I’m trying to piece together what the overall theme of Section 9 is. The first three clauses seem to address legal matters, the next four seem to address taxes and duties, and the final one, titles of nobility. Obviously, all clauses dictate how the law works, but only the first three address the law directly, whereas the rest only imply what the law can and cannot do; that being said, the first three can be split into the first clause, which addresses slavery (although not directly: the phrasing “Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” covers pretty much any immigrant, maybe even any foreign visitor), and the next two clauses, which address how to prosecute felonies. Clauses 5 and 6 can be paired together as addressing how to regulate commerce between the States.
Section 10 almost seems like an abridged version of Section 9 (except applying to the States as opposed to the feds). Here it is:
Okay, Article I done!
The rest of the Articles are relatively short compare to the first, so each one won’t take as long (although collectively I think they’re longer than the first). Then the Amendments! (Isn’t everyone excited?! ).
But before that, I need to finished reading the wiki article on Shay’s Rebellion. We can have a short “intermission” and discuss it.
Eh, it’s a wee bit more complicated than that, but slavery in the US is more complicated than most people want to acknowledge in the first place. At the time we killed a couple of people for attempting to traffic in slaves… But, yes, that is one note point. Thomas Sowell has written a crazy amount about Slavery, attempting to understand the complicated nature of it… My favorite line: [url=http://www.creators.com/conservative/thomas-sowell/filtering-history.html]
Source linked[/url]
Sure. Though the second half has created a load of problems. “Invasion of the public safety” is vague. “Cases of Rebellion” only a little less so.
It’s an interesting aspect of law. Another aspect is if we declare legal a past crime, we still do not let the violators off… For exactly the same reason.
I think they have a separation between federal and state, so yes, no federal tax may be laid on a state to state transition.
yesh
That and, you can’t spend money on something unless a law is passed to allow you to do so. Remember, these laws are meant to curtail the government, not the other way around. Banning Cigarettes at this time frame would be seen as absurd, what people do to themselves is not within the bounds of the government.
Yes, cuz fuck nobles.
The whole thing is to tell government what it is allowed to do. Not the people of the united states… Start from that premise and it makes a lot more sense.
They are allowed to work together, they are just not allowed to be discriminatory to other states, ie, Texas and Colorado cannot enter into special rules with each other, excluding other states. Additionally, they didn’t want a state (or set of states) to enter into contracts with other nations.
After the failure of the Articles of Confederation, this was specifically not allowed. It was one of the reasons for it’s failure. Disproportionate economic isn’t as big a deal as so many give it credit. In this case it is so that the states would honor depts. One of the things that caused Shay’s Rebellion is that the soldiers got back and were not being paid the money they were owed, and so could not pay the money they owed… (Though I think a portion can be associated with the problem with specialization. When all you have is a hammer everything is a nail, many of the rebels had effectively only ever known being a soldier.)
Because the inspectors wish to get paid. That is something that costs.
This does reduce the chance they would do such a thing, right…
Yes, it puts the power for importation and exportation strictly within the hands of the federal government.
Sadly, no.
The federal government is in charge of exchanges between the states, note, this says nothing about the people of the states. The states alone.
I am enjoying this. I’ve never done this before, so it’s fun.
You might want to check out other sources as well. Remember Wiki can’t be edited by just any idiot, it takes a special kind of idiot.
Which shows an astute awareness of the difference between the law and morality. Society may not consider it right that so-and-so went to prison for such-and-such crime, which may be why so many lobbyists pushed to repeal the law which he broke (hypothetically), and succeeded, but that doesn’t change the fact that he broke the law at the time.
Speaking of repeals, this clause obviously doesn’t bar anyone from repealing the sentence as opposed to the law itself, so if there really was a great moral outcry about the unfair sentencing of so-and-so, there is still a chance to undo the damage.
Yeah, I read that article but I’m still a little confused, probably because the clause seems to be alluding to Section II above it, and my questions about the apportionment of taxes went unanswered:
If I can understand this, it might be more clear.
The article you linked me to says:
When it says that a State with twice the population will pay twice the taxes, they mean in absolute figures, right (as opposed to twice the tax rate)? (Which makes me say: well, duh!). But then how can the more populous State have a smaller share of the national tax base? Is this considering income and spending levels? For example, if you and I both have to pay a 10% tax on income, that doesn’t mean we’ll pay exactly the same amount in taxes because I may make less than you. Similar with spending. But then what sense does it make to say: twice the population, twice the taxes (i.e. in terms of absolute dollars)?
And what makes these taxes “dangerous” or “politically difficult”?
If I can get my question on tax rates answered, this might begin to make a bit more sense.
Right, you can’t just reach into people’s pockets and rob them. But the way it’s worded, it sounds like such taxes must adhere to the “Census or Enumeration herein”–again, if I understood how taxes relates to this, I think it would all make sense.
You mean in order to uphold a law? I recall a wise man once telling me that laws don’t “allow” you to do things, they only prevent. Or is this concept reversed at the level of government?
Yeah, that makes sense out of the “Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” part, but still, Section 9 as a whole seems more like a random grouping of extraneous clauses (and maybe that’s exactly what they are, which is why they come at the end of Article I, Section 10 repeating them in condensed form for the States themselves).
Ah, I see.
So let me get this straight–if the States are allowed to print their own currency, they can print enough to pay off debts, but at the cost of the value of the dollar?
Why were gold and silver acceptable?
Oh yeah, duh.
