt-instrument currency has brought to our lives.

[pcosmar]

But was the original intent of the founders' to build roads for postal service?

NO,,, and None of the original and still recognized post roads were build by the Government.

They were roads build by the people,, from farm to market..

They established such roads as Post Roads.. roads already in existance... and later as they came to be. (expansion)

It was not until after the invention of the automobile that ownership of roads was usurped by governments.

[Swordsmyth]

Monetary Offices - constitutional. They make rules such as not being allowed to melt down coins. That’s allowed, but most of the money in circulation is unconstitutional.
EricMartin

I don't see how it is constitutional to ban the melting of coins, a better example of a constitutional activity of this office would be banning the shaving of coins.

[Swordsmyth]

Indian Affairs Bureau - This started in 1824 and is largely unconstitutional. While Indians are mentioned in the Constitution, all it really says is that they’re not to be taxed, they don’t count towards vote totals, and commerce with them may be regulated. So, regulating commerce with Indians is Constitutional, but nothing else is.61
EricMartin

This should be part of the State Department tasked with dealing with treaties with the Indians.

[Swordsmyth]

Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia - This should be done by the local D.C. government; it was started in 1997.


@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

But since Congress is given jurisdiction over D.C. it is Constitutional, it may be a good idea to hand it over to the municipal government but it would take an act of Congress.

[Swordsmyth]

National Capital Planning Commission – This Commission must immediately and henceforward cease all functions, including those dealing with D.C. parks; however, the previous portion notwithstanding, Federal buildings that carry out Constitutional functions may be dealt with;
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Congress has jurisdiction over D.C. as I said above so this is Constitutional.

[Swordsmyth]

Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board – This Board must immediately and henceforward cease all functions, especially those regarding privacy or other rights not found in the Constitution, but it may continue ensuring Constitutional rights;
@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

The 4thA guarantees a right to privacy at least to the extent of forbidding unreasonable and unwarranted searches, so long as this board sticks to actual Constitutional rights I see nothing wrong with it.

[Swordsmyth]

To establish Post Offices and post Roads; - Arguments have been made either way as to whether Congress can build roads or designate roads as “post” roads, so it may currently be Constitutional to build post roads, but much of the current road building by the Federal Government has nothing to do with the Post or the Postal Service, so it is unconstitutional.

While presently the post office is Constitutional, I personally would support an amendment that stripped the Federal Government of these Postal powers, and the Post Office could be auctioned off to any domestic entity and deregulated. Powers of Congress like this one are optional. We wouldn’t need an amendment to force the end of the post office, just Congressional action, but an amendment would make its removal more permanent.

In an age of the internet, email, and messaging apps, the government should not be required to secure cheap communication for all.
Affordable, nationwide communication was the goal of this power that has been delegated to the Federal Government, and since we now easily meet this goal without this Federal power, I would like to see the nation do away with it. Wouldn’t the Founders be proud to see us stripping away even more powers from the Federal Government, than their original intent?


@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

I disagree, neutral distribution of information is a necessity in a republic for a properly informed electorate, the current scandals involving liberal social media censoring conservatives demonstrates the perils of privatizing the Post Office, it might even be desirable to have the Post Office provide Internet services bound by the 1stA since that is merely a technological update of its mission.

Killing parcel delivery might be a good idea but since the post office makes most of its money on parcels it would be necessary to fully re-federalize the Post Office and run it with tax money.

[Swordsmyth]

The first nine Amendments have nothing to do with state governments. These amendments are rights for citizens that state governments can abridge. These amendments are limits on the Federal Government so that the Federal Government can’t make any laws infringing these various rights. The state governments can make any law abridging or granting these rights, at least according to the Constitution. The state constitutions already protect many rights, but that’s for the states to decide.

When the founders wrote the first nine amendments to the Bill of Rights, they intended for them to have nothing to do with limiting state governments.139


@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

Here I disagree, other than when the 1stA says "Congress shall make no law" the Bill of Rights applies to the states, please note that the BoR doesn't repeat that specification anywhere else.
A4S2 states:

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

And just because there had been doubt the 14thA clarified it:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;

[EricMartin]

OK, I've started and immediately came to the old Sam Adams quote:



I'm on page one and it may take me 41.3 years to finish, as I read slowly, but I thought I would point out for the sake of conversation and perhaps some clarity that an equally true version of that quote could go like this:



The latter is precisely what Theye and their useful idiots have been doing. Lately, BLM and Antifa come to mind, along with the rest of the "leftist" progressive weaklings who have been praying to the god of tyranny their entire lives. They may be despicable for their cowardice, ignorance, and blind avarice, but we must give credit even unto such creatures when they show virtue, however little and misapplied it may be: they get out there and ACT. They act abhorrently, but they act, which is a whole lot more than most of the rest of us do. And that is why they stand a good chance of leading those for whom they serve as useful idiots to eventual victory over the vast remainder. It's a sad thought, but there you have it. Those who would lord over you are winning in a big way as the rest of us sit idly, moaning about it while doing nothing of substance to stop it.

Humans.



Update:



Because when they violate, we sit idly by and allow it. Words have come to mean nearly nothing in terms of acting as levers against official political vermin. Nor, in the absence of such effect, do we lynch them from street lamps. Therefore, there are no effective consequences for their felonious acts. Given this, what incentive have Theye to behave in accord with the Constitution? Answer: there is none and so here we find ourselves. No rocket surgery there.



Update:



Ooooo... in a world of better men, I might agree, but not in this one. The mean human being is not in fact a human being but a mere simulacrum - a beast in human clothing. He is imbued through deep marination with what I have come to call The Four Necessities (https://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-four-necessities.html), which abbreviate to the convenient acronym "FAIL": Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, Lassitude.

Not to piss on your Constitutional parade, but the document is a cluster copulation of semantic and structural insufficiency. It was written for FREE men and not for those of lesser cloth. Sadly, America is now people with a strong majority of the latter and very few of the former. I might argue that America is a land with vanishingly few free men, but that's another discussion entirely.

The average man is a beast whose mental orientation comports strongly with Bastiat's quote on page 1. That is observable truth that no man of honesty and integrity may credibly deny, barring brain lesions or some other deep organic cognitive impairment. Because of this, a constitution, if we must insist on having such a document for free men - the apparent necessity of which, I will point out, pretty well proves my assertions about the nature of mean humanity - it must be far better conceived and executed than that under which we currently suffer, and I mean suffer.

As I have mentioned in this forum more than once in the past, I wrote such a constitution about 30 years ago as an academic exercise to see whether I could do it. I could and I did and it vastly outstrips what we now have in terms of structure, semantic clarity, and overall utility in terms of the reasons for which such a document ostensibly is contrived: the protection and guaranty of the rights of free men against the predations, violations, and other trespasses of their fellows.

And in so doing, my contrivances taught me a lesson I shall never forsake: no document can protect a man, for it is naught but words on paper. Without the rightful mind, a man is just another beast, immune to the higher reasoning of men, and uncaring that it is so. The righteously free man has little to no protection against the mob of mean men who, regardless of intentions good or nefarious, would strip a man of his innate freedoms and feed him to the wolves for no other reason than he has asserted his valid claims to life in apparent violation of the broader and perhaps even tacit edict that he "share" that which is rightly his with his "brothers".

We live in a world lousy with mental decay and filth where the majority is quite content to see men with guns vent their rage upon those who serve as reminders to that majority of just how less-than they are; what cowards; what grasping children; what ignorants; what loafers. The mean man hates the superior man precisely because the latter serves as the sorest reminder to the former of just what a low and vile creature is; something less than quite human.

In case you were wondering about my own Frankenstein's Monster, my constitution was constructed of two parts which I called the Nucleus and the Orbit. The Nucleus was immutable, containing the principles of proper human relations and the various derivatives used as the basis of authority. It would include a dictionary of all terms used therein, as well as the ENTIRE body of Law (note the capitalization, vis-a-vis "law"), which was VERY small. It included the fundamental criteria that must be satisfied in order to determine whether an act is a crime. Because none of those things can conceivably change with time and circumstance, they are sacrosanct and immutable. This, of course, would lead many to freak out because they are not free men, but something else. A truly free man accepts the risks of freedom, which can be high - even terminally so. Lesser men, whom I call Weakmen, seek to hedge their bets by placing constraints and other limitations and exceptions upon actual, proper human freedom. The worst of the beasts are those who most closely simulate Freemen and therefore hold the unearned credibility of the Freeman and are thereby so often successful in gaining the acceptance of their corruptions of the landscape of true liberty by the vast legions of Weakmen. THAT is the precise reason for declaring the Nucleus untouchable, because men will by small degrees alter what is immutably correct to better serve their corrupted ends.

The Orbit contained all that was of a changeable nature, with the proviso that nothing therein could in any way violate the protections of the Nucleus, any such violation being null, void, without force of Law, and authorizing any Freeman to take any steps he deems fit to protect himself from trespass by anyone attempting to foist or otherwise enforce such invalid mandates upon him, up to and including killing every individual so acting against him.

