Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU" channel.

  1.  @TheStapleGunKid  "Can you cite any prominent Southern leader or document that said 'We disagree with Wisconsin's decision, but respect their right to make it' or something to that effect?" You're the one that said, "that certainly wasn't the Southern view at the time." The burden of proof is on you. If you can't show that Southerners said it, then what reason is there to say they certainly believed it? "Why would the South accuse states like Wisconsin of breaking their obligations if the state had a right to do what they did?" States don't have a right to break their obligations (not while remaining in the union anyway.) States have a right to refuse to comply with federal laws that aren't constitutionally authorized. And states have a right to judge for themselves whether laws are constitutionally authorized. But if state A doesn't agree with state B's final judgment, then it's up to state A to decide whether it wants to remain in union with a state that in its view has broken the terms of union, has broken its constitutional obligations.
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  2.  @TheStapleGunKid  "No wonder the Supreme Court rejected it." Is there any more basis for that claim than your other totally baseless "certainly believed" claim?
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  3.  @TheStapleGunKid  That's interesting but who said anything about it being "left to the courts of justice of the several States"? State courts have nothing to do with anything I said, nor with anything Thomas Jefferson, for example, said about the right states have to refuse to comply with federal laws that aren't constitutionally authorized and to judge for themselves whether laws are constitutionally authorized.
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  4.  @TheStapleGunKid  "Please explain." Have you never read the Kentucky Resolutions? (FWIW, I'm most familiar with Jefferson's original draft, and I don't really know what differences there are between Jefferson's original draft and the final resolution, although I assume the differences are relatively minor.)
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  5.  @TheStapleGunKid  Certainly not the courts. Just read Jefferson's draft of the Kentucky Resolutions. They're really not very long.
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  6.  @TheStapleGunKid  My view wouldn't be as carefully stated and well thought out as Jefferson's. Jefferson's views are more worth considering than mine, and I think I'm pretty fully agreed with Jefferson anyway. I've already said certainly not the courts. I don't know that Jefferson was too particular as to the details of how states should speak, but I think it's very clear he wasn't talking about judges either.
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  7.  @TheStapleGunKid  If you don't care enough to read the quite short Kentucky Resolutions (particularly Jefferson's draft), then you don't care enough to discuss these questions minimally intelligently.
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  8.  @TheStapleGunKid  The people/their representatives. But in a different (other-than-American) context it could just as well be a monarch or some other representative as elected representatives. As Senator (later president) Warren G. Harding said around the time of WWI, “voting for war in the name of democracy... It is my deliberate judgment that it is none of our business what type of government any nation on this earth may choose to have.” (By the way, are you as much of an interventionist hawk when it comes to foreign countries as you are a fan of despotism at home? How consistent is your opposition to living and letting live? How consistent is your refusal to see any other solution to dealing with differences other than coercion, threats of violence and violence? Did you support Obama's and Trump's missile strikes on Syria and wish we had been more aggressive? Would you defend our wars against Libya, Serbia, Iraq...? Support continued drone strikes against all the countries with which we haven't even been at war, not by modern American standards anyway? Favor increased involvement in Ukraine?) Certainly states have a right to refuse to enter into or remain in union with states that have forms of government too different from their own, too different to make close cooperation impractical. There is obviously wisdom in the constitution's prohibition on allowing Saudi Arabia to become the 51st state. But the details of the process by which Wisconsin may choose to declare something unconstitutional isn't the business of anyone but the people of Wisconsin. As Jefferson wrote elsewhere and in a slightly different context, "to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarchy. our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. ...and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective controul. the constitution has erected no such single tribunal knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time & party it’s members would become despots... the judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum & tuum, and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department. when the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. the exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves"
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  9.  @TheStapleGunKid  "First of all, if there's a right to declare federal laws unconstitutional, why would it fall to the people or their representatives and not the courts?" Were you lying to me when you said you read the Kentucky Resolutions? Why would you ask me this question if you had?
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  10.  @TheStapleGunKid  The answer to your question is right there in the opening (short) paragraph: "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." Is your reading comprehension really that poor? I believed you at first when you said you had read what Jefferson wrote, but I think now you must have been lying. It's not like you even had a single question or challenge or counterargument to anything Jefferson wrote, only a "I read them; now answer my questions as if I hadn't read anything."