Well, I assume they get to pay their inspectors (as you so eloquently pointed out above) and cover other costs, but are they saying that any profit over and above that goes straight to the federal coffers? Without a profit, it would indeed reduce the chances that they would impose import and export taxes, if that’s what you’re saying.
So it’s saying: if you guys want any dealings with each other, you gotta go through us. Is that right? And by the States alone, you mean State governments, right?
I see where this is going. They’re trying to put a few restraints on unbridled State power. No dealings with each other unless it’s through us, no discriminatory colluding amongst a few States to the exclusion of others, no raising an army, no printing of your own currency… ← All these would be ways in which the States could gain the upper hand over the federal government (are you sure the prohibition against States printing their own currency isn’t about preventing unbalanced economic power?). While I appreciate the point that the Constitution is intended to place limits on governmental power, it must be able to exact some power over the States if it is to function as a government at all (and moreover, these last two Sections could be in the same spirit of limiting government except at the State level. ← Those are governments too).
Well, at least someone’s having fun.
Yeah, a clever idiot.
Way ahead of you there. It is an excellent source, isn’t it?
Okay, let’s have a little discussion on Shays’ Rebellion…
Based on my research, Shays’ Rebellion, in a nut shell, was a citizen’s revolt against first the Massachusetts government and then the United State federal government in response to unreasonably harsh debt collection policies. Citizens, particularly veterans of the American Revolution, couldn’t pay their debts because they themselves couldn’t be paid for their war-time efforts. The federal government, having no or very little (I forget) in the way of financial reserves because they imposed no or very little (I forget which) taxes, and therefore could not afford to pay soldiers for their efforts in the war. When it came time to pay their debts in turn, these war veterans therefore came up short and were persecuted harshly by debt collectors. Daniel Shays staged a rebellion against the Massachusetts government and then later against the federal government. The rebellion was eventually put down in 1787, and almost immediately, in response to the perceived inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation which were believed to have allowed for the circumstances culminating in the rebellion, efforts were made to redraft it and later rename it to the American Constitution.
That’s it in a nutshell. I have to be honest and admit that I’m not sure I got my facts right–I might be missing some important details and mis-stating others–but this is what I recollect from my research. The point is, Shays Rebellion had a fundamental impact on instigating the drafting of the Constitution and shaping it into its original form.
The impression I get is that Federalists (those pushing for Constitutional reform) felt the federal government should have been able to do something more effective about the rebellion if not prevent it in the first place.
One of the key factors, many believed, responsible for initiating the rebellion was the deficiency in federal reserves that could have been used to pay war veterans for their services and thus allow them to pay their debts. Thus, more strongly enforced taxation was needed by the federal government, they thought. ← This is where you get a lot of the rules about taxation.
The right of States to demand felons back from other States to which they escaped was prompted by the rebellion, specifically by the fact that that’s how many of the rebels escaped persecution.
The idea of a single executive (the President) was also prompted by the rebellion, namely to place executive power into more centralized hands, thus making the federal government stronger.
The take home message I get is that Shays Rebellion was a wake up call to many, signaling the need for a stronger, more centralized, federal government. The way I interpret this is that the whole goal of the American Revolution, the whole point of establishing America, was to have a government designed to allow for and nourish as much freedom for its citizens as practically possible without it imploding on itself. What Shays Rebellion proved was that the first attempt at this, with the Articles of Confederation, missed the mark–it made for a government that allowed too much freedom, a government that could not step in and establish law and order, and preserve the peace. (It reminds me of Einstein’s quote: “Things ought to be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” ← Replace simplicity with freedom and you get the picture.) Thus, the Federalists realized an adjustment needed to be made and that a redraft of the Articles was in order.
So freedom is a balance. A government with some level of power is needed. Too little and you get rebellions like Shays’; too much, and you get the current state of Marxist domination that our Conservative friends here have enlightened us about.
But it makes me wonder: what do we say about a reaction by the government to an uprising of disaffected people geared towards increasing the power of the government such that it is more able to put down or prevent such uprisings in the future? History is always told by the winners. I wonder how Shays would have told the story. Would he say that the new Constitution gave the government just the right amount of power to be exactly that which America needed? Or would he say that the rebellion was completely justified and a stronger, more centralized, government built for the purpose of crushing or preventing such rebellions should they arise again is a blow to freedom and an insult to the American people? To be fair, however, the new Constitution granted legislation the right to impose tax laws, not as means to be tyrants, not as a means to gouge the people for the sake of satisfying greed, but to enable the government to pay people, soldiers in this case, what they are owed, and thereby eliminate any reason for the people to be disaffected with the government or for authorities, like debt collectors, to come down harshly on the people for things out of their control. But still, it stands to question whether a government that aims to make itself stronger and more centralized every time the people rise up and rebel against it is incontestably a good thing.
Something else it makes me wonder: what alternatives would there be for government to collect the money necessary to get things done? In my research, I learned that, at least at the time, borrowing money abroad was out of the question as almost all countries refused to extend lines of credit. Consulting my own thoughts, I wonder how feasible it would be for government to invest in startup businesses. I guess they need the money to do this in the first place, but what about after a while of collecting taxes? They certainly have enough to do it today. Anyone can produce things, provide services, even politicians, so why don’t they? Why don’t they fulfill a public demand for something, for some service, and thereby collect money from people willing to pay for it? They would have to make such business successful enough to make a profit that could not only be put back into that businesses for furthering itself, but could be spent on things that have nothing to do with the business–like running a government–which doesn’t include filling the personal pockets of those politicians who own and run the businesses, at least not over and above a standard salary. I know this is called Crony Capitalism, but the question I’m asking is: could it be a feasible alternative to taxes, another way for government to make the money it needs to do its job?