Orbital law, or "statute" as I would prefer to label it for the purposes of distinguishing it from Law, might treat things of a privileged nature such as the formation of corporations, again were we to insist on continuing to employ such legal fictions. The way I see it, if one seeks to enjoy some special privilege, and I strongly question the validity of such things, they may also be required to toe a line concomitant with such. If, for example, you choose the protections of the "corporate veil", you may be required to waive certain other basic rights under what might be very specific circumstances, such as the prima facie case of criminal negligence such that your corporate right to privacy is thereby annulled by order of a judge, whose ass would be on the line in the case he were to issue such an order without valid basis.

Under my constitution, "government" would quake in its boots in minute by minute fashion at the very thought of violating the sovereign rights of Freemen with treble sentencing and damages compared with the same crimes committed by non-governmental individuals. There would be no qualified immunities for anyone, at any time, for any reason. You violate, you face the music, circumstance notwithstanding such as "we were at war". If you want to presume to govern, you bear all the attendant risks. That alone would keep "government" tiny. It would keep corruption low because ANY many would be empowered to hold any government official accountable, with the understanding that any false charge brought against a government official would earn one the same treble penalties.

Yes sir, under my constitution, the nation would be a far quieter and more prosperous place, all the while those committing violations of trespass upon their fellows being held their feet to the fire. Conditions would be such that it would so deeply behoove all men to adopt a posture of great caution and circumspection where his treatment of others was concerned. Mannerliness would rapidly become abidingly fashionable and most men would not dare bring injury of any palpable form to his fellows.

That constitution and the social order it would engender might succeed because I believe there are enough people of such cloth to make it so, but there are no guarantees. It could go all wildly wrong, but those are the risks one must accept if he is serious about breaking free from the bonds of pretty slavery (https://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com/2013/04/pretty-slavery-what-it-is-and-how-to.html), which is the worst form of that vile institution and the one into which Americans appear to be so hopelessly locked.

Update:



Actually, it is. By all appearances, it is indefinitely sustainable so long as certain conditions hold.

Osan, I agree with much of what you have written. You wrote that a constitution is a document that offers "the protection and guaranty of the rights of free men against the predations, violations, and other trespasses of their fellows." I agree that this may be the case. But the U.S. Constitution is very particular. It is a Constitution primarily concerned not with rights being stripped away from individuals by other individuals, but primary by the federal government. In other words, the U.S. Constitution is meant to restrain the federal government. It barely has another goal. The federal government could be considered one of the fellows you mention, but it's virtually the only fellow. THe Constitution is eloquent and short because it doesn't grant individuals rights (not as its primary purpose, and not originally), it merely strictly restrains the federal government. State Constitutions may grant some rights and "freedom", but I would argue that this is a very dangerous thing to do, because then someone might imply that everything not listed as a right or freedom of man may be classified as forbidden through law. I prefer the way the U.S. Constitution handled things: it gave just a few things that the federal government could mess with. The rest it must leave alone.

[EricMartin]

NO,,, and None of the original and still recognized post roads were build by the Government.

They were roads build by the people,, from farm to market..

They established such roads as Post Roads.. roads already in existance... and later as they came to be. (expansion)

It was not until after the invention of the automobile that ownership of roads was usurped by governments.

Thank you!

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

I don't see how it is constitutional to ban the melting of coins, a better example of a constitutional activity of this office would be banning the shaving of coins.

Good point.

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

The 4thA guarantees a right to privacy at least to the extent of forbidding unreasonable and unwarranted searches, so long as this board sticks to actual Constitutional rights I see nothing wrong with it.

Yup, that's what I wrote.

[EricMartin]

@EricMartin (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/member.php?u=70500)

I disagree, neutral distribution of information is a necessity in a republic for a properly informed electorate, the current scandals involving liberal social media censoring conservatives demonstrates the perils of privatizing the Post Office, it might even be desirable to have the Post Office provide Internet services bound by the 1stA since that is merely a technological update of its mission.

Killing parcel delivery might be a good idea but since the post office makes most of its money on parcels it would be necessary to fully re-federalize the Post Office and run it with tax money.

Interesting thoughts. I thought this one seemed a little odd, "have the Post Office provide Internet services bound by the 1stA since that is merely a technological update of its mission." I wouldn't remotely trust the government to allow many of the current websites we have today because they might deem them "hateful" or "politically incorrect".

[EricMartin]

If what you're saying is true, than why hasn't the Supreme Court yet incorporated all of rights that the Bill of Rights grants so that the states must uphold those rights as well? The answer, I believe, is that these were never intended to be rights to be enforced upon the states.

[Swordsmyth]

Interesting thoughts. I thought this one seemed a little odd, "have the Post Office provide Internet services bound by the 1stA since that is merely a technological update of its mission." I wouldn't remotely trust the government to allow many of the current websites we have today because they might deem them "hateful" or "politically incorrect".
But would it be allowed to ban them?
The 1stA should forbid the government from censoring anything but criminal content.
We would want private ISPs as well to provide alternatives (and undoubtedly better service) but the post office hasn't ever tried to refuse to mail magazines etc. based on politics.

[Swordsmyth]

If what you're saying is true, than why hasn't the Supreme Court yet incorporated all of rights that the Bill of Rights grants so that the states must uphold those rights as well? The answer, I believe, is that these were never intended to be rights to be enforced upon the states.
Since when has the SCOTUS been particularly interested in obeying the Constitution or preserving the rights of the citizens?
They have always been political even in the early days of the republic.

If most of the BoR is not intended to apply to the states then why is the first part of the 1stA the only part that says "Congress shall make no law"?
Even if that applied to the entire 1stA it should need to be repeated in each amendment after the 1st but it wasn't.
And since the BoR was intended to preserve the rights of the citizens then why would its authors want to allow the states to violate those rights?
If each state disarms its citizens then they won't be able to revolt against the federal government or the state governments.

Some of the colonies had established religions and they didn't want to be forced to give them up, that is the only reason that Congress is specified int the 1stA.

[EricMartin]

But would it be allowed to ban them?
The 1stA should forbid the government from censoring anything but criminal content.
We would want private ISPs as well to provide alternatives (and undoubtedly better service) but the post office hasn't ever tried to refuse to mail magazines etc. based on politics.

Isn't "criminal content" a pretty broad term. Is hate speech criminal? I hate some murderers, rightly or wrongly, but if that is deemed hate speech it could be taken down.

[Swordsmyth]

Isn't "criminal content" a pretty broad term. Is hate speech criminal? I hate some murderers, rightly or wrongly, but if that is deemed hate speech it could be taken down.
"Hate speech" is an unconstitutional concept.
If "Hate Speech" is made criminal then the government will censor all speech everywhere including on private platforms.

But we could go to court against the Post Office to try and enforce the 1stA, we can't do that with private ISPs, platforms etc.

[EricMartin]

Since when has the SCOTUS been particularly interested in obeying the Constitution or preserving the rights of the citizens?
They have always been political even in the early days of the republic.

If most of the BoR is not intended to apply to the states then why is the first part of the 1stA the only part that says "Congress shall make no law"?
Even if that applied to the entire 1stA it should need to be repeated in each amendment after the 1st but it wasn't.
And since the BoR was intended to preserve the rights of the citizens then why would its authors want to allow the states to violate those rights?
If each state disarms its citizens then they won't be able to revolt against the federal government or the state governments.

Some of the colonies had established religions and they didn't want to be forced to give them up, that is the only reason that Congress is specified int the 1stA.

What you're saying, in my mind, is the equivalent of saying that only the first of the enumerated powers were powers of Congress. The rest were just powers.

You wrote, "And since the BoR was intended to preserve the rights of the citizens then why would its authors want to allow the states to violate those rights?" Every or almost every state constitution guarantees the right to bear arms to its citizens. The states were urged to have their own Constitutions for these very reasons... this was not meant to be in the hands of the federal government.

[EricMartin]

"Hate speech" is an unconstitutional concept.
If "Hate Speech" is made criminal then the government will censor all speech everywhere including on private platforms.

But we could go to court against the Post Office to try and enforce the 1stA, we can't do that with private ISPs, platforms etc.

You can't force 1st amend on ISPs, of course. But you can always try to set up your own ISP. Or move to one that is free enough for you. Or worst case, communicate in person.

[Swordsmyth]

What you're saying, in my mind, is the equivalent of saying that only the first of the enumerated powers were powers of Congress. The rest were just powers.
How can "Congress shall make no law" apply to anything beyond the 1stA?
It can be argued that it applies to the whole 1stA:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But the 2ndA has nothing like it and isn't part of the same sentence:

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.


If "Congress shall make no law" applied to anything but the 1stA then the other rights would have been listed as part of the 1stA instead of breaking them up in 10 amendments.




