Americans must stand against this no matter their faith. By American, I mean those that support, honor, and protect the Constitution as it is written, and not as lawyers/judges twist it to mean.

I stand with you as will all Americans who cherish their God given rights. We must not forget that the Constitution merely acknowledges our rights it does not give them to us, God has. The enemies of freedom and liberty use the law to destroy these rights and serve another kingdom. To bend your knee to these evil men is a sin not only for you but one which you place on the heads of your children and grandchildren, and great gandchildren.

The Declaration of Indpendence certainly says that rights are endowed by the Creator. Maybe we should cancel independence retroactively on the grounds of a pre-emptive violation of the Wall of Separation between Church and State (shame on you, Mr. Jefferson!---sarc).

@spam

Teabagger, I see you no longer support the American Constitution.

When someone uses a term like "teabagger" it is an indication they are more interested in throwing out insults than engaging in rational debate.

"Teabagger" is hatespeech. And of course we don't support the American Constitution, since it has failed (spectacularly), to protect us from deviants like you.

Niyol @niyol_biligaana

@Alessandra_Ref - we shall not stand 4 gov control of our churches. Parker must resign. Contact mayor
mayor@houstontx.gov, call 713-837-0311

And that liberal Constitution a radical revolutionary becon of its time, written by elite lawyers, has accompanied the implacable march of liberalism.

Actually the Constitution was not written and approved by a large group of lawyers.. It was liberal in the classical liberal sense and not the Marxist progressive sense that liberal is used in today. The march of of modern liberalism is actually an affront to the Constitution. The need to destroy slavery opened the doors for modern liberalism, and the 1900's through Wilson and FDR nailed those doors open.

Appealing to an ideological/Constitutional machine set up by John Locke and the American
Founders that has, from 1787 to the present, has been successfully cleansing
America from all taint of our classical-Christian heritage.

America has had its share of controversies–Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist, Union vs. Confederate –but classocal conservatives reactionaries have had no dog in any of those fights, because each side was as Lockean as the other.

A State recognizing no restrictions of natural (let alone divine) law claims that it can order you to act against your conscience (not just preventing you from doing good, but commanding you to do evil) without even bothering to claim a compelling need. We were promised that disestablishment would give us religious freedom, but it has secured us nothing. A “liberty” in opposition to Gods law and natural law will always end in the suppression of both.

P.S. 34 out of 55 members of the Constitutional Convention were lawyers or made a study of law.

Indeed it will, because each time the economic pressures enabling the enforcement of 'God's' and 'natures' laws recedes, the natural law of common sense arises. It is tragic that human nature too often engages in violence during the change. The Civil War was horrible. But the North was right.

The North was wrong. If you study the Constitutional Convention three states agreed to ratify the Constitution providing they could withdraw from the union at any time if they felt it was necessary to the interests of their individual states. By agreeing to the demands of these three states, all the states recognized their right to leave and each de facto recognized that right for themselves as well.
Lincoln's radical use of force is not authorized by the Constitution. Proof of that is that not one, not one Confederate leader was prosecuted for treason after the war. Further explain to me if seccession was unconstitutional how Lincoln justified West VA leaving VA.
Lincoln wished to subsidize his railroad cronies, he could only do so by raising tarrifs, which he and his party did by over 200%. Just imagine what you would do if someone targetted a 200% tax increase on your profession while exempting others, for this is what the Republicans did, just as the Kleptocrats are doing today.
By the way google the fact about the three satets and see which ones they were, You'll be very surprised.

It's acknowledged implicitly that any country can do all in it's power to maintain its existence.

Those southern states, in enforcing slavery, in effect abolished the first amendment, prohibiting any abolitionist propaganda from being sent through the mails. They also in effect abolished the fourth amendment - free black sailors entering the port of Charleston, S.C. were incarcerated during the ship's stay.

Those southern hotheads destroyed slavery in the US by their idiotic decision to secede from the Union.

You seem to be implying that slavery was a good thing.

So you read my statement that those enforcing slavery abolished the first amendment by prohibiting abolitionist material, and locking up free black sailors while in port was a GOOD idea?

"three states agreed to ratify the Constitution providing they could withdraw from the union at any time"

If so, they should have insisted on having that caveat stated explicitly in the Constitution.

This whole discussion is getting way off topic and distracts from the immediate problem, which is the assault on freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association by the radical left and the LGBT lobby. Whatever your position on the Civil War (my own is complicated, but over all I think the South was wrong) I hope we can all agree on that.

The confederates were traitors to the USA. It is quite clear cut!

Perhaps, but that isn't the point. We should be concentrating on the issue at hand.

I agree, and I have no interest in re-adjudicating the Civil War. Just couldn't resist addressing the peculiar theory put forth.

Thanks, and I agree with your take.

You mean the Tenth Amendment?

Interesting interpretation of the Tenth Amendment.

Particularly as they could have, as a condition of ratification, insisted on something like the Articles of Confederation's clause on retention of rights, which begins, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, ..." - they didn't.