I’ll see if I can find the reference. Sorry, I don’t know off the top of my head.
yes’m
Yeah, keep in mind no computers to keep track of percentages, it was easier to tax a flat sum based on population… At least that’s what I would gather.
Just that resource manipulation by the government, tax based or otherwise must have a rule passed through legislators.
Period, government officials cannot reach into government coffers and spend the money, without a law allowing them to do so. They
have to seek permission first, in effect.
Uhh, I’m not sure that has anything to do with what I said. Yet at the same time it is a really interesting subject. The value of anything is subjective, and having other currency would not directly decrease the value of the dollar, anymore than printing more dollars does, and a state that printed too much money would simply result in people using the us dollar, rather than the state currency… There is an old saying, bad money chases out good. The best representation I’ve been shown is that of cigarettes, in prison. The shittier cigarettes are the ones that get passed around the most, while the good ones get saved, either for smoking, or because of their higher value. We would see state money competing, in a sense, with the US dollar, which would give less control to the federal government… But, I would be easy to convince, this was simply a lack of understanding of economics on the founders part. Many people like to forget how long it has taken us to get where we are with understanding, even of things like algebra, which was not easy to figure out. Economics has the same kind of history, impeded so much more so by the results being less palatable.
This would be part of why I say it’s a misunderstanding on there part… ALL things are acceptable. Currency is just a tool to make the process easier.
lol, they are called the small things because of how easy they are to miss.
It is what I am saying.
Yes, states alone, though, this particular section has been abused over the years to make it one of the most frustrating aspects of the Constitution. They’ve used it as an excuse to lay down some piles of nonsense. FDR particularly made use of this.
I would guess it is more about keeping the ease of which the people of the states deal with each other. Think how much easier it is in Europe, having one currency… No attempting to figure out exchange values…
Yeah, that all seems to match up with my understanding of Shay’s rebellion.
Very little in my exposure, Taxes are one of the two inevitable things for a reason.
The government then would be a competitor, with the ability to limit other competitors. They would have motivation to limit the abilities of others to compete. They would work to become a monopoly, and the first basic rule of monopolies is, they produce less at higher costs (This is why they are such a bad thing).
I question that they should, let alone, do. If they have more money than they should, then they should be lowering taxes, not taking it in and using it in a manor that is not suited towards the business of government. As to do, we are deep, deep in dept right now. It’s sort of a huge problem.
Because they can demand everyone buy it, regardless of its use. At one point, the English government taxed beer this way, requiring every amount of beer having a substance in it. That only the government could produce… This wouldn’t just be filling public demand, it would be taxes. If they were in charge of producing typewriters, we may have never gotten a single computer, because they are competitors… And it could be justified, without those taxes, we wouldn’t have a military…
You nailed it, this would become the worst sort of Crony Capitalism, and everyone would suffer. The separation of government and capitalism should be the same distance as government and religion… Far enough that we all understand there is a dividing line…
So $X per district per year? But then what does the article mean by “even if the more populous state’s share of the national tax base were smaller”? How could it be smaller?
Taxing per district is kind of a new concept for me. It means the greater the population, the less the tax burden on each individual head, until you break into the next block of 30,000 when all of a sudden, everyone’s taxes double.
So what about maintaining an navy (Section 8 )? If the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, then it would seem any spending on the navy is permitted by law. So if Congress wanted to build a new air craft carrier, could they just go ahead an do that? Or does a law need to be passed for every little decision detail on a case by case basis?
Right, I think I’m conflating two thoughts here: how a State printing money would affect the value of the US dollar vs. how a State printing its own currency would affect the value of the US dollar. In any case, the clause prohibits both. The reason I brought up the scenario of the States printing money to pay off debts is that the clause that prohibits this seems based on those during the rebellion who wanted the State to do just that. I forget what I read: did any State government print money? ← I took that to be what you were getting at. No?
So you mean, at the time, there was the going currency, and then there was gold and silver… and that’s it (from their limited understanding).
Well, you know, it made me think of another motive: job creation! If there’s ever a surplus of restless unemployed inspection workers, the government can create a new import tax and create inspection jobs (this may discourage other countries from shipping to you guys though, but it would ensure better quality products coming into your country).
True, but the EU doesn’t ban other European currencies.
I have no doubt you’re right, Eric. I thought I’d throw it out there anyway in the anticipation that someone more knowledgeable in these matters than I would pick up on it and either tear it to shreds or see some potential in it. But I knew all the while that this was crony capitalism and that was bad. I wasn’t sure if it was worse than taxation, however.
But the question still lingers: are there any means, other than taxation, for government to get the cash needed to get things done? What did they rely on during the interim between the Articles of Confederation and the American Constitution? Charitable donations?
Well, I haven’t had a chance to get into Article II yet, but I have come to a couple insights based on Article I that I’d like to share with you. In a nutshell, they are that 1) the American Constitution, as the supreme law of the land, really is one of a kind, at least at the time of its inception, for a very good reason, and 2) this reason explains something to me that hadn’t occurred to me before–something about the difference between a republic and a democracy. I mean, I always knew what the difference was in principle–one is a term signifying the ownership of the government/state by the people and/or that the government is made up of the people, the other a term signifying a political decision making process, particularly decisions on who gets to be leader, that gives the final say on such decisions to the people. What I didn’t know was how you could have a republic without a democracy, but now I’m seeing a potential mechanism that may keep them separate.