You wrote, "And since the BoR was intended to preserve the rights of the citizens then why would its authors want to allow the states to violate those rights?" Every or almost every state constitution guarantees the right to bear arms to its citizens. The states were urged to have their own Constitutions for these very reasons... this was not meant to be in the hands of the federal government.
Not all state Constitutions had all of the rights in the BoR and new states might not have included any of them.
The rights in the BoR are fundamental GOD given human rights and the founders had no intent to allow the states to violate them. (with the possible exception of the 1stA)
When it was found that some states wanted to violate them the Constitution was amended to apply the BoR to the states specifically because there had been a debate about whether it applied and because the 1stA didn't apply.

[Swordsmyth]

You can't force 1st amend on ISPs, of course. But you can always try to set up your own ISP. Or move to one that is free enough for you. Or worst case, communicate in person.
You could say the same for private postal/courier services but you would be forgetting my argument for the existence of the Post Office.

Neutral distribution of information is vital for the liberty of a republic.

[PAF]

EricMartin

I don't see how it is constitutional to ban the melting of coins, a better example of a constitutional activity of this office would be banning the shaving of coins.


Pennies:

Pre 1982: solid copper = $.02+ : keep.

1982+: zinc - pretty much worthless = <$.01 : melt down, make bullets - you just increased the value.

[Swordsmyth]

Pennies:

Pre 1982: solid copper = $.02+ : keep.

1982+: zinc - pretty much worthless = <$.01 : melt down, make bullets - you just increased the value.
Nickles are the best value, they haven't changed their composition.

[PAF]

Nickles are the best value, they haven't changed their composition.


Which is why I suggested melting 1982+ pennies down into ammo ;-)

[EricMartin]

How can "Congress shall make no law" apply to anything beyond the 1stA?
It can be argued that it applies to the whole 1stA:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But the 2ndA has nothing like it and isn't part of the same sentence:

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.


If "Congress shall make no law" applied to anything but the 1stA then the other rights would have been listed as part of the 1stA instead of breaking them up in 10 amendments.



Not all state Constitutions had all of the rights in the BoR and new states might not have included any of them.
The rights in the BoR are fundamental GOD given human rights and the founders had no intent to allow the states to violate them. (with the possible exception of the 1stA)
When it was found that some states wanted to violate them the Constitution was amended to apply the BoR to the states specifically because there had been a debate about whether it applied and because the 1stA didn't apply.

I simply disagree with your interpretation. I believe in the original intent as the way to interpret, and I believe the original intent was for the Bill of Rights to almost entirely apply to the federal government, and not to the states. I do not think what you're writing was the original intent. I think you believe more in following the Constitution as it's written, but I believe the founders wanted us to follow it based on the meaning they intended for it. I think we have a difference in opinion, and that's ok.

[Swordsmyth]

I simply disagree with your interpretation. I believe in the original intent as the way to interpret, and I believe the original intent was for the Bill of Rights to almost entirely apply to the federal government, and not to the states. I do not think what you're writing was the original intent. I think you believe more in following the Constitution as it's written, but I believe the founders wanted us to follow it based on the meaning they intended for it. I think we have a difference in opinion, and that's ok.
I believe that if they wanted to only limit the federal government with amendments 2-10 they would have specified that as they did in the 1stA.

But even if that is what they intended then I will say that we need to exceed them, the rights in the BoR are fundamental GOD given rights and no level of government should be allowed to violate them, it is immoral to allow it.

The founders were not perfect and we should build on the foundation they provided where their original structure was inadequate.

[EricMartin]

I believe that if they wanted to only limit the federal government with amendments 2-10 they would have specified that as they did in the 1stA.

But even if that is what they intended then I will say that we need to exceed them, the rights in the BoR are fundamental GOD given rights and no level of government should be allowed to violate them, it is immoral to allow it.

The founders were not perfect and we should build on the foundation they provided where their original structure was inadequate.

I definitely agree that we should build on the Constitution where inadequate! I think amendments are the way to do it.

[Swordsmyth]

I definitely agree that we should build on the Constitution where inadequate! I think amendments are the way to do it.

And because the 1st didn't apply to the states and just in case the 2nd-10th didn't apply to the states the 14th was added to make the whole BoR apply to the states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;

[EricMartin]

And because the 1st didn't apply to the states and just in case the 2nd-10th didn't apply to the states the 14th was added to make the whole BoR apply to the states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;

That can be interpreted many ways.

[Swordsmyth]

That can be interpreted many ways.
What was the original intent?
That is the standard you have chosen.

[osan]

Osan, I agree with much of what you have written. You wrote that a constitution is a document that offers "the protection and guaranty of the rights of free men against the predations, violations, and other trespasses of their fellows." I agree that this may be the case. But the U.S. Constitution is very particular. It is a Constitution primarily concerned not with rights being stripped away from individuals by other individuals, but primary by the federal government.

Allow me to gently point out that there is no such thing as the "federal government", save as a mental abstraction floating around within the confines of human skulls. "Federal Government" is a script, replete with roles, instructions, lines, and specifications of behavior to which some people subscribe. That's it. It's not the buildings, the equipment, the black-letter "law", or anything one cares to name. It is an idea and nothing more, being made manifest through human action. Stop the actions and <POOF!!> - it disappears from one millisecond to the next, as if into thin air.

My point is that what you have asserted here is problematic in that it tends to lead people into the mental trap of regarding "federal government" as something real in itself, rather than fellow human beings playing bit parts in a play and in accord with a script that most often ruins the live quality of the lives of a great majority of people who call themselves "American".

It behooves every man to understand this and bear it centrally in our awareness any time the topic of "government" or "the state" comes up for discussion or other consideration.


In other words, the U.S. Constitution is meant to restrain the federal government.

That is the common theory, but I don't buy it.

The BoR, to me, serves a far broader purpose. It is a laundry list of requirements, of necessary conditions the onus of which falls upon any state joining the Union. IOW, if you want to be in the club, these conditions and rules must you meet and by which you must abide at all times. If we are to be a free land, these are the protections that must be in full force, and if you want to be in the club, then you must agree to become a free land. Period. There is no possibility that state sovereignty extends to the establishment of a hard-line Leninist-style communist architecture. If that is what you choose for yourselves, then you must leave the Union and forfeit all the benefits of membership.

This is not rocket surgery and is so painfully obvious as the intent of the Framers that I can barely believe that nearly everyone misses it. Note that NOWHERE in the Constitution is the BoR specified as applying to the fedgov only. The right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed... Does it make any structural sense to architect a land where the fedgov may not infringe upon the right, yet the states may? No. It makes no sense to provide avenues of tyranny one way, while making such noise and effort to deny them another. BoR speaks directly and very explicitly to the protection and guaranty of human rights and not the limitation of "government", save as a negative restriction pursuant to those protections and guarantees.


It barely has another goal. The federal government could be considered one of the fellows you mention, but it's virtually the only fellow.

I agree with part the first, but must depart with you on part the second. Consider how nonsensical it is. A nation, conceived in LIBERTY. How, pray anyone explain, could such a nation admit a sovereign tyranny into its fold and expect that to work out well? I will not declare it impossible, but will state that it is not likely.


THe Constitution is eloquent and short because it doesn't grant individuals rights

It is decidedly NOT eloquent, but it is elegant. To that I say, SO WHAT? I care no whit for elegance and brevity, but for clarity, correctness, conciseness, and completeness. The Constitution falls very short on these, save for concision. It is an insufficient document in the context of the rottenness of the mean human being, who has proven himself without fail over the millennia to be a scurrilous cad, a bounder, and overall beastly creature whose personal corruptions must be acknowledged no matter how "nice" be may superficially seem, and against which the vigilance of his fellows must be perpetual.

Given this, language sufficient to allow even a single individual an avenue to hold at bay millions becomes necessary. The Constitution provides no such mechanisms - at least not with clarity, and that is where the document fails most deeply. It is precisely due to semantic vagary that politicians and lawyers have been able to engage in such chicanery that has resulted in the gross diminution of our rights and the great flourishing of the manifold tyrannies that beset us.


it merely strictly restrains the federal government.

Certainly portions do that. The BoR does not do only that - it declares its recognition and pledges its protections and guaranty of ALL human rights and demands the states follow suit. Otherwise, "conceived in liberty" becomes empty words.


State Constitutions may grant some rights and "freedom",

Granting "freedom" directly implies that men do not own themselves, but rather are owned by third parties. The absurdity of this should be plain to anyone, save perhaps the most hopelessly stupid among us.


I prefer the way the U.S. Constitution handled things: it gave just a few things that the federal government could mess with. The rest it must leave alone.

And yet, it does not leave the rest alone. It meddles in ever deeper measure and nobody is stopping it. Things are going in the wrong direction.

My point is that with a constitution that is sufficient on Monday, a single man may stand his ground against an entire nation precisely because the scoundrels will be unable to violate him without exposing themselves. By Friday, of course, the quality of the people may have deteriorated ito the point where nobody will care about such exposures. Thus the admonitions about free people having to be moral and smart. This is why no constitution can protect anyone, in itself. But it can provide the explicit conceptual framework by which true people, if they remain so, will support the liberties of their fellows as their own precisely because to protect the freedom of others is to protect one's own.

