Comments by "Walter Bailey" (@walterbailey2950) on "PragerU" channel.

To say that the original concept of federalism and state sovereignty was nothing more than a pretext to defend slavery is just as absurd as saying that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. And General Seidule knows better. At some point, he seems to have abandoned any attempt to avoid pre-judging the evidence and become an ideologue riding a wave of anger that is only likely to produce more division and less understanding.
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@rundstedt1004 I’m not just a YouTuber. I have an MA in Civil War and Reconstruction history. But even a high school student should know more about federalism than you evidently do. General Seidule does know better. He’s just an ideologue who refuses to be honest about it.
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So states rights is more than just a pretext to defend slavery. It’s much more than that.
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@rundstedt1004 So what professor Blight is saying is that federalism in it’s true form is an anachronism which doesn’t allow the creation of a modern unitary state that has elites and a powerful National government capable of protecting the people. A full understanding of the requirements of a modern liberal unitary state leads you to the conclusion that it’s the only way to do what we need to do to be a modern country. Actual federalism as laid down by the framers of the constitution doesn’t give the national government enough power to do that. So what we can do is say that we have a federal system without actually having one and anytime someone points out the inconsistency we can say they’re just trying to defend slavery, even though federalism in it’s true form was the original plan for our entire government and not just a pretext for slavery.
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There’s nothing in the constitution that says that any of the amendments can’t be changed. You’re just making that up because you want to treat the second amendment like a holy scripture.
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There’s no historical or constitutional basis for that assertion.
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@emmittmatthews8636 “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws,i as and ever for the support of the laws.“ John Adams
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Yes Antebellum Militia acts did. But they were replaced after the Civil War with a national guard which is volunteer force armed by the federal government.
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This is a whole lot of nonsense by someone who doesn’t understand the historical context that he’s talking about at all. Both clauses of the second amendment are actually operative and interdependent. It’s not just about an individual right but also a collective right. It is about a right of the states to control the primary military power of the country at the time. The 1792 militia act doesn’t just say all men of a certain age range are part of the Militia. It says they have to enroll in an organized militia controlled by the state governments. At the time most Americans hated and feared standing armies and they didn’t want the federal government to control one. The second amendment was intended to be a means for the states to serve that function of defense and security instead. The security of a free state meant literally the states such as Massachusetts, Virginia and Pennsylvania not this make-believe abstraction that people have cooked up recently in order to try to get around that obvious fact. The first amendment may be more about an individual right although it also includes the collective right of assembly. But you don’t need to use free-speech rights in order to make government functions such as the Organized Militia of the States effective. You do need an individual right of firearms ownership in order to provide firearms for the state militia when the states can’t afford to provide them as was the case in 1792. If you were to write the second amendment in modern language it would sound something like this “In order for the state militia to provide security for the state the militiamen have to be able to provide their own arms for Militia duty” Yes it is talking about an individual right but not just an individual right. It’s talking about an individual right in order to facilitate a collective right of the states. James Madison surely would’ve regarded the contemporary idea that there’s some kind of inherent conflict between the people and all government as dangerous nonsense. And that certainly isn’t in any of his writing including the second amendment.
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@Anon54387 There’s evidence that an original right was intended, but zero evidence that any of the framers meant for the people to overthrow the US or state governments. When armed citizens tried to stop enforcement of a federal tax on whiskey, George Washington ordered them charged with treason. “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by thei laws, and ever for the support of the laws.” John Adams
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The original intent as evidenced by what people said at the time was that individuals had to be able to provide their own arms for service in the state militia in order to provide for the security of a free state because the government couldn’t afford to arm them.
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@johnk2452 I’d love to hear what you’re basing your understanding of the declaration of independence on. Since you seem to think that you in your infinite wisdom get what it means better than the framers of the US Constitution who lived through the drafting of and in some cases signed both the declaration and the federal constitution.
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@johnk2452 Yeah and imagine what follows is your reading into that “all men are created equal” phrase contemporary anti-government radical anarchism, because you can’t imagine that what you want the Declaration of Independence to be about might not actually be what it is about, because you can’t imagine that it actually comes from a very different time from people who had goals very different from yours in the 21st-century. For you to be able to imagine these things you need to be educated enough to actually understand historical documents. But you, like so many people today, think that you don’t have to actually know anything in order to understand documents written 250 years ago.
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@johnk2452 Here’s a hint that you can learn from if you’ll bother to listen: Even those bitterly opposed to the federal Constitution at the time weren’t anarchists, they weren’t against the government per se. They simply wanted a loose confederation of sovereign states.
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That would be a rewrite of the second amendment completely contrary to the original intent.
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@mister-v-3086 There is no militia act of 1789. The militia act of 1792 requires all able bodied men ages 18 to 45 to serve in the organized militia: in other words everyone eligible for Militia Service. No one else was considered to be militia. Federal law passed after the Civil War redefining the militia to be anyone with a gun does not reflect the original intent.
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@mister-v-3086 There is no writing from any of the people involved in drafting the second amendment saying that it was intended to help individuals use force against their own government. It’s just a myth from the 1960s.
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@mister-v-3086 Yes but neither The 1792 militia act nor anything that Washington or Jefferson, who wasn’t involved in writing the second amendment anyway by the way, said Ever construed the second amendment as a means for individuals to use force against the US or state governments. When this happened in 1793 Washington termed it an of rebellion and used militia to crush the armed whiskey rebels. Jefferson didn’t try to help the whiskey rebels. He certainly didn’t appear on the scene and lead them against the federal response.
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@mister-v-3086 No in most cases the organized militia of the states provided their own personal weapons. Federal law from the time actually REQUIRED them to own weapons from Militia duty if they were eligible for Militia Service. It also specified exactly what types of weapons they could provide for militia service. The requirement was part of how the federal government “regulated” the militia.
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