So I said that the American Constitution, at least at its inception, was really one of a kind? How so? It was the first, to my knowledge, that structured the law such that it regulated the government, not the people. I think this is a key insight, a very key insight, and particularly that this was the genius of the founding fathers. No constitution before that time (or government if constitutions as such didn’t exist before that) was ever directed at the government. Instead, the supreme law of the land (which ever land that was) was imposed by government on the people. But the American Constitution was the first of its kind, to my knowledge, that completely flipped that around and imposed legal limits on the government such that the people could be, as much as possible, free to live their lives how they wished.
The second insight is how this might (although I can’t quite say guarantee) hint at a way to have a republic without a democracy. I always thought that if you’re going to have a stable, enduring republic, you have to have some kind of democratic process–at the very least, a process by which your leaders are periodically elected according to a popular vote. Otherwise, you’d have a leader in office for life (even if he was elected), and that means (even if elected), he would have no motive or concern for maintaining some degree of accountability. I mean, with re-elections, with the possibility of impeachment, with competing parties, with the prospect of one day becoming a common citizen again, there are still plenty of consequences for unscrupulous behavior that an elected official ought to take seriously. But without these things, a leader, once in power, can allow that power to corrupt him to the point of becoming a monster. And then who’s republic is it? Certainly not the people’s–which is to say not a republic at all.
Bu insight 1)–that the Constitution of America is design to orient the law towards the government rather than the people–hints at another mechanism by which the government can “belong” to the people. The law, so long as it’s understood, recognized as legitimate, and enforced, is a very powerful tool that can be used on whomever it applies to. And a supreme law that applies to the government–so long as the people recognize, legitimize, and enforce it (with personnel already employed to do the enforcing)–can keep the government in check and accountable for their actions, thereby ensuring (to the best of the law’s ability) that they remain faithful to the people. This too would preserve a republic as a republic, or at least be very effective towards that end.
But I only say it might be feasible as a mechanism for maintaining a republic independently of a democratic element. The key requirement would be, as I said, that the law that promises this somehow be recognized, legitimized, and enforced by the people–somehow–sort of like a cage that keeps the government confined, but a cage that must always be vigilantly watched over and maintained. What I worry about is that, without the democratic element, this cage will eventually erode or that the government it confines will find secret ways to escape. At least with democracy, you have an additional mechanism, about as effective as the government-oriented legal system that the Constitution is, for keeping elected officials accountable and in check (for the reasons I outlined). Without this, all the people have is the law, and they must impose this law on those who are in power for life–which may be enough, but I fear may not be.
This may be a point for discussion: can a supreme legal system geared towards limiting the government and preserving the people’s freedom be enough to maintain a republic without a democratic element?
This whole thing with Sections 9 and 10 of Article I–where the federal government lays down the law on State governments–this coupled with the aftermath of Shays’ Rebellion–tells me that the framers of the Constitution of the United States understood that while the nation as a whole was to remain a republic, the relation between the feds and the States had to be a dictatorship–the federal government had to dictate to the State governments what they could and couldn’t do–no printing money, no direct interactions between State governments, no raising an army–which, as I said earlier, is keeping within the spirit of the Constitution: governments, even State governments, need to be limited (although, to be fair, it’s actually the Constitution itself which imposes these limitations on State governments, not the feds, but it does give the feds more power).
I say this is a consequence of Shays’ Rebellion because what the feds learnt from that experience is that if you don’t monitor the States and have some measure of control over how they’re running things, you could get things like rebellions, revolts, and even revolutions (Massachusetts obviously didn’t handle things too well).
And you have to remember, they didn’t just walk on the Massachusetts government, but the feds too. The impulse to impose more control was a panic reaction on the part of the feds. ← This should be remembered–it means the Constitution was slapped together not long after a political panic.
I even remember reading about Samuel Adams’ proposal that rebellion in a republic, as opposed to a monarchy, be punishable by death. ← This just goes to show the length people will go to, even those in power, when threatened by a violent mob–imposing the same draconian measures as those they fought against only a decade earlier, only justified with a new conceptual twist.
I think, overall, the decision to impose a dictatorship on State governments was a wise choice given the circumstances of the time–in fact, it’s ingenious: it’s a way of imposing dictatorial control without that control actually reaching the people–thereby preserving the republic.
Ok, I had a good long break (been really busy) and I’m ready to get back into the thick of the American Constitution.
We left off concluding Article I and then briefly touched on Sheys’ Rebellion. Now I’d like to resume with Article II (hey, it would make more sense than resuming with Article III ).
But rather than start off by look at the Constitution itself, I would like to look at the wiki article on the American Constitution (because, well, like I said from the beginning, I’m using the wiki article as a guide, and this will give us a rough gloss on Article II from which to start).
So here I go copying and pasting the snippet, interleaving it with my thoughts in my favorite color, blue:
I’m sure most or all of these questions and comments will be addressed as we go through Article II, and I will do my research along side this.
Well, God dammit! I’ve ignored this thread long enough.