The Constitution overestimates the average man, even in the 18th century. How much more so in the 21st.

[EricMartin]

I agree with part the first, but must depart with you on part the second. Consider how nonsensical it is. A nation, conceived in LIBERTY. How, pray anyone explain, could such a nation admit a sovereign tyranny into its fold and expect that to work out well? I will not declare it impossible, but will state that it is not likely.

Yes, it was implied and as I recall specifically asked of the states to be republics with their own constitutions before they would be admitted to the Union. But I don't think this was a major goal of the Constitution. The major goal of the Constitution was to provide a framework for the states to cede a small amount of power to a federal government that would be shared among several states, and then make sure the federal government did not do a thing more than that which was explicitly ceded to it. This stronger Federal government was thought of as necessary since the Articles of Confederation provided no way to adequately tax.


The Constitution overestimates the average man, even in the 18th century. How much more so in the 21st.

I'm not sure that it does overestimate them. It wasn't intended for the average. It was intended for the very best who would be the ones swearing or affirming to uphold it. The problem is that today the very best are in business or the nonprofit sector for the most part. Politics is largely the realm of foolish, sheep-like things who are ignorant at best, and evil at worst. Ron Paul is the biggest exception to that, with perhaps a few others.

[osan]

Yes, it was implied and as I recall specifically asked of the states to be republics with their own constitutions before they would be admitted to the Union.

Strongly implied. Unmistakably so.


But I don't think this was a major goal of the Constitution.

Au contraire, mon frere... I think it was indeed a major goal. As I wrote previously, without such conditions, the Union makes no sense and "conceived in liberty" becomes mere and farcical words.


The major goal of the Constitution was to provide a framework for the states to cede a small amount of power to a federal government that would be shared among several states, and then make sure the federal government did not do a thing more than that which was explicitly ceded to it. This stronger Federal government was thought of as necessary since the Articles of Confederation provided no way to adequately tax.

That was YET ANOTHER major goal. The Constitution set forth several major goals, any one of which represented an absolutely monumental departure from anything that had come prior in all the history of human civilization. The totality of those goals represented something truly wild and wonderful, but I reiterate and stand by my assertion that the instrument of expression was and remains hopelessly naive and thereby weak. If only the average man were a quantum nobler than currently we find him; if only the Gaussian were narrower. But they aren't and it isn't. Therefore, America.


I'm not sure that it does overestimate them.

I would love to see your basis for this. Seriously. I may have missed something.


It wasn't intended for the average.

And THAT is precisely why it has failed so miserably.


It was intended for the very best who would be the ones swearing or affirming to uphold it.

https://mentalunrest.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/img_20180701_205813.jpg


Need I say more?


The problem is that today... Politics is largely the realm of foolish, sheep-like things who are ignorant at best, and evil at worst. Ron Paul is the biggest exception to that, with perhaps a few others.

And with this, you make my points for me. Thank you sir.

:) / :(

[Swordsmyth]

That can be interpreted many ways.


What was the original intent?
That is the standard you have chosen.


Justice Thomas, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the Court that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the right to keep and bear arms set forth in the Second Amendment “fully applicable to the States.” Ante, at 1. I write separately because I believe there is a more straightforward path to this conclusion, one that is more faithful to the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history.
Applying what is now a well-settled test, the plurality opinion concludes that the right to keep and bear arms applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because it is “fundamental” to the American “scheme of ordered liberty,” ante, at 19 (citing Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/391/145/index.html), 149 (1968)), and “ ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,’ ” ante, at 19(quoting Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/521/702/index.html), 721 (1997)). I agree with that description of the right. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to “process.” Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.


More at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/



Two questions still remain, both provoked by the textual similarity between §1’s Privileges or Immunities Clause and Article IV, §2. The first involves the nature of the rights at stake: Are the privileges or immunities of “citizens of the United States” recognized by §1 the same as the privileges and immunities of “citizens in the several States” to which Article IV, §2 refers? The second involves the restriction imposed on the States: Does §1, like Article IV, §2, prohibit only discrimination with respect to certain rights if the State chooses to recognize them, or does it require States to recognize those rights? I address each question in turn.

B

I start with the nature of the rights that §1’s Privileges or Immunities Clause protects. Section 1 overruled Dred Scott’s holding that blacks were not citizens of either the United States or their own State and, thus, did not enjoy “the privileges and immunities of citizens” embodied in the Constitution. 19 How., at 417. The Court in Dred Scott did not distinguish between privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States and citizens in the several States, instead referring to the rights of citizens generally. It did, however, give examples of what the rights of citizens were—the constitutionally enumerated rights of “the full liberty of speech” and the right “to keep and carry arms.” Ibid.

Section 1 protects the rights of citizens “of the United States” specifically. The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that the privileges and immunities of such citizens included individual rights enumerated in the Constitution, including the right to keep and bear arms.

1

Nineteenth-century treaties through which the United States acquired territory from other sovereigns routinely promised inhabitants of the newly acquired territories that they would enjoy all of the “rights,” “privileges,” and “immunities” of United States citizens. See, e.g., Treaty of Amity, Settlement, and Limits, Art. 6, Feb. 22, 1819, 8 Stat. 256–258, T. S. No. 327 (entered into force Feb. 19, 1821) (cession of Florida) (“The inhabitants of the territories which his Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States, by this Treaty, shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment of all the privileges, rights, and immunities, of the citizens of the United States” (emphasis added)).[Footnote 7 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F7)] Commentators of the time explained that the rights and immunities of “citizens of the United States” recognized in these treaties “undoubtedly mean[t] those privileges that are common to all citizens of this republic.” Marcus, An Examination of the Expediency and Constitutionality of Prohibiting Slavery in the State of Missouri 17 (1819). It is therefore altogether unsurprising that several of these treaties identify liberties enumerated in the Constitution as privileges and immunities common to all United States citizens.

For example, the Louisiana Cession Act of 1803, which codified a treaty between the United States and France culminating in the Louisiana Purchase, provided that

“The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyments of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the religion which they profess.” Treaty Between the United States of America and the French Republic, Art. III, Apr. 30, 1803, 8 Stat. 202, T. S. No. 86 (emphasis added).[Footnote 8 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F8)]

The Louisiana Cession Act reveals even more about the privileges and immunities of United States citizenship because it provoked an extensive public debate on the meaning of that term. In 1820, when the Missouri Territory (which the United States acquired through the Cession Act) sought to enter the Union as a new State, a debate ensued over whether to prohibit slavery within Missouri as a condition of its admission. Some congressmen argued that prohibiting slavery in Missouri would deprive its inhabitants of the “privileges and immunities” they had been promised by the Cession Act. See, e.g., 35 Annals of Cong. 1083 (1855) (remarks of Kentucky Rep. Hardin). But those who opposed slavery in Missouri argued that the right to hold slaves was merely a matter of state property law, not one of the privileges and immunities of United States citizenship guaranteed by the Act.[Footnote 9 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F9)]
Daniel Webster was among the leading proponents of the antislavery position. In his “Memorial to Congress,” Webster argued that “[t]he rights, advantages and immunities here spoken of must . . . be such as are recognized or communicated by the Constitution of the United States,” not the “rights, advantages and immunities, derived exclusively from the State governments . . . .” D. Webster, A Memorial to the Congress of the United States on the Subject of Restraining the Increase of Slavery in New States to be Admitted into the Union 15 (Dec. 15, 1819) (emphasis added). “The obvious meaning” of the Act, in Webster’s view, was that “the rights derived under the federal Constitution shall be enjoyed by the inhabitants of [the territory].” Id., at 15–16 (emphasis added). In other words, Webster articulated a distinction between the rights of United States citizenship and the rights of state citizenship, and argued that the former included those rights “recognized or communicated by the Constitution.” Since the right to hold slaves was not mentioned in the Constitution, it was not a right of federal citizenship.
Webster and his allies ultimately lost the debate over slavery in Missouri and the territory was admitted as a slave State as part of the now-famous Missouri Compromise. Missouri Enabling Act of March 6, 1820, ch. 22, §8, 3 Stat. 548. But their arguments continued to inform public understanding of the privileges and immunities of United States citizenship. In 1854, Webster’s Memorial was republished in a pamphlet discussing the Nation’s next major debate on slavery—the proposed repeal of the Missouri Compromise through the Kansas-Nebraska Act, see The Nebraska Question: Comprising Speeches in the United States Senate: Together with the History of the Missouri Compromise 9–12 (1854). It was published again in 1857 in a collection of famous American speeches. See The Political Text-Book, or Encyclopedia: Containing Everything Necessary for the Reference of the Politicians and Statesmen of the United States 601–604 (M. Cluskey ed. 1857); see also Lash, 98 Geo. L. J., at 1294–1296 (describing Webster’s arguments and their influence).

