Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
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@TheStapleGunKid Madison in Federalist #39, pointing out the content of the Constitution itself, disproves that nonsense: "That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a MAJORITY of the people of the Union, nor from that of a MAJORITY of the States. It must result from the UNANIMOUS assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution."
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@TheStapleGunKid Sure, in the midst of his war, Lincoln was able to get away with simply defying the Supreme Court, just as he said he believed: "if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal..."
And prior to 1862, Lincoln had already with the suspension of habeus corpus led the Chief Justice to say, "I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome."
So do you think presidents should be able to do things that the Supreme Court has already ruled are unconstitutional, and what recourse, if any, should there be in such situations?
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@TheStapleGunKid First I'll repeat the questions you didn't answer: "When they said it was slavery..." what does that even mean? "When they said it was slavery..." First of all, what does that even mean? For example, if the Constitution was supposed to guarantee the extradition of murderers that escaped to another state, and the northern states refused to honor their constitutional obligations, if terrorist murderers murdered random southern civilians (beginning even with a free black man that was just minding his own business) under abolitionist pretenses and the southern states cited that as a reason for secession, is that the kind of thing you would summarize by saying "they said it was slavery"? (You can answer the first question with a sentence that begins, "When I say they said it was slavery, I mean..." You can answer the second question with a yes or no, and I'll follow up from there.)
To continue repeating unanswered questions/challenges: Secondly, quote any part of any of the official declarations of causes where a seceding state said whatever it is that you mean when you say, "they said it was slavery." And if the declarations were all so clear and all said essentially the same thing, I'll take a quote from South Carolina's declaration, which was the first and offered plenty of detail.
And repeating yet another unanswered question: Do you defend presidents defying the Supreme Court and pursuing their own interpretation of the Constitution whenever they say the Supreme Court is wrong? (A yes or no would answer that question.)
And in case my previous comment wasn't clear enough, if "Confederate leaders openly said secession was necessary to preserve slavery because Lincoln was going to ban its expansion," let's see at least one quote from one of the seceding states' declarations of causes or at least one from Jefferson Davis, or if there's no evidence for your case in those most definitive sources, let's see whatever you've got.
I recognize that Lincoln tried to spin things after the fact so as to misrepresent what he stood for when he committed the northern states to all-out war and in the preceding months, but nothing he said in the lead-up to the war or within the first few months of the war (when the critical decisions were made) comes remotely close (even in hindsight) to a pronouncement that the war was about slavery (whatever you even mean by that), and there were definitive declarations at that time that the war wasn't at all about slavery. And misleading spin is all he offered even after the fact. And even up until the end of the war, there was nothing the South could have done with regards to slavery that would have brought the North to the table to negotiate a peace, certainly not conceding what you're suggesting was "the only substantial dispute," namely the right to take slaves to the territories, nor anything else related to slavery, and Lincoln was consistently and unequivocally clear that nothing the South did with regards to slavery would make a bit of difference to him in prosecuting the war, so it's ridiculous to say the war was about slavery. And you surely know all this.
"You say your position is consistent, but yet you are refusing to say secession was illegal even though that's what the Supreme Court ruled. Either you accept them as the arbiter of the constitution or you don't." I already told you -- and I quote from what I already said -- "I believe the final say should be determined about like Jefferson laid out in his first draft of the Kentucky Resolutions..." If that went over your head, look it up. It's short, and it's well worth the read.
How bout you? Do you believe the Supreme Court's rulings on the Constitution should be authoritative? I've already quoted Lincoln and the chief justice at the time to you showing that Lincoln didn't believe or respect that idea. If you believe the Supreme Court should be the ultimate arbiter, how then do you deal with Lincoln's disrespect for that idea. And are you suggesting that there aren't any decisions that should be overturned because they were wrongly decided?
And not that I really care what the Supreme Court said after the fact when there was no practical way they could have declared the central objective of the whole tremendously costly war the North had just waged wrong, even if they had been so inclined, but if you want to talk about that ruling, let's at least see a specific quote addressing the relevant point to our discussion.
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Of Ty Seidule the founding generation said, "The soldiery, who are generally composed of the dregs of the people, when disbanded, or unfit for military service, being equally unfit for any other employment, become extremely burthensome. As they are a body of men exempt from the common occupations of social life, having an interest different from the rest of the community, they wanton in the lap of ease and indolence, without feeling the duties, which arise from the political connection, though drawing their subsistence from the bosom of the state. The severity of discipline necessary to be observed reduces them to a degree of slavery; the unconditional submission to the commands of their superiors, to which they are bound, renders them the fit instruments of tyranny and oppression. — Hence they have in all ages afforded striking examples of contributing, more or less, to enslave mankind; — and whoever will take the trouble to examine, will find that by far the greater part of the different nations, who have fallen from the glorious state of liberty, owe their ruin to standing armies.” “Impartial Examiner,” Virginia Independent Chronicle, 1788
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@woodrowcall3158 > Armed with knowledge you have in this day and time, would you push for the abolition of slavery if you found yourself back in the mid-1800s?