It’s definitely NOT because I’m losing interest. On the contrary, I want (almost desperately) to get back into the thick of it. It’s just that in the past, oh, 3 weeks or so, I’ve worked at least 230 hours. If you do the math, you’ll quickly figure out that I’m being worked to the bone. Just last week alone, I worked 83 hours. I’d start work at about 8:00 every day and quit between 9:30 and 10:30 each day of the week. I’d work at least a full 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday too. So I’ve had no time.
Suffice it to say, we’re going through a rough spell at work (tough economy, two people quit on us, and we’re desperate to please one of our Patron Clients–Alberta Health)–so we’re being over worked.
But God dammit, I’m not going to sacrifice this Friday to another neglect of one of my favorite pastimes: ILP.
It’s 1:06 on a Friday night (well, Saturday morning I guess), and I’m a bit drunk I have to warn you, but FUCK!!!–I’m going to keep this thread alive if it kills me!
So, anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, we just went through Section I of Article II. Let’s move on to Section II (it’s all I have time for right now):
These two sections are relatively straight forward, so I have no comments on them except this:
When it says “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment…” does it mean: shall be removed from office if impeached, or does it mean: shall be removed from office and the means shall be impeachment?
The Heritage Guide to The Constitution explains the vagueness of “good Behavior” as being for the sake of “the foundation stone for the independent judiciary in the American tripartite system of government,” meaning that the Constitution cannot dictate what “good Behavior” is supposed to mean if the judiciary is to function as an independent branch of government, and that it is up to the men and women within that branch to decide what counts as good behavior (after which point it functions as a binding contract).
The Heritage Guide explains this oddly phrased clause as follows:
I’ve been omitting to post my thoughts on the Wikipedia article on each Article, but I haven’t been neglecting to read it. I just don’t think, at this point, that going through a thorough analysis of the Wikipedia article on top of the Constitution is necessary.
Section 1:
In other words, if someone is convicted of a crime in Virginia, and that person makes his way into North Carolina, the NC State government must also recognize his status as criminal.
I suppose this applies to a person’s innocence as well: if, for example, littering were illegal in North Carolina but not in Virginia, then even if a person litters in Virginia and then makes his way across the border, the State government of North Carolina must regard him as innocent.
Section 2:
I sounds like it’s harkening to slavery. If a slave escapes into a free State, he can’t thereby proclaim himself free in the eyes of the law. He is to be returned to his owner in the State from which he fled upon the owner’s claim.
Sections 3:
^^ Not sure what this last part means: How would one construe something in the Constitution to “Prejudice” any claims of the United States. Does it mean claims to the territories? And if the Constitution were construed to prejudice such claims, then such claims become null and void?
And what about the claims “of any particular State”? Wasn’t there a great deal of confusion and unclarity about who really had a claim to the territories, or certain parts of it? So how could both claims–that of the federal government and of a particular State–remain unprejudiced?
Section 4:
What’s being guaranteed here? That the federal government will maintain a republican form for the sake of the States, or that the federal government will see to it that each State government take and maintain a republican form?
I finally got a question answered that I asked earlier in this thread: Does each state have its own legislature? The wiki article on Article V definitively says they do.
Now onto Article V:
That’s Article V, short and succinct.
So essentially, there are two conditions under which amendments to the Constitution may be proposed: 1) if 2/3 of the House of Representatives and the Senate motion for it, or 2) if 2/3 of the state legislatures motion for an amendment proposing convention. And once proposed, in needs to be ratified by either 3/4 of the State legislatures or 3/4 of the amendment proposing conventions of the States in order to be made part of the Constitution.
The first clause mentioned for protection against amendments makes sense–why would you want to leave open to amendment a date set in stone when clearly that date was strictly chosen. But to zero in on the clauses about proportional taxation and equal representation to the exclusion of any other clause throughout the Constitution seems rather arbitrary to me–I mean, why not any other clause? The Heritage Guide is not helpful here, except in saying that a man by the name of Roger Sherman really, really pushed for it.
Article VI:
Seems pretty clear to me.
Article VII:
Why is there a minimum number at all? What if only 3 States ratified the Constitution? Would it not work for those 3 States?
That’s phase 1. Phase 2 of this constitutionalogical analysis will involve the Amendments. We’re only half way through boys and girls.
But before we get into the Amendments, I want to give my assessment of what I think the Constitution is intended to accomplish: it seems intended to accomplish a government over governments–a federal government over the State governments–and this in the hopes of preserving a republic by means of preoccupying the federal government with rulership over State governments rather than the people.
As I said earlier in this thread, the American Constitution seems geared towards giving the federal government dictatorial power over the State governments–empowering it to dictate what the State governments can and can’t do–and to provide it with the means of enforcing its authority. The lessons of history show that in order to maintain order, a government must be able to rule with an iron fist. The flip side to that is that it robs the people of their liberty and forces them to live in fear of their government. I think that what the American Constitution accomplishes is a way of preserving that dictatorial power, thereby maintaining a strong capable authority at the head, while at the same time preserving the liberty of the people by making the State governments the only subjects of the federal dictatorship (if we may call it that) rather than the people.