2

Evidence from the political branches in the years leading to the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption demonstrates broad public understanding that the privileges and immunities of United States citizenship included rights set forth in the Constitution, just as Webster and his allies had argued. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation granting amnesty to former Confederates, guaranteeing “to all and to every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion, a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason . . . with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws which have been made in pursuance thereof.” 15 Stat. 712.

Records from the 39th Congress further support this understanding.

a

After the Civil War, Congress established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction to investigate circumstances in the Southern States and to determine whether, and on what conditions, those States should be readmitted to the Union. See Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 6, 30 (1865) (hereinafter 39th Cong. Globe); M. Curtis, No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights 57 (1986) (hereinafter Curtis). That Committee would ultimately recommend the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, justifying its recommendation by submitting a report to Congress that extensively catalogued the abuses of civil rights in the former slave States and argued that “adequate security for future peace and safety . . . can only be found in such changes of the organic law as shall determine the civil rights and privileges of all citizens in all parts of the republic.” See Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, S. Rep. No. 112, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 15 (1866); H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. XXI (1866).

As the Court notes, the Committee’s Report “was widely reprinted in the press and distributed by members of the 39th Congress to their constituents.” Ante, at 24; B. Kendrick, Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction 264–265 (1914) (noting that 150,000 copies of the Report were printed and that it was widely distributed as a campaign document in the election of 1866). In addition, newspaper coverage suggests that the wider public was aware of the Committee’s work even before the Report was issued. For example, the Fort Wayne Daily Democrat (which appears to have been unsupportive of the Committee’s work) paraphrased a motion instructing the Committee to

“enquire into [the] expediency of amending the Constitution of the United States so as to declare with greater certainty the power of Congress to enforce and determine by appropriate legislation all the guarantees contained in that instrument.” The ****** Congress!, Fort Wayne Daily Democrat, Feb. 1, 1866, p. 4 (emphasis added).

b

Statements made by Members of Congress leading up to, and during, the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment point in the same direction. The record of these debates has been combed before. See Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/332/46/index.html), 92–110 (1947) (Appendix to dissenting opinion of Black, J.) (concluding that the debates support the conclusion that §1 was understood to incorporate the Bill of Rights against the States); ante, at 14, n. 9, 26–27, n. 23, (opinion of the Court) (counting the debates among other evidence that §1 applies the Second Amendment against the States). Before considering that record here, it is important to clarify its relevance. When interpreting constitutional text, the goal is to discern the most likely public understanding of a particular provision at the time it was adopted. Statements by legislators can assist in this process to the extent they demonstrate the manner in which the public used or understood a particular word or phrase. They can further assist to the extent there is evidence that these statements were disseminated to the public. In other words, this evidence is useful not because it demonstrates what the draftsmen of the text may have been thinking, but only insofar as it illuminates what the public understood the words chosen by the draftsmen to mean.

(1)

Three speeches stand out as particularly significant. Representative John Bingham, the principal draftsman of §1, delivered a speech on the floor of the House in February 1866 introducing his first draft of the provision. Bingham began by discussing Barron and its holding that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States. He then argued that a constitutional amendment was necessary to provide “an express grant of power in Congress to enforce by penal enactment these great canons of the supreme law, securing to all the citizens in every State all the privileges and immunities of citizens, and to all the people all the sacred rights of person.” 39th Cong. Globe 1089–1090 (1866). Bingham emphasized that §1 was designed “to arm the Congress of the United States, by the consent of the people of the United States, with the power to enforce the bill of rights as it stands in the Constitution today. It ‘hath that extent—no more.’ ” Id., at 1088.

Bingham’s speech was printed in pamphlet form and broadly distributed in 1866 under the title, “One Country, One Constitution, and One People,” and the subtitle, “In Support of the Proposed Amendment to Enforce the Bill of Rights.”[Footnote 10 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F10)] Newspapersalsoreported his proposal, with the New York Times providing particularly extensive coverage, including a full reproduction of Bingham’s first draft of §1 and his remarks that a constitutional amendment to “enforc[e]” the “immortal bill of rights” was “absolutely essential to American nationality.” N. Y. Times, Feb. 27, 1866, p. 8.
Bingham’s first draft of §1 was different from the version ultimately adopted. Of particular importance, the first draft grantedCongress the “power to make all laws … necessary and proper to secure” the “citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States,” rather than restricting state power to “abridge” the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.[Footnote 11 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F11)] 39th Cong. Globe 1088.
That draft was met with objections, which the Timescovered extensively. A front-page article hailed the “Clear and Forcible Speech” by Representative Robert Hale against the draft, explaining—and endorsing—Hale’s view that Bingham’s proposal would “confer upon Congress all the rights and power of legislation now reserved to the States” and would “in effect utterly obliterate State rights and State authority over their own internal affairs.”[Footnote 12 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F12)] N. Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1866, p. 1.
Critically, Hale did not object to the draft insofar as it purported to protect constitutional liberties against state interference. Indeed, Hale stated that he believed (incorrectly in light of Barron) that individual rights enumerated in the Constitution were already enforceable against the States. See 39th Cong. Globe 1064 (“I have, somehow or other, gone along with the impression that there is that sort of protection thrown over us in some way, whether with or without the sanction of a judicial decision that we are so protected”); see N. Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1866, at 1. Hale’s misperception was not uncommon among members of the Reconstruction generation. See infra, at 38–40. But that is secondary to the point that the Times’coverage of this debate over §1’s meaning suggests public awareness of its main contours—i.e., that §1 would, at a minimum, enforce constitutionally enumerated rights of United States citizens against the States.
Bingham’s draft was tabled for several months. In the interim, he delivered a second well-publicized speech, again arguing that a constitutional amendment was required to give Congress the power to enforce the Bill of Rights against the States. That speech was printed in pamphlet form, see Speech of Hon. John A. Bingham, of Ohio, on the Civil Rights Bill, Mar. 9, 1866 (Cong. Globe); see 39th Cong. Globe 1837 (remarks of Rep. Lawrence) (noting that the speech was “extensively published”), and the New York Times covered the speech on its front page. Thirty-Ninth Congress, N. Y. Times, Mar. 10, 1866, p. 1.
By the time the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment resumed, Bingham had amended his draft of §1 to include the text of the Privileges or Immunities Clause that was ultimately adopted. Senator Jacob Howard introduced the new draft on the floor of the Senate in the third speech relevant here. Howard explained that the Constitution recognized “a mass of privileges, immunities, and rights, some of them secured by the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution, . . . some by the first eight amendments of the Constitution,” and that “there is no power given in the Constitution to enforce and to carry out any of these guarantees” against the States. 39th Cong. Globe 2765. Howard then stated that “the great object” of §1 was to “restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees.” Id., at 2766. Section 1, he indicated, imposed “a general prohibition upon all the States, as such, from abridging the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the United States.” Id., at 2765.
In describing these rights, Howard explained that they included “the privileges and immunities spoken of” in Article IV, §2. Id., at 2765. Although he did not catalogue the precise “nature” or “extent” of those rights, he thought “Corfield v. Coryell” provided a useful description. Howard then submitted that

“[t]o these privileges and immunities, whatever they may be— . . . should be added the personal rights guarantied and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as the freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances, [and] . . . the right to keep and to bear arms.” Ibid. (emphasis added).

News of Howard’s speech was carried in major newspapers across the country, including the New York Herald, see N. Y. Herald, May 24, 1866, p. 1, which was the best-selling paper in the Nation at that time, see A. Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction 187 (1998) (hereinafter Amar).[Footnote 13 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F13)] The New York Times carried the speech as well, reprinting a lengthy excerpt of Howard’s remarks, including the statements quoted above. N. Y. Times, May 24, 1866, p. 1. The following day’s Timeseditorialized on Howard’s speech, predicting that “[t]o this, the first section of the amendment, the Union party throughout the country will yield a ready acquiescence, and the South could offer no justifiable resistance,” suggesting that Bingham’s narrower second draft had not been met with the same objections that Hale had raised against the first. N. Y. Times, May 25, 1866, p. 4.
As a whole, these well-circulated speeches indicate that §1 was understood to enforce constitutionally declared rights against the States, and they provide no suggestion that any language in the section other than the Privileges or Immunities Clause would accomplish that task.

(2)

When read against this backdrop, the civil rights legislation adopted by the 39th Congress in 1866 further supports this view. Between passing the Thirteenth Amendment—which outlawed slavery alone—and the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress passed two significant pieces of legislation. The first was the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which provided that “all persons born in the United States” were “citizens of the United States” and that “such citizens, of every race and color, . . . shall have the same right” to, among other things, “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens.” Ch. 31, §1, 14 Stat. 27.
Both proponents and opponents of this Act described it as providing the “privileges” of citizenship to freedmen, and defined those privileges to include constitutional rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms. See 39th Cong. Globe 474 (remarks of Sen. Trumbull) (stating that the “the late slaveholding States” had enacted laws “depriving persons of African descent of privileges which are essential to freemen,” including “prohibit any negro or mulatto from having fire-arms” and stating that “[t]he purpose of the bill under consideration is to destroy all these discriminations”); id., at 1266–1267 (remarks of Rep. Raymond) (opposing the Act, but recognizing that to “[m]ake a colored man a citizen of the United States” would guarantee to him, inter alia, “a defined status . . . a right to defend himself and his wife and children; a right to bear arms”).
Three months later, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, which also entitled all citizens to the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty” and “personal security.” Act of July 16, 1866, ch. 200, §14, 14 Stat. 176. The Act stated expressly that the rights of personal liberty and security protected by the Act “includ[ed] the constitutional right to bear arms.” Ibid.