I would take the position that the following abolitionists took at the time:
George Bassett: "It is constantly said... that if our government cannot prevent a State from seceding at will, it is no government at all. But it is forgotten, that the true glory of our government—the queen beauty of our system is, that it ceases with the will of the people. Its true strength lies not in navies and battalions, but in the affections of the people. Numbers in our midst... are vainly boasting that we propose to show the world that we have a government that is strong enough to meet the exigency and to suppress rebellion. But they fail entirely to apprehend and appreciate the true theory of the American system. Their is the old European, and not the American, idea of government. ...
"The true strength of a free government—and they are the strongest of all, is in the devoted attachment of its citizen sovereigns. Let this be forfeited, and the government falls.
"A government which is strong by the exercise of military power over its own citizens, is not a free government, but a despotism.
"Instead of the peaceful separation of these States being a disgrace to our government in the eyes of the world, it will constitute in all coming time its truest glory, and will demonstrate the infinite superiority of the voluntary system of self-government over the despotic usurpations of the past."
Bassett: "Those are false abolitionists, and selfish as slavery itself, who use the anti-slavery sentiment merely as their political capital; who subordinate and sacrifice the true principles of freedom to party success and personal aggrandizement. Such have no moral power over slavery, and the political power they obtain they use for themselves."
Joshua Blanchard, writing in The Liberator, March 1861: "The doctrine that the prerogatives of government are more sacred and inviolable than the rights, liberties, and welfare and even lives of individual men, is now openly maintained by the advocates of an enforced union, in direction opposition to the principle of popular sovereignty.... The success of this compulsory measure, establishing the character of our national government as one maintained by coercion, and not by consent, would be an awful apostacy, a retrogression into the barbarous maxims of European domination, cemented in blood; an utter failure of the first magnificent experiment of popular government, the the exultation of tyrants, the disgrace of our land, the despair of all the friends of freedom in the world.
"...But the harmonious union of the people of this nation, on the principle of general consent, can never be maintained where the sentiments of the two great sections of it are at such irreconcilable variance on the vital question of the right to slavery... The only plan, then, for national reputation, for safety, for justice, and even for humanity, is to give each section an independent government, confirmed to its own ideas of right – that is, peaceable separation from each other."
Josiah Warren: "The right of self-sovereignty in every human being, which gives you [the southern states] the supreme right to leave us without asking our leave gives to your slaves the same right to leave you..." And, of course, the inverse is equally true: the right of self-sovereignty which gives slaves the right to freedom gave (even if the North violated the right) the southern states the right to separate from the northern states without asking leave of the northern states/DC.
Lysander Spooner: "The whole affair... has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. ... And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have “Abolished Slavery!” That they have “Saved the Country!” ...
"The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general – not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only “as a war measure,” ...in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man – although that was not the motive of the war – as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. ...
"This, too, they call “Preserving our Glorious Union”; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” ... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one – when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war..."
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@TheStapleGunKid "...it really doesn't matter what Stephens said. The actions of CSA proved his claim was a lie." The Stephens quote proves that Southerners respected the principle of just government resting on the consent of the governed in a way that Lincoln and the Republicans decidedly did not. And, as I already said (adding emphasis), "I don't know enough about the details of the history to say, but I assume you're right when you note that there isn't a history in the North or South of respecting the principles of the Declaration of Independence with respect to PARTS OF STATES -- I think that's unfortunate -- but there's very much a tradition, particularly in the South, of respecting those principles at the STATE LEVEL."
I never said Jefferson was pro-secession. He wasn't, but he was strongly pro-right of secession.
As to the quote about the Missouri compromise, he was clearly condemning the Missouri compromise. Are you really so ideologically blinded that you can't recognize that?
"Whose making the 'argument from silence' now?" Do you mean who's defending 10th amendment principles now? Neither I nor the constitution is opposed to arguments from silence; I and the constitution are only opposed to arguments from silence in favor of federal government power.
"If what you are saying is true, and this statement does confer a right to secession..." I said no such thing. As I said of the Confederate constitution counterparts to the 9th and 10th amendments, "You might say those are really insignificant little changes, and they are in one sense, but the fact that the Confederacy made such minor changes on those points shows they were points where they wanted to be abundantly clear about those foundational points." Preambles never confer anything, but they do help clarify, and the Confederate constitution added clarity to the US constitution.
"Under the CSA constitution, the Confederate states were not allowed to pass ANY anti-slavery laws."
BS. There was nothing in the Confederate constitution to stop states from abolishing slavery or otherwise passing anti-slavery laws except as related to citizens of other states and their slaves.
"All Confederate territory had to be slave territory."
True, but that's no different than what the Supreme Court had already ruled the US Constitution said less directly.
"All Confederate states had to be slave states."
BS again.
"They were totally centralized in regard to slavery. The notion that the CSA was in any way opposed to a big strong central government is a sham."
BS, both with regards to slavery and more generally. I already quoted several parts of the Confederate constitution that added specific limitations to the central government. And even the slavery provisions were limitations on the central government with regards to interference in slavery-related questions.
"And yes the "perpetual Union" part of the Articles..."