But what prevents the federal government from taking more power? Why, if they already hold authority over the State governments, would they not over step their bounds and exercise power over the people as well? Well, it wouldn’t necessarily, but the only way for the federal government to over step its bounds is by engaging in unconstitutional acts, and I’ll say a few things about this below. For now, let me just state that it is my honest opinion that what the Constitution was designed to accomplish is not so much the limiting of power for its own sake but for the sake of avoiding the kinds of tyrannical and terrorist governments that plagued Europe at the time and from which the colonists and the founding fathers were trying to escape. And there was a post earlier in this thread in which I offered a theory about why tyranny and terrorism ends up being exacted by dictatorial powers:
When a dictator rules directly over the people, he runs the risk (which is bound to be realized sooner or later) of inciting the people’s resistance and rage, which eventually culminates in rebellion. When that happens, the dictator must fend for his life. Kill or be killed. But the kind of dictatorship that the American Constitution prescribes for the federal government is not one over the people but one over State governments–and this makes a big difference. Members of State governments, unless they’ve been living under a rock all their lives, enter into the profession knowingly and willingly–very much like a soldier voluntarily enrolling in the army, knowing full well that he’ll be taking his orders from his superiors and that life will be rough, and accepting that willingly. Politicians in State governments are in the business of dealing with the federal government, where knowing the rules and playing along are par for the course. The end result is that all apprehension and proclivity to panic is removed from the federal government and replaced by a sense of “business as usual”. There is no need for coming down hard on the State governments, for oppression and brutal tactics of punishment and instilling fear. Instead, a harmony arises, the proper functioning of a well oiled machine.
It’s a bit like separating the workers in a corporation from upper management by a layer of middle management. Middle management are selected for their skills at mediating between upper management (or clients) and the workers. They are the type of people who know how to handle such a situation. If upper management or clients dealt directly with the workers, many workers would not be able to handle the pressure and either break down psychologically or rise up and rebel (i.e. quit, fall back on unions, etc.).
At the same time, however, the kind of rulership the federal government holds over State governments is not whimsical–the Constitution does not leave the rules of the game open ended for the federal government to decide willy-nilly. The Constitution structures the law in a very particular and detailed way such as to preserve a republic. It prescribes laws that all State governments must adhere to and powers with which the federal government can enforce those laws, but the aim is to preserve a republic in which the people can enjoy as much freedom as practically possible. We see this in the many clauses mentioning the rights of the people–such as the Habeas Corpus clause of Article I, Section 9, or the Privileges and Immunities clause of Article IV, Section 2–effectively restraining the State governments from overt acts against the liberties of American citizens. The dictatorial rule, in other words, is to command, by law, what is necessary in order to protect the liberties of the people and thereby preserve the republic.
Notice that the most basic laws of any nation–don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t rape–aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution. Why? Not because the authors of the Constitution wanted just that much freedom for the people, but because the subjects of the federal law–that is, the law of the Constitution–weren’t the people–it was for the people, for the sake of protecting them, but the actual subjects to whom the law applied were the State governments. If the US were a direct dictatorship, like a monarchy, it would have to make laws applicable to the people–like don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t rape–and you would see this in the Constitution. But it makes no sense to make such laws for State governments. They get a different set of laws. The State governments, in turn, are the ones making laws binding on the people, but with the federal law restricting what they can and can’t do to the people, the people are in much less danger of being bound by unreasonable and brutal laws, or worse, a total disregard for the law on the part of the State governments.
But why would the federal government adhere to this constitutional prescription? Why not extend their power over the people as well as the State governments? Well, of course, they can’t make such a move in one foul swoop, at least not without risk wholesale rebellion on the part of the people (and perhaps the State governments as well), but they can do it by a series of surreptitious and duplicitous baby steps–in other words, exactly what liberals do (according to some in this thread). When they legislate for a ban on smoking in public restaurants and pubs, they are exercising, through the State government, power over the people that does not serve republican ends. How does a ban on smoking help maintain a republic? Remember, the laws layd out by the Constitution not only apply to State governments, but they enumerate the things the State governments cannot do to the people, whereas a ban on smoking in public restaurants is a law applied directly to the people and an addition to the enumeration of things they cannot do. This one example may be small potatoes compared to other limitations on individual liberties, but it fits the form of what undermines a republic and renders the nation subject to factionalism.
This, I think, it the fundamental danger of the liberal approach to politics–to subvert the process by which the law is made to serve republican ends and to invert it to serve the interests of factions and partial groups at the expense of others. Although such an approach is not overtly unconstitutional, I suspect it is the reason why so many conservatives and libertarians regard it as wholly against the spirit of the Constitution, and why they see it as a destructive force dissolving the American way of life.
It’s been a few weeks since I contributed to this thread–been busy–but I’m ready to delve into the Amendments.
Now, I treated this the same way I treated the rest of the Constitution–I used wiki as a guide and the source documents as the formal object of the investigation. This time, however, that source is The Heritage Guide to The Constitution, not the wiki original source (which doesn’t exist as far as my searches go).
Let’s go through the main points that the wiki intro to the Amendments goes through. Here’s what it says:
Keep in mind that this intro to the Amendments focuses on the ratified Amendments. The wiki article states that, on average, for every 2 year term in Congress, Senators and House Representatives propose around 200 amendments, 27 of which, since the Constitution’s inception, have been ratified and 6 of which have been approved by Congress and presented to the States but have not been ratified (4 of which are still pending only in virtue of no time limit being set on them).
But anyway, going through the wiki quote above, I find the following points to be salient:
The Amendment process does not allow changes to the original text of the Constitution, which to me seems like a no-brainer–of course, you don’t change the original text!
The first 10 Amendments to the Constitution (out of the 12 which were originally proposed) were ratified in one batch–and they are collectively known as the American Bill of Rights.