(3)

There is much else in the legislative record. Many statements by Members of Congress corroborate the view that the Privileges or Immunities Clause enforced constitutionally enumerated rights against the States. See Curtis 112 (collecting examples). I am not aware of any statement that directly refutes that proposition. That said, the record of the debates—like most legislative history—is less than crystal clear. In particular, much ambiguity derives from the fact that at least several Members described §1 as protecting the privileges and immunities of citizens “in the several States,” harkening back to Article IV, §2. See supra, at 28–29 (describing Sen. Howard’s speech).These statements can be read to support the view that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects some or all the fundamental rights of “citizens” described in Corfield. They can also be read to support the view that the Privileges or Immunities Clause, like Article IV, §2, prohibits only state discrimination with respect to those rights it covers, but does not deprive States of the power to deny those rights to all citizens equally.

I examine the rest of the historical record with this understanding. But for purposes of discerning what the public most likely thought the Privileges or Immunities Clause to mean, it is significant that the most widely publicized statements by the legislators who voted on §1—Bingham, Howard, and even Hale—point unambiguously toward the conclusion that the Privileges or Immunities Clause enforces at least those fundamental rights enumerated in the Constitution against the States, including the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

3

Interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment in the period immediately following its ratification help to establish the public understanding of the text at the time of its adoption.

Some of these interpretations come from Members of Congress. During an 1871 debate on a bill to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, Representative Henry Dawes listed the Constitution’s first eight Amendments, including “the right to keep and bear arms,” before explaining that after the Civil War, the country “gave the most grand of all these rights, privileges, and immunities, by one single amendment to the Constitution, to four millions of American citizens” who formerly were slaves. Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 475–476 (1871). “It is all these,” Dawes explained, “which are comprehended in the words ‘American citizen.’ ” Ibid.; see also id.,at 334 (remarks of Rep. Hoar) (stating that the Privileges or Immunities Clause referred to those rights “declared to belong to the citizen by the Constitution itself”). Even opponents of Fourteenth Amendment enforcement legislation acknowledged that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected constitutionally enumerated individual rights. See 2 Cong. Rec. 384–385 (1874) (remarks of Rep. Mills) (opposing enforcement law, but acknowledging, in referring to the Bill of Rights, that “[t]hese first amendments and some provisions of the Constitution of like import embrace the ‘privileges and immunities’ of citizenship as set forth in article 4, section 2 of the Constitution and in the fourteenth amendment” (emphasis added)); see Curtis 166–170 (collecting examples).
Legislation passed in furtherance of the Fourteenth Amendment demonstrates even more clearly this understanding. For example, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13, which was titled in pertinent part “An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,” and which is codified in the still-existing 42 U. S. C. §1983. That statute prohibits state officials from depriving citizens of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” Rev. Stat. 1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983 (emphasis added). Although the Judiciary ignored this provision for decades after its enactment, this Court has come to interpret the statute, unremarkably in light of its text, as protecting constitutionally enumerated rights. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/365/167/index.html), 171 (1961).
A Federal Court of Appeals decision written by a future Justice of this Court adopted the same understanding of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. See, e.g., United States v. Hall, 26 F. Cas. 79, 82 (No. 15,282) (CC SD Ala. 1871) (Woods, J.) (“We think, therefore, that the . . . rights enumerated in the first eight articles of amendment to the constitution of the United States, are the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States”). In addition, two of the era’s major constitutional treatises reflected the understanding that §1 would protect constitutionally enumerated rights from state abridgment.[Footnote 14 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F14)] A third such treatise unambiguously indicates that the Privileges or Immunities Clause accomplished this task. G. Paschal, The Constitution of the United States 290 (1868) (explaining that the rights listed in §1 had “already been guarantied” by Article IV and the Bill of Rights, but that “[t]he new feature declared” by §1 was that these rights, “which had been construed to apply only to the national government, are thus imposed upon the States”).
Another example of public understanding comes from United States Attorney Daniel Corbin’s statement in an 1871 Ku Klux Klan prosecution. Corbin cited Barron and declared:

“[T]he fourteenth amendment changes all that theory, and lays the same restriction upon the States that before lay upon the Congress of the United States—that, as Congress heretofore could not interfere with the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms, now, after the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, the State cannot interfere with the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. The right to keep and bear arms is included in the fourteenth amendment, under ‘privileges and immunities.’ ” Proceedings in the Ku Klux Trials at Columbia, S. C., in the United States Circuit Court, November Term, 1871, p. 147 (1872).

*  *  *

This evidence plainly shows that the ratifying public understood the Privileges or Immunities Clause to protect constitutionally enumerated rights, including the right to keep and bear arms. As the Court demonstrates, there can be no doubt that §1 was understood to enforce the Second Amendment against the States. See ante, at 22–33. In my view, this is because the right to keep and bear arms was understood to be a privilege of American citizenship guaranteed by the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

C

The next question is whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause merely prohibits States from discriminating among citizens if they recognize the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms, or whether the Clause requires States to recognize the right. The municipal respondents, Chicago and Oak Park, argue for the former interpretation. They contend that the Second Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth, authorizes a State to impose an outright ban on handgun possession such as the ones at issue here so long as a State applies it to all citizens equally.[Footnote 15 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F15)] The Court explains why this antidiscrimination-only reading of §1 as a whole is “implausible.” Ante, at 31 (citing Brief for Municipal Respondents 64). I agree, but because I think it is the Privileges or Immunities Clause that applies this right to the States, I must explain why this Clause in particular protects against more than just state discrimination, and in fact establishes a minimum baseline of rights for all American citizens.

1

I begin, again, with the text. The Privileges or Immunities Clause opens with the command that “[I]No State shall” abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Amdt. 14, §1 (emphasis added). The very same phrase opens Article I, §10 of the Constitution, which prohibits the States from “pass any Bill of Attainder” or “ex post facto Law,” among other things. Article I, §10 is one of the few constitutional provisions that limits state authority. In Barron, when Chief Justice Marshall interpreted the Bill of Rights as lacking “plain and intelligible language” restricting state power to infringe upon individual liberties, he pointed to Article I, §10 as an example of text that would have accomplished that task. 7 Pet., at 250. Indeed, Chief Justice Marshall would later describe Article I, §10 as “a bill of rights for the people of each state.” [I]Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87, 138 (1810). Thus, the fact that the Privileges or Immunities Clause uses the command “[n]o State shall”—which Article IV, §2 does not—strongly suggests that the former imposes a greater restriction on state power than the latter.
This interpretation is strengthened when one considers that the Privileges or Immunities Clause uses the verb “abridge,” rather than “discriminate,” to describe the limit it imposes on state authority. The Webster’s dictionary in use at the time of Reconstruction defines the word “abridge” to mean “[t]o deprive; to cut off; . . . as, to abridge one of his rights.” Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, at 6. The Clause is thus best understood to impose a limitation on state power to infringe upon pre-existing substantive rights. It raises no indication that the Framers of the Clause used the word “abridge” to prohibit only discrimination.

This most natural textual reading is underscored by a well-publicized revision to the Fourteenth Amendment that the Reconstruction Congress rejected. After several Southern States refused to ratify the Amendment, President Johnson met with their Governors to draft a compromise. N. Y. Times, Feb. 5, 1867, p. 5. Their proposal eliminated Congress’ power to enforce the Amendment (granted in §5), and replaced the Privileges or Immunities Clause in §1 with the following:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the States in which they reside, and the Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” Draft reprinted in 1 Documentary History of Reconstruction 240 (W. Fleming ed. 1950) (hereinafter Fleming).

Significantly, this proposal removed the “[n]o State shall” directive and the verb “abridge” from §1, andalso changed the class of rights to be protected from those belonging to “citizens of the United States” to those of the “citizens in the several States.” This phrasing is materially indistinguishable from Article IV, §2, which generally was understood as an antidiscrimination provision alone. See supra, at 15–18. The proposal thus strongly indicates that at least the President of the United States and several southern Governors thought that the Privileges or Immunities Clause, which they unsuccessfully tried to revise, prohibited more than just state-sponsored discrimination.