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  11.  @TheStapleGunKid  "That passage literally tells us nothing about which organization within a state would carry out the task." What was the first question you asked, and the only question of yours I've so far quoted and responded to? It wasn't a "which" question; it was a "why" question, and the quote from Jefferson I gave you directly answers that, your first question. So why did you ask it? Because you lied about reading what Jefferson wrote. Why lie? Why not just say you don't want to read it? It's not like you even had a single question or challenge or counterargument to anything Jefferson wrote, only a "I read them; now answer my questions as if I hadn't read anything."
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  12.  @TheStapleGunKid  The first of the questions you asked in your comment with a string of questions the answers to all of which ought to have been clear enough to you if you had actually read what Jefferson wrote, and the question to which I replied with the quote from the Kentucky Resolutions was, once again: "First of all, if there's a right to declare federal laws unconstitutional, why would it fall to the people or their representatives and not the courts?" Are you really dumb enough or so blinded by your mental dependence on despotism that you can't see the answer to that question in the quote I provided? If you read the Kentucky Resolutions, tell me whether you agree with the principles Jefferson set out in them, and if not, tell me where you agree and where you disagree, and why you disagree where you disagree (at least for one or two points for starters.) And since you're so hung up on the specifics of how a state would decide what's unconstitutional, tell me what you think Jefferson had in mind, specifically in light of what I already quoted Jefferson saying elsewhere (beginning with "to consider the judges...") And as to those specifics, I've already told you that I'm not hung up on the specifics of how a people express their will, that in other contexts (other-than-American) I think the principles Jefferson expressed could even be applied to constitutions (or treaties or other legal arrangements) between states governed by monarchs.
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  13.  @TheStapleGunKid  "If a state does have the right to judge for themselves if federal laws are constitutional, it's very important to know who in the state can do it, and why they are the ones who have this power." Important to whom? Why? "I already explained my disagreements and articulated the points several posts earlier. Go back up and read them again." Which comment are you trying to pass off as that?
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  14.  @TheStapleGunKid  And you think Jefferson just didn't consider objections like yours?
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  15.  @TheStapleGunKid  And you have no idea what his counterargument to your position would be. You don't even know if he would have a counterargument.
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  16.  @TheStapleGunKid  And you do so without any evidence that you read a single word of what he wrote, which is to say without specifically addressing a single argument he made, without so much as recognizing that there even is an argument, even so much as a flawed argument to support his position.
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  17.  @TheStapleGunKid  And you did so without any evidence that you read a single word of what he wrote, which is to say without specifically addressing a single argument he made, without so much as recognizing that there even is an argument, even so much as a flawed argument to support his position.
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  18.  @TheStapleGunKid  You explained why I disagreed with Jefferson's view in the resolutions without providing any evidence that you read a single word of what he wrote, which is to say without specifically addressing a single argument he made, and without so much as recognizing that there even is an argument, even so much as a flawed argument to support his position. You addressed none of the arguments Jefferson made against your position.
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  19.  @TheStapleGunKid  "As for your question, I would say yes the fugitive criminal clause only imposed requirements on the federal government, not state authorities, which are not mentioned in the text." That isn't the way the extradition clause is now or has ever been carried into effect, is it?
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  20.  @TheStapleGunKid  "I explained why I disagreed with Jefferson's view in the resolutions..." And besides not addressing any of the arguments Jefferson actually made you didn't make any argument for rejecting Jefferson's view that wouldn't also be a counterargument against your own position that "Wisconsin had the right to rule the act unconstitutional." How do you figure you can defend the right of a state to rule an act unconstitutional without contradicting the argument you made against Jefferson?
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  21.  @TheStapleGunKid  Those are all clear and simple facts, but those facts aren't answers to any of the important questions, namely how that clause is supposed to be enforced and especially what could be done if the clause isn't enforced however it's supposed to be.
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  22.  @TheStapleGunKid  You asked me, "Do you at least agree Wisconsin had the right to rule the act unconstitutional?"
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  23.  @TheStapleGunKid  So which legal principle do you agree with? Do you think the constitution legitimately empowers federal authorities to compel state authorities to do things? (Is that even a fair summary of the difference?)
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  24.  @TheStapleGunKid  "The constitution gives the government the federal authority to compel states to do some things." Where does the constitution do that? "The Supreme Court is the final authority on interpreting which things can be compelled." Where did the Supreme Court get that authority?