Did you not see where I said I wasn't yet saying anything about your perpetual BS? That I had a question for you first? A question you didn't answer: I'd like to know what difference it would make to you if those words hadn't been in the Articles or the constitution. Would your position change substantially?
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@TheStapleGunKid You should also look at the US constitution. It mirrors the Confederate constitution in terms of the sections that applied to the federal government and the sections that applied to the states. If you do a search for "constitution text," for example, the first link that should come up (or that came up for me anyway) was a link from the National Constitution Center, and if you look at the US constitution you'll notice their heading on article 1, section 9, "Powers Denied Congress," and their heading on article 1, section 10, "Powers Denied to the States." This is precisely mirrored in the Confederate constitution, and the section you're trying to tell me is a blanket ban is from article 1, section 9, the "Powers Denied Congress" section. If that isn't sufficient to get you to admit that all the related arguments I previously called BS were indeed BS, then I have to believe you know you're making a dishonest case that can't stand on the truth but depends entirely on a foundation of lies.
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@TheStapleGunKid "...the Confederate states seceded and fought the war to preserve slavery" So what would have happened to slavery (and particularly what would Lincoln and the Republicans have done) if they hadn't seceded that seceding offered any hope of avoiding? It might help a lot if you could explain that in a little detail.
I'll repeat my earlier question: when the seceding states cited in their declarations of causes of secession the northern states' refusal to extradite escaped murderous terrorists despite the states' constitutional obligation to do so, is that the sort of thing you would summarize as "it was slavery"? Because if what you mean by "it was slavery" is broad enough to encompass northern support of anti-southern terrorism against random civilians under abolitionist pretenses, then we may agree about the facts but only disagree about whether it is misleading and deceptive to do the equivalent of summarizing the war between Hitler's Germany and the USSR by saying communism was bad and Germany was opposed to communism or to summarize the 9/11 attacks as it was US abuse of Palestinian rights.
And how can one side fight a war to preserve slavery when the other side isn't fighting to abolish it? You ask why it's hard to understand. When Congress by a practically unanimous vote shortly after the first major battle of the war, declares, "this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of... nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States [i.e. slavery]..." does that not seem to contradict your assertion that the war was fought over slavery? Do you just ignore everything Lincoln and Congress said about the war in explaining what it was about? How do you reconcile that declaration of Congress to your summary of what the war was about? It certainly contradicts any straightforward explanation of the war that "it was slavery."
I'd like to discuss those quotes you shared from Mississippi and South Carolina's declarations of causes with you, but you'll have to explain what you think they prove that contradicts anything I'm saying, or you'll have to explain what they prove that you think I'm not recognizing.
If your answer to my question of whether you support presidents defying the Supreme Court and pursuing their own interpretation of the Constitution whenever they say the Supreme Court is wrong is no, then what remedies do you think are justified when such situations arise? I agree with Thomas Jefferson when he wrote "that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made it’s discretion, & not the constitution the measure of it’s powers: but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress."
"Do you accept that secession is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court ruled it was?" No, I definitely don't believe that whatever the Supreme Court says the Constitution says is what the Constitution actually says. Do you? I don't understand how anybody could. (I assume there is no way to accept that something is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court ruled it was without believing that whatever the Supreme Court says the Constitution says is what the Constitution actually says.)
But whether or not you believe that the majority opinion in Texas v White (and every other decision the court has ever ruled on) tells us as clearly what the Constitution means as if God Himself told us what it means, if that ruling in any case captures your view on the constitutionality of secession, please quote, as I've already asked, the part of that decision that captures your view on that question. I'm not familiar enough with that decision to know of anything they actually said that I disagree with.
It seems there are basically two ways -- if there's another way, please explain -- to approach questions of constitutionality. One way was summarized by Thomas Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolutions. According to that interpretation the states that seceded were clearly within their "right to judge for [themselves], as well as infractions, as of the mode & measure of redress." Some people reject Jefferson's approach to the Constitution, but it seems that everyone that accepts his approach accepts that the states that seceded had a right to secede (and that the North was wrong to try to stop them.)
The other way to approach questions of constitutionality is to say that the Supreme Court has the final say, and whatever they say goes. But if that's the proper way to decide constitutional disputes, then the fact remains that Lincoln said he was going to ban slavery in US territories even after the Supreme Court had ruled that "the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void..." which is to say (according to this second approach) that Lincoln ran for office promising to defy the Constitution. And he not only said he was going to defy the Constitution (to the extent the Supreme Court decisions are definitive), he explicitly rejected the authority of the Supreme Court to broadly decide questions of constitutionality (as I already quoted him as saying.) So if the Supreme Court is supposed to have the final say but a president gets elected promising to defy the Supreme Court and, as you say, "We can see that was the case because that's exactly what Lincoln did: He banned the expansion of slavery," then that raises the question of what remedies there are when a president simply and openly defies the Constitution. That's not a problem if you follow Jefferson, but that's a problem that demands an answer if you reject Jefferson's path.
Lincoln obviously didn't follow either path. If he had a coherent approach to the Constitution, you'll have to explain it to me. All I see in Lincoln is dishonest excuses for defying and undermining the Constitution.
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