2

The argument that the Privileges or Immunities Clause prohibits no more than discrimination often is followed by a claim that public discussion of the Clause, and of §1 generally, was not extensive. Because of this, the argument goes, §1 must not have been understood to accomplish such a significant task as subjecting States to federal enforcement of a minimum baseline of rights. That argument overlooks critical aspects of the Nation’s history that underscored the need for, and wide agreement upon, federal enforcement of constitutionally enumerated rights against the States, including the right to keep and bear arms.

a

I turn first to public debate at the time of ratification. It is true that the congressional debates over §1 were relatively brief. It is also true that there is little evidence of extensive debate in the States. Many state legislatures did not keep records of their debates, and the few records that do exist reveal only modest discussion. See Curtis 145. These facts are not surprising.

First, however consequential we consider the question today, the nationalization of constitutional rights was not the most controversial aspect of the Fourteenth Amendment at the time of its ratification. The Nation had just endured a tumultuous civil war, and §§2, 3, and 4—which reduced the representation of States that denied voting rights to blacks, deprived most former Confederate officers of the power to hold elective office, and required States to disavow Confederate war debts—were far more polarizing and consumed far more political attention. See Wildenthal 1600; Hardy, Original Popular Understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment as Reflected in the Print Media of 1866–1868, 30 Whittier L. Rev. 695, 699 (2009).
Second, the congressional debates on the Fourteenth Amendment reveal that many representatives, and probably many citizens, believed that the Thirteenth Amendment, the 1866 Civil Rights legislation, or some combination of the two, had already enforced constitutional rights against the States. Justice Black’s dissent in Adamson chronicles this point in detail. 332 U. S., at 107–108 (Appendix to dissenting opinion). Regardless of whether that understanding was accurate as a matter of constitutional law, it helps to explain why Congressmen had little to say during the debates about §1. See ibid.
Third, while Barron made plain that the Bill of Rights was not legally enforceable against the States, see supra, at 2, the significance of that holding should not be overstated. Like the Framers, see supra, at 14–15, many 19th-century Americans understood the Bill of Rights to declare inalienable rights that pre-existed all government. Thus, even though the Bill of Rights technically applied only to the Federal Government, many believed that it declared rights that no legitimate government could abridge.
Chief Justice Henry Lumpkin’s decision for the Georgia Supreme Court in Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243 (1846), illustrates this view. In assessing state power to regulate firearm possession, Lumpkin wrote that he was “aware that it has been decided, that [the Second Amendment], like other amendments adopted at the same time, is a restriction upon the government of the United States, and does not extend to the individual States.” Id., at 250. But he still considered the right to keep and bear arms as “an unalienable right, which lies at the bottom of every free government,” and thus found the States bound to honor it. Ibid. Other state courts adopted similar positions with respect to the right to keep and bear arms and other enumerated rights.[Footnote 16 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F16)] Some courts even suggested that the protections in the Bill of Rights were legally enforceable against the States, Barron notwithstanding.[Footnote 17 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F17)] A prominent treatise of the era took the same position. W. Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America 124–125 (2d ed. 1829) (reprint 2009) (arguing that certain of the first eight Amendments “appl[y] to the state legislatures” because those Amendments “form parts of the declared rights of the people, of which neither the state powers nor those of the Union can ever deprive them”); id., at 125–126 (describing the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms” as “a restraint on both” Congress and the States); see also Heller, 554 U. S., at __ (slip op., at 34) (describing Rawle’s treatise as “influential”). Certain abolitionist leaders adhered to this view as well. Lysander Spooner championed the popular abolitionist argument that slavery was inconsistent with constitutional principles, citing as evidence the fact that it deprived black Americans of the “natural right of all men ‘to keep and bear arms’ for their personal defence,” which he believed the Constitution “prohibit[ed] both Congress and the State governments from infringing.” L. Spooner, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery 98 (1860).
In sum, some appear to have believed that the Bill of Rights did apply to the States, even though this Court had squarely rejected that theory. See, e.g., supra,at 27–28 (recounting Rep. Hale’s argument to this effect). Many others believed that the liberties codified in the Bill of Rights were ones that no State should abridge, even though they understood that the Bill technically did not apply to States. These beliefs, combined with the fact that most state constitutions recognized many, if not all, of the individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, made the need for federal enforcement of constitutional liberties against the States an afterthought......

...
After the Civil War, Southern anxiety about an uprising among the newly freed slaves peaked. As Representative Thaddeus Stevens is reported to have said, “[w]hen it was first proposed to free the slaves, and arm the blacks, did not half the nation tremble? The prim conservatives, the snobs, and the male waiting-maids in Congress, were in hysterics.” K. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877, p. 104 (1965) (hereinafter Era of Reconstruction).

As the Court explains, this fear led to “systematic efforts” in the “old Confederacy” to disarm the more than 180,000 freedmen who had served in the Union Army, as well as other free blacks. See ante, at 23. Some States formally prohibited blacks from possessing firearms. Ante, at 23–24 (quoting 1865 Miss. Laws p. 165, §1, reprinted in 1 Fleming 289). Others enacted legislation prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms without a license, a restriction not imposed on whites. See, e.g., La. Statute of 1865, reprinted in [I]id., at 280. Additionally, “[t]hroughout the South, armed parties, often consisting of ex-Confederate soldiers serving in the state militias, forcibly took firearms from newly freed slaves.” Ante, at 24.
As the Court makes crystal clear, if the Fourteenth Amendment “had outlawed only those laws that discriminate on the basis of race or previous condition of servitude, African-Americans in the South would likely have remained vulnerable to attack by many of their worst abusers: the state militia and state peace officers.” Ante, at 32. In the years following the Civil War, a law banning firearm possession outright “would have been nondiscriminatory only in the formal sense,” for it would have “left firearms in the hands of the militia and local peace officers.” Ibid.
Evidence suggests that the public understood this at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The publicly circulated Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction extensively detailed these abuses, see ante, at 23–24 (collecting examples), and statements by citizens indicate that they looked to the Committee to provide a federal solution to this problem, see, e.g., 39th Cong. Globe 337 (remarks of Rep. Sumner) (introducing “a memorial from the colored citizens of the State of South Carolina” asking for, inter alia, “constitutional protection in keeping arms, in holding public assemblies, and in complete liberty of speech and of the press”).
One way in which the Federal Government responded was to issue military orders countermanding Southern arms legislation. See, e.g.,Jan. 17, 1866, order from Major General D. E. Sickles, reprinted in E. McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction 37 (1871) (“The constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed”). The significance of these steps was not lost on those they were designed to protect. After one such order was issued, The Christian Recorder, published by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, published the following editorial:

“ ‘We have several times alluded to the fact that the Constitution of the United States, guaranties to every citizen the right to keep and bear arms. . . . All men, without the distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families, or themselves.’
“We are glad to learn that [the] Commissioner for this State . . . has given freedmen to understand that they have as good a right to keep fire arms as any other citizens. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, and we will be governed by that at present.” Right to Bear Arms, Christian Recorder (Phila.), Feb. 24, 1866, pp. 29–30.

The same month, The Loyal Georgian carried a letter to the editor asking “Have colored persons a right to own and carry fire arms?—A Colored Citizen.” The editors responded as follows:

“Almost every day, we are asked questions similar to the above. We answer certainly you have the same right to own and carry fire arms that other citizens have. You are not only free but citizens of the United States and, as such, entitled to the same privileges granted to other citizens by the Constitution of the United States.

.     .     .     .     .
“. . . Article II, of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States, gives the people the right to bear arms and states that this right shall not be infringed. . . . All men, without distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families or themselves.” Letter to the Editor, Loyal Georgian (Augusta), Feb. 3, 1866, p. 3.

These statements are consistent with the arguments of abolitionists during the antebellum era that slavery, and the slave States’ efforts to retain it, violated the constitutional rights of individuals—rights the abolitionists described as among the privileges and immunities of citizenship. See, e.g.,J. Tiffany, Treatise on the Unconstitutionality of American Slavery 56 (1849) (reprint 1969) (“pledg . . . to see that all the rights, privileges, and immunities, granted by the constitution of the United States, are extended to all”); id., at 99 (describing the “right to keep and bear arms” as one of those rights secured by “the constitution of the United States”). The problem abolitionists sought to remedy was that, under Dred Scott, blacks were not entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens under the Federal Constitution and that, in many States, whatever inalienable rights state law recognized did not apply to blacks. See, e.g., [I]Cooper v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 72 (1848) (deciding, just two years after Chief Justice Lumpkin’s opinion in Nunn recognizing the right to keep and bear arms, see supra, at 39, that “[f]ree persons of color have never been recognized here as citizens; they are not entitled to bear arms”).
Section 1 guaranteed the rights of citizenship in the United States and in the several States without regard to race. But it was understood that liberty would be assured little protection if §1 left each State to decide which privileges or immunities of United States citizenship it would protect. As Frederick Douglass explained before §1’s adoption, “the Legislatures of the South can take from him the right to keep and bear arms, as they can—they would not allow a negro to walk with a cane where I came from, they would not allow five of them to assemble together.” In What New Skin Will the Old Snake Come Forth? An Address Delivered in New York, New York, May 10, 1865, reprinted in 4 The Frederick Douglass Papers 79, 83–84 (J. Blassingame & J. McKivigan eds., 1991) (footnote omitted). “Notwithstanding the provision in the Constitution of the United States, that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged,” Douglass explained that “the black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms.” Id., at 84. Absent a constitutional amendment to enforce that right against the States, he insisted that “the work of the Abolitionists [wa]s not finished.” Ibid.
This history confirms what the text of the Privileges or Immunities Clause most naturally suggests: Consistent with its command that “[n]o State shall … abridge” the rights of United States citizens, the Clause establishes a minimum baseline of federal rights, and the constitutional right to keep and bear arms plainly was among them.[Footnote 19 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F19)] ...