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  25.  @TheStapleGunKid  "The constitution says the states can't print money, so if a state starts printing money, the federal government can compel it to stop. Because if it couldn't then what would stop the state from printing money?" One could just as well say the constitution says the federal government can't make any law abridging the freedom of speech, so if the federal government abridges the freedom of speech, states can compel it to stop. Because if states couldn't then what would stop the federal government from abridging the freedom of speech? "In regard interpreting what the government can do in this regard, that would fall to the judicial power of the United States, IE the supreme court." That takes us back to the other question I already asked, which you didn't answer: Where did the Supreme Court get that authority? "What's your view? Do you believe the federal government has no right or ability to compel the states to do anything? And please don't just refer to the Kentucky Resolutions or some other document, just give your view." You claim to have read the Kentucky Resolutions, but you haven't responded to a single specific point or argument made in the Kentucky Resolutions. If you're going to maintain that you've read them... and done so over the course of our recent discussion, then why should I repeat what you've already read?
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  26.  @TheStapleGunKid  If you had read the Kentucky Resolutions like you've claimed, you could respond to one specific point or argument in them. So why don't you actually read them now and do so?
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  27.  @TheStapleGunKid  Feel free to get back to me when you can even begin to deal with the clearest and most famous argument against you.
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  28.  @TheStapleGunKid  Arguments you might know something about if you read them. But you didn't even have to do that. But if you want to continue to pretend that you did read them, then I'll continue to press you to respond to point out a flaw you see in even one argument Jefferson made. Do you hide from Jefferson because you're afraid of the truth of sound reason?
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  29.  @giuffre714  And if Republicans hadn't used opposition to slavery as an excuse for trashing the constitution and the rule of law for the sake of their crony capitalist agenda, it wouldn't have mattered. As former (at the time) President Pierce (New Hampshire) said in 1862, "Do we not know that the disregard of the Constitution, and of the security that it affords to the rights of States and of individuals, has been the cause of the calamity which our country is called to undergo?"
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  30. Confederates never actually said any such thing.
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  31.  @Ben00000  I realize it's not as cool, at least from your perspective, as these made up quotes. Enjoy your revisionist history!
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  32.  @Ben00000  I didn't deny they did it. I denied they said it. And that's an historical fact. They didn't say anything of the sort. Your revisionist myths don't like to think about that, though.
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  33.  @Ben00000  By "better research" you mean avoiding what was actually said in the historical record and reading more revisionist "history"?
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  34.  @Ben00000  If they had actually said anything of the sort, there would be no need to make up the fake revisionist quotes.
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  35.  @TheStapleGunKid  Are you counting Mosby decades after the fact after he went to work for northern railroad companies (just like Lincoln) as a Confederate, a Neo-Confederate, or neither?
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  36.  @TheStapleGunKid  I'm just asking how you count him. When did "Neo-Confederate" (jaranarm's term and the context of this thread) ideas begin? Do the things Davis and Stephens said after the war count as "Confederate" and not "Neo-Confederate" just as much?
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  37.  @TheStapleGunKid  What do you think Stephens said after the war that was contradicted by anything he said earlier?
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  38.  @TheStapleGunKid  And the question isn't whether Davis and Stephens were Confederates. That answer is obvious, which is to say you're skirting the real question. The real question is if you would call the views of anyone that was ever a Confederate "Neo-Confederate," or whether any views expressed by anyone that was ever a Confederate can only, by your terminology, be called Confederate and never Neo-Confederate. Have you not turned the original comment upside down by quoting Mosby's comments from decades after the war to try to disprove what Confederates actually said at the time of the war?
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  39.  @TheStapleGunKid  So what? What does that have to do with whether Confederates or Neo-Confederates or whatever else you want to label anyone as either said or contradicted what was claimed in the original comment? Nothing. But since you can't quote Stephens saying anything about what the Confederacy was fighting for or what, after the fact in the past tense, they fought for that is consistent with your revisionist BS, you make a big deal out of some squabble with a reporter over comments made before the Confederacy was fighting for anything at all.
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  40.  @TheStapleGunKid  As to the suggestion that Stephens believed there was any fundamental change between the US and Confederate constitutions, he said in April of 1861, " We quit the Union, but not the constitution — this we have preserved."