Amendments 13-15 are known as the Reconstruction Amendments and were a response to the Emancipation Declaration and the Civil War that followed–essentially amending the Constitution such as to address and deal with the outlawing of slavery and providing for the men and women who were consequently freed by it. On this note, I find it interesting that out of all the Amendments, the wiki article only bothers to mention the first 10 and 13-15 as grouped together. Is this a shortcoming of the wiki article or do Americans in general not group any of the other Amendments into additional groups? More research on my part will tell (either that, or someone here will pipe up and answer this question).
With the exception to the 27th Amendment, the period during which the ratified Amendments were pending is relatively short–between 100 days for the shortest period and almost 4 years for the longest. Now I must say, with that brief a time span for ratifying pending Amendments, the 27th certainly stands out like a soar thumb, blowing the others out of the water by almost 200 years, putting its ratification date at 1992. Makes me wonder what happened just prior to 1992 that all of a sudden, after 202 years of collecting dust, drew Congress’s attention to it and and made it acceptable to the States. Might it also have something to do with the 26th Amendment, the previous one to be ratified in 1971, taking the shortest amount of time to be ratified?
The second paragraph in the quote above goes into the Amendment process, which we went over in our analysis of Article V, and doesn’t really add anything new… so neither will I.
Before we actually get into the Amendments, I want to briefly list out the major milestones along the timeline during which the Constitution was being developed and finally put into action–that is, from its first draft to the ratification of the Bill of Rights:
1787 - First draft of the Constitution written up in Philadelphia, PA.
1787 (later) - Federalist Papers begin to be written explaining the reasoning behind the decisions made at Philadelphia. (I’m in the middle of listening to an audio recording of the Federalist Papers right now, so it’s foremost on my mind as an important stepping stone to landing the Constitution upon America).
1788 - New Hampshire becomes the 9th State to ratify the Constitution (but not the last), thereby making it official and legally binding over the nation in accordance with Article VII. (It’s interesting to pondering the self-referential aspect of this Article–any State who might have chose not to ratify it would not recognize its legal legitimacy, and therefore Article VII itself would not count as sufficient justification to accept it as ratified–but history is written by the winners).
1791 - Bill of Rights ratified as the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.
So given that the wiki article divides the first 10 Amendments into 3 groups–Safeguards of liberty (Amendments 1, 2, 3), Safeguards of justice (Amendments 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ), and Unenumerated rights and reserved powers (Amendments 9, 10)–I think it convenient to start with the Safeguards of liberty:
This has always stood out in my mind as an almost impossible Amendment to uphold–how do you allow a people to practice their various religions in complete freedom when some of those practices may involve breaking the law or harming others?
We’ve discussed this Amendment at length way earlier in this thread–I think the main confusion over it, at least for me, has been settled thus: its purpose is not just to uphold the freedom of Americans to have and use guns just for shits and giggles, but to defend their freedoms against potential tyranny on behalf of the government or foreign invasions (and also how impotent such a Constitutional power may in fact be now-a-days).
Before moving on, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the wikipedia article’s take on the Safeguards of Liberty. I forgot to do that. I usually read the wiki’s brief summary on the article, clause, amendment, section, whatever, before I delve into the source material but, and if it stirs any thoughts, I’ll typically post that first before hashing out the actual source material. This time I did things in reverse order, but that’s no problem–today we’re doing things in reverse order:
Well this sort of addresses my comments in the last post: how can such an Amendment as the first possibly be upheld if it means potentially plunging the nation into a civil war on religious grounds and rending the unity of the States? This point brought up in the wiki article suggests that it isn’t so much the express intent laid out in the Amendment that matters but the function or the effect it has–namely, to allow as much freedom of expression as possible… which to me seems like a good thing (no matter how “offensive” such expression may be to some).
As for the “free exercise” clause, that still stands in need of a bit of scrutiny as I’m sure everyone will agree that there is a difference between expressing your view and exercising your views. ← It’s this latter point that I question. How can you exercise, in all your God given freedom, your religious belief to, let’s just say hypothetically, fly a plane into a building, without harming others, violating the supreme law of the land, infringing on the rights and freedoms of others, and not to say the least, performing an unconstitutional act?
What the wiki article is here suggesting is that this Amendment was not meant to allow people to fly planes into buildings or allows for religiously based mass murders and other such human atrocities, but to permit free speach and self-expression. What I think it is getting at is that any maneuver to use this Amendment beyond this purpose will inevitably be met with the enforcement of the supreme law which will unquestioningly work against it. And that’s fine. It is basically open to the possibility of conflicting rights and freedoms such that one may be allowed to exercise some freedom X given that such a freedom may be exercised in the face of other conflicting freedoms, such as that held by others (the community, the State, society at large) to exercise their freedom to defend their liberties, rights, and lives. In other words, you are free to exercise your rights to your own religious practices so long as you accept or understand that this exercise may be met with the consequence of the law should such a religious practice work against it.
I think it was this above quote from wikipedia coupled with this thought I had in Amorphos’s thread ‘I am the law’ that spirred this synthesis between the first Amendment and my questioning it.
It’s really only the first part of this quote that I find interesting, and only because it mentions the “Constitutional ratification debates” ← Something for me to research… I may get back to you.
Yeah, that would piss me off too. And there’s that phrase again: “Constitutional ratification debates” ← Must research!
Makes me wonder: the clause only speaks of “peacetime”. What about in war? What about in war today? It would be interesting, as a Canadian pearing into the lives of Americans, to ask whether certain Americans have experienced soldiers or other military personel lodging themselves, without your consest, in your homes, particularly during periods like, let’s just say, Desert Storm or the “War Against Terror”?