...

[Swordsmyth]

...There was noreason to interpret the Privileges or Immunities Clause as putting the Court to the extreme choice of interpreting the “privileges and immunities” of federal citizenship to mean either all thoserights listed in Corfield, or almost no rights at all. 16 Wall., at 76. The record is scant that the public understood the Clause to make the Federal Government “a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States” as the Slaughter-House majority feared. Id., at 78. For one thing, Corfield listed the “elective franchise” as one of the privileges and immunities of “citizens of the several states,” 6 F. Cas., at 552, yet Congress and the States still found it necessary to adopt the Fifteenth Amendment—which protects “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote”—two years after the Fourteenth Amendment’s passage. If the Privileges or Immunities Clause were understood to protect every conceivable civil right from state abridgment, the Fifteenth Amendment would have been redundant.

The better view, in light of the States and Federal Government’s shared history of recognizing certain inalienable rights in their citizens, is that the privileges and immunities of state and federal citizenship overlap. This is not to say that the privileges and immunities of state and federal citizenship are the same. At the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, States performed many more functions than the Federal Government, and it is unlikely that, simply by referring to “privileges or immunities,” the Framers of §1 meant to transfer every right mentioned in Corfield to congressional oversight. As discussed, “privileges” and “immunities” were understood only as synonyms for “rights.” See supra, at 9–11. It was their attachment to a particular group that gave them content, and the text and history recounted here indicate that the rights of United States citizens were not perfectly identical to the rights of citizens “in the several States.” Justice Swayne, one of the dissenters in Slaughter-House, made the point clear:


“The citizen of a State has the same fundamental rights as a citizen of the United States, and also certain others, local in their character, arising from his relation to the State, and in addition, those which belong to the citizen of the United States, he being in that relation also. There may thus be a double citizenship, each having some rights peculiar to itself. It is only over those which belong to the citizen of the United States that the category here in question throws the shield of its protection.” 16 Wall., at 126 (emphasis added).


Because the privileges and immunities of American citizenship include rights enumerated in the Constitution, they overlap to at least some extent with the privileges and immunities traditionally recognized in citizens in the several States.

A separate question is whether the privileges and immunities of American citizenship include any rights besides those enumerated in the Constitution. The four dissenting Justices in Slaughter-House would have held that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected the unenumerated right that the butchers in that case asserted. See id., at 83 (Field, J., dissenting); id., at 111 (Bradley, J., dissenting); id., at 124 (Swayne, J., dissenting). Because this case does not involve an unenumerated right, it is not necessary to resolve the question whether the Clause protects such rights, or whether the Court’s judgment in Slaughter-House was correct.

Still, it is argued that the mere possibility that the Privileges or Immunities Clause may enforce unenumerated rights against the States creates “ ‘special hazards’ ” that should prevent this Court from returning to the original meaning of the Clause.[Footnote 21 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/742/#F21)] Post, at 3 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Ironically, the same objection applies to the Court’s substantive due process jurisprudence, which illustrates the risks of granting judges broad discretion to recognize individual constitutional rights in the absence of textual or historical guideposts. But I see no reason to assume that such hazards apply to the Privileges or Immunities Clause. The mere fact that the Clause does not expressly list the rights it protects does not render it incapable of principled judicial application. The Constitution contains many provisions that require an examination of more than just constitutional text to determine whether a particular act is within Congress’ power or is otherwise prohibited. See, e.g., Art. I, §8, cl. 18 (Necessary and Proper Clause); Amdt. 8 (Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause). When the inquiry focuses on what the ratifying era understood the Privileges or Immunities Clause to mean, interpreting it should be no more “hazardous” than interpreting these other constitutional provisions by using the same approach. To be sure, interpreting the Privileges or Immunities Clause may produce hard questions. But they will have the advantage of being questions the Constitution asks us to answer. I believe those questions are more worthy of this Court’s attention—and far more likely to yield discernable answers—than the substantive due process questions the Court has for years created on its own, with neither textual nor historical support.

Finding these impediments to returning to the original meaning overstated, I reject Slaughter-House insofar as it precludes any overlap between the privileges and immunities of state and federal citizenship...

...
In my view, the record makes plain that the Framers of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the ratifying-era public understood—just as the Framers of the Second Amendment did—that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty. The record makes equally plain that they deemed this right necessary to include in the minimum baseline of federal rights that the Privileges or Immunities Clause established in the wake of the War over slavery. There is nothing about Cruikshank’s contrary holding that warrants its retention.


*  *  *

I agree with the Court that the Second Amendment is fully applicable to the States. I do so because the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment as a privilege of American citizenship.

...

[EricMartin]

"I agree with the Court that the Second Amendment is fully applicable to the States." Is that you? I don't agree with the court in the least. For example, if, as the court, you're going to say it's a right then you shouldn't let a city like Baltimore ban some weapons: "Baltimore is the most dangerous city in America, according to a new study by USA Today (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/19/homicides-toll-big-u-s-cities-2017/302763002/), with 55.8 murders per 100,000 residents. In spite of that fact, the Maryland Democratic Party is touting the “assault weapons ban” the party implemented in 2013 as a way to raise money. “Will USA follow MD’s lead?” asks a fundraising email from Maryland Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathleen Matthews." https://dailycaller.com/2018/03/02/democrats-tout-baltimore-gun-control/

[Swordsmyth]

"I agree with the Court that the Second Amendment is fully applicable to the States." Is that you? I don't agree with the court in the least. For example, if, as the court, you're going to say it's a right then you shouldn't let a city like Baltimore ban some weapons: "Baltimore is the most dangerous city in America, according to a new study by USA Today (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/19/homicides-toll-big-u-s-cities-2017/302763002/), with 55.8 murders per 100,000 residents. In spite of that fact, the Maryland Democratic Party is touting the “assault weapons ban” the party implemented in 2013 as a way to raise money. “Will USA follow MD’s lead?” asks a fundraising email from Maryland Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathleen Matthews." https://dailycaller.com/2018/03/02/democrats-tout-baltimore-gun-control/
That is all from Thomas' ruling which can be found at the link provided and which demonstrates that the 14thA was intended to apply the BoR to the states.

I agree with Thomas, Baltimore should NOT be able to ban some weapons and any ban makes the safety of its citizens decrease aside from the fact that it violates their rights.

[EricMartin]

Thank you all for your comments, arguments, and replies. Now, the biggest struggle for me is getting the message of Liberation Day to the masses. If anyone knows the right person to introduce me to so that I can get this book in front of them, or if anyone has another way of spreading the message of this book, please let me know.

One of the goals of the free version of the book was to get it out there more, and to get it indexed by Google's search engine. I got it out there somewhat more, with some free downloads, but it seems that the indexing by Google isn't that great to find a random quote from the middle of the book. Because of these reasons, I'm retiring the free version of the book, at least for now. It seems that quite a few of you have the free version of the book, which is great. You can now find the book in physical and digital form here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069204809X/

If there's anyway that you can help me to get this book in front of more readers, please let me know. Thanks!

[Swordsmyth]

Thank you all for your comments, arguments, and replies. Now, the biggest struggle for me is getting the message of Liberation Day to the masses. If anyone knows the right person to introduce me to so that I can get this book in front of them, or if anyone has another way of spreading the message of this book, please let me know.

One of the goals of the free version of the book was to get it out there more, and to get it indexed by Google's search engine. I got it out there somewhat more, with some free downloads, but it seems that the indexing by Google isn't that great to find a random quote from the middle of the book. Because of these reasons, I'm retiring the free version of the book, at least for now. It seems that quite a few of you have the free version of the book, which is great. You can now find the book in physical and digital form here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069204809X/

If there's anyway that you can help me to get this book in front of more readers, please let me know. Thanks!
You might contact the John Birch Society and see if they are interested in distributing it.

[EricMartin]

You might contact the John Birch Society and see if they are interested in distributing it.

Good idea! I've tried reaching out to them before, I think via email. Do you or does anyone know a better way to reach out to them? I don't recall having any luck last time. Thanks!

[Swordsmyth]

Good idea! I've tried reaching out to them before, I think via email. Do you or does anyone know a better way to reach out to them? I don't recall having any luck last time. Thanks!
You could try their publication "The New American", back when I subscribed to their print magazine they replied to my letters several times.



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