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  41. And as to what changes were made between the US and the Confederate constitutions, Stephens said this in April of 1861, "But all the changes — every one of them — are upon what is called the conservative side. Now, this I ask your special atten tion to. It is an important fact. I wish you specially to mark it, for I know that efforts has been made to create prejudice against our movement by telling the conservative men of the country that it sprung from some of the hot heads down South, and should not be relied on or trusted. But take the constitu tion and read it, and you will find that every change in it from the old constitution is conservative. In many respects it is an improvement upon the constitution of our fathers. It has such improvements as the experience of seventy years showed were required. In this particular our revolution thus far is distin guished from popular revolutions in the history of the world. In it are settled many of the vexed questions which disturbed us in the old confederacy. A few of these may be mentioned — such as that no money shall be appropriated from the common treas ury for internal improvement ; leaving all such matters for the local and State authorities. The tariff question is also settled. The presidential term is extended, and no re-election allowed. This will relieve the country of those periodical agitations from which sprang so much mischief in the old government. If his tory shall record the truth in reference to our past system of government, it will be written of us that one of the greatest evils in the old government was the scramble for public offices — connected with the Presidential election. This evil is entirely obviated under the constitution which we have adopted. Many other improvements, as I think, could be mentioned, but it is unnecessary. I have barely alluded to the subject to show 3'ou that we do not invite you to any wild scheme of revolution. We invite Virginia to join us in perpetuating the principles upon which she has ever stood — the only hope of constitutional liberty in the world, as I now seriously apprehend."
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  42.  @TheStapleGunKid  As to what the Confederacy was fighting for, Stephens said in April 1861, "All we ask of our late confederates is to let us alone." That's what Confederates actually said when they went to war, and your and jaranarm's fake quotes and dishonest summaries are nothing but revisionist lies.
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  43.  @TheStapleGunKid  Fake quotes and dishonest summaries is all you have. No Southerner ever said anything about seceding in order to preserve slavery, nor seceding in order to expand slavery. Nonetheless, it's ridiculous to suggest that a country can't fight for anything other than what it seceded for, as if the war between Kosovo and Serbia was a war over religion or the war in the Donbas (prior to Russia's invasion) was a war over language.
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  44.  @TheStapleGunKid  "left alone" to "expand" You speak in oxymorons because your position is nonsense.
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  45.  @TheStapleGunKid  And, no, Stephens never said "slavery was 'the immediate cause of our late troubles that threatened dangers.'" More fake quotes.
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  46.  @TheStapleGunKid  More oxymorons and revisionist lies from you! If you cared about the truth, you'd answer my earlier questions directly: 1) What do you even mean by fighting for slavery? Do you mean fighting for their independence while continuing to want to keep slaves (just like the 13 states did in 1776)? That's a misleading propaganda phrase if that is what you mean, and if you mean something else, it's almost certainly just a straight up lie with no basis in the historical evidence. 2) You're not denying that the North wouldn't let the South choose its own government, are you? 3) So you're saying the Confederacy went to war with the Union in order to "expand" slavery into one of the Union's slave states? "Left alone from the Union to expand" into the Union is your oxymoronic revisionist BS.
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  47.  @TheStapleGunKid  "And what do you think that vexed question was? It was whether slavery would survive or die." Keep making up meanings. More of your revisionist lies!
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  48.  @TheStapleGunKid  Precisely the things that the Confederate constitution changed/clarified specifically with respect to slavery (which was really only the right of slave owners in one state to transit with their slaves through other states, a right which incidentally presumes that some Confederate states might in the future abolish slavery and codifying the right that the US Supreme Court had already said the US constitution guaranteed of slave owners to take slaves to any territories, in this case of the Confederacy), which is exactly what Stephens was talking about, not your made up revisionist BS that you want to summarize as whether slavery would "survive or die." What absurd propaganda you're spouting!
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  49.  @TheStapleGunKid  Ha ha! You're a joke. But you're also a liar, and a revisionist propagandist. The constitutional questions relating to slavery most certainly weren't whether it would "survive or die," and if you say so, then you're intentionally lying. But, of course, you need lies like these to hide from the real questions of the war, the ones that are just as relevant today completely apart from anything at all to do with slavery, like the ones I asked you about 4 comments back in this thread (not for the first time.) You know what you're really defending is slavery, not African chattel slavery, but slavery all the same, and you're happy to exploit long-dead issues of African slavery in order to continue defending slavery today.
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  50.  @Rundstedt1  A Pretext is exactly what the South said when they seceded. Georgia's official declaration of causes said very clearly: "After... the act of 1846 was passed... the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all. All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success."
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