In addition to all the above, I want to drop a few thoughts on the “Bill of Rights” as the first 10 Amendments are called, and specifically the christening of them as the “Bill of Rights” ← From what I’ve read, although I can’t remember the sources or the authors who said this, the “Bill of Rights” came across as a joke to the framers of the Constitution. Why, they asked, spell out the rights of the individual citizens of the United States, as it should be plane to everyone that the citizens have as many rights as there are possible ways to live or conduct one’s self in civil society? In other words, the notion of enumerating a list of rights was tantamount to listing out a limited set of opinions or views one could have on, let’s say, religion or philosophy, or some intellectual topic–like saying: philosophers have the right to be Atheists, Marxists, or Dualists ([size=50]and maybe we’ll add more when the need arises[/size]). Why make such a list when it should be implicit in the intent or the spirit of the Constitution that the people have as many rights to do as many things as they want, and the task of the Constitution is to enumerate, not what their rights are, but what their rights are not. In other words, you don’t have the right to do X, Y, and Z, but other than that, anything goes.
Some, from what I recollect from my past research, even thought that a Bill of Rights, enumerating the ten rights that all American citizens have was not only unnecessary but dangerous–in that it might function as a precedent of enumeration in and of itself–that is, it might leave the impression on American citizens that a “right” was something for the Constitution, if not the federal government, to grant–as opposed to something every human being has by nature and in inemurable quantity.
As much as this may be the case, I actually agree with the canonization of at least some fundamental rights into the Constitution. Why? Because unless you’ve been living under a rock all your life, you’d realize there are certain inalienable rights that one has just in virtue of being alive that, despite being natural or God given (take your pick), have been treated by governments worldwide and back through history as things that can be appropriated from the people or switched on and off at their discretion. What I think the Bill of Rights represents is a “Top 10” list of the most frequently government-violated human rights worldwide and back through history. The proactive enforcement of these rights in the form of Constitutional Amendments represents the voice of the people stating that they will not stand for a violation of these rights should the federal government make a move to encroach them, and that they demand that this stand which they take go so far as to be established as supreme law. Note that nowhere in the first 10 Amendments does it say that these rights are limited to only these 10–as though they were enumerable at all–and so I think the implication that these Amendments will set a precedent for such treatment (that is, of rights being enumerable or quantitatively limited) is unfounded, at least insofar as the logical analysis goes. Certainly, some may misinterpret that this implication really does follow, but I think those who do misinterpret these Amendments in this way are mistaken. Such a misinterpretation may happen, of course, but I would like to think it could be countered quite easily by a thorough and rational analysis of the actual content of the Bill of Rights.
As I said before, I will be using the wiki article as a guide, but here are the original texts for the Safeguards of Justice, Amendments 4 through 8:
4:
Sounds good on paper, but there’s obviously much room for getting around it. All one has to do is convincingly show that a search and seizure is “reasonable”.
The wiki article says “A search can mean everything from a frisking by a police officer or to a demand for a blood test…” ← So think about that the next time you get frisked by the cops.
“It also imposes certain limitations on police investigating a crime and prevents the use of illegally obtained evidence at trial.” ← Good deterrent.
5:
“The Fifth Amendment (1791) establishes a requirement that a trials for a major crime may commence only after an indictment has been handed down by a grand jury;” ← What does this mean? How does a jury hand down an indictment before a trial has commenced?
6:
“In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment requires what has become known as the Miranda warning.” ← One question: I’ve always wondered why in the Miranda Warning they say “Anything you say can, and will, be used against you”? How does anyone know that anything one says will be used against one. What if I say “I like chocolate”? That’s guaranteed to be used against me?
7:
^^ This last clause almost sounds like a repeat of the clause from Amendment 6: “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;” but I guess adapted to common law. Makes me wonder: why did they say “twice” rather than “more than once”? Is it constitutional to try someone three times? It might be, according to this, but how would you get there without going through the unconstitutional second trial?
“The Seventh Amendment (1791) extends the right to a jury trial ← So another rehashing to federal civil ← Is ‘civil’ in any way equivalent to ‘common law’? cases,”
“Although the Seventh Amendment itself says that it is limited to ‘suits at common law,’ meaning cases that triggered the right to a jury under English law, ← There’s our answer the amendment has been found to apply in lawsuits that are similar to the old common law cases.” ← Uh… what’s the difference?
“For example, the right to a jury trial applies to cases brought under federal statutes that prohibit race or gender discrimination in housing or employment. ← Oh, so they must mean that though discrimination charges weren’t ever involved in old English common law, such charges are considered to fall under the category of ‘common law’ today. Importantly, this amendment guarantees the right to a jury trial only in federal court, not in state court.” ← I didn’t get where the Amendment says that, except perhaps for “no fact… shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States” ← Does “United States” refer specifically to the federal level? Either that, or “common law” explicitly denotes federal laws.
8:
“Although this phrase originally was intended to outlaw certain gruesome methods of punishment, it has been broadened over the years to protect against punishments that are grossly disproportionate to or too harsh for the particular crime. This provision has also been used to challenge prison conditions such as extremely unsanitary cells, overcrowding, insufficient medical care and deliberate failure by officials to protect inmates from one another.”
^^ Just thought this was relevant/interesting. Also reminds me of Zoot Allure’s Adventures in Prison.
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