The Tenth Amendment doesn't explicitly state secession as one of the rights retained by the states upon formation of a union.

The question of a right to secession was, unfortunately, not explicitly addressed in the Constitution. That ambiguity led to people arguing vehemently on both sides of the question - people felt so strongly about it, on both sides, that it led eventually to war.

If the Constitution had been clear on this issue, maybe the union would never have been formed. Maybe it would have been formed and there would have been no Civil War. Maybe (if secession had been explicitly unconstitutional) the South would have appealed to right of revolution and gone to war anyway.

Particularly as they could have…

They could have done a lot of things differently. Had they been aware of the future, undoubtedly they would have. The point is that trying to interpret the meaning of the Constitution outside the context o f the ratification conventions is completely indefensible.

Yes, people dispute endlessly over the Constitution's meaning. Obviously, the proceedings of those conventions should be the first stop (and probably the only stop) in determining what the Constitution was intended to mean. Of course, generally the people who dispute the meaning of the Constitution do so to justify totalitarian ends and don't much care what it was intended to mean…which suggests 1) that no amount of clarifying text would have sufficed, and 2) that we ought not take their arguments seriously.

You declare that people "argued" against secession. The arguments were (and are) pretty bad. It wasn't on the strength of his arguments that Lincoln rallied his invasion force. It was on the strength of the bad blood between North and South, and on rhetoric. As usual.

Well-written law can be interpreted based on the actual wording of the law.

The value of looking at the discussions around ratification is to understand the meaning of the words and phrasing as used at the time. Once usage is settled, the actual wording of the Constitution should be determinative - not various opinions from the ratification debate.

If the meaning is still ambiguous, it should be clarified by amendment.

Your use of phrases like "can be" and "should be" reflects that you do, I think, recognize that the Constitution is poorly written and staggeringly ambiguous. Only within some interpretive framework (i.e., the Feds are by default limited only to the enumerated powers) does it begin to become serious.

Something that is unambiguous, of course, is that the Constitution would never have been ratified had it been argued to be indissoluble, perpetual, perfect, or the Union argued to be indivisible. I mean hello, 3/5's clause? It blows my mind that New England was so desperate to federalize that they caved to such insanity. This is akin to your girlfriend being so desperate to marry you (despite the fact that you don't like her very much) that she concedes to pay all the bills and grant you unlimited on-demand sex. Crazy much?

Teabagger, the Civil War ended 149 1/2 years ago. The traitors LOST! Give it up.

It is possible that most or all of what you say is correct. It just proves my point. Slavery survived as long as the economic climate favored it. When the economic factors shifted sufficiently (whether for good reasons or bad..i.e. tariffs and/or financial chaos from secession) the cruelty hidden behind 'natural law' or 'God's law' for maintaining slavery became sufficiently exposed to where it became possible to end it. Only to that extent do I mean that the North was right. The Civil War itself was one monstrous horror from one end to the other...as were many of the motives for conducting it.

The abolition of slavery did not open the door to modern Liberalism. That a Rothbardian faux Libertarian myth.

The Civil War was fought because the South lost an election and would not accept the results. Every other justification save the primary, i.e., the defense of slavery, amounted to a protest to being defeated in Congress. The 10th Amendment does not give the States a right to nullify a vote in Congress that is derived from the Federal government's enumerated powers. The Confederacy was the antithesis of liberal government.

What makes succession appealing to the faux Libertarian is that it allows the party that loses a vote to split off and form its own government. Faux Libertarians are anarchists who see succession as a way of destroying government by breaking down society into small homogeneous political units. In the Rothbardian fantasy world such a society will live in peace and harmony. In the real world it would quickly degenerate into a bunch of warring mini-mobs.

What a crock. Try reading the Confederate Constitution and see which of the two was more liberal. The war may have been a defense of slavery, with the minor fact that fewer than 10% of Southerners owned slaves and its hard to believe anyone would fight for something they had no stake in, and that four states of the South left the Union after Lincoln decided to use unlawful force against the States that left the Union. Now show me in the enumberated powers where Lincoln had the ability to wage war on his fellow citizens?
I would remind you that the Confederacy did everything it could to prevent war offering to pay its share of the national debt and for any federal properties in the south. Lincon did all he could to provoke war. Its sad to see so much propoganda absorbed rather than serious research, thought, and investigation of the obvious flaws in Lincoln's words and actions.
The man was the only leader in the civilized war who had to kill 600,000 of his fellow citizens to end slavery. No other nation had to endure this, no other president had to cause it. The man was a tyrant and warmonger who died as he deserved.

If Lincoln was inflexible in allowing the south to secede, maybe Lincoln's motive for war really was to end American slavery?

If Lincoln was inflexible in allowing the south to secede, maybe Lincoln's motive for war really was to end American slavery?

If only we had the slightest evidence that Lincoln had some secret motive.

the south harbored slavery. and they lost. theres not much else to say; you can paint any person in history you want, as a villain. doesnt do much to change the outcome of what has already happened. even the beatles, way back when, made then chinese ruler, Mao, out to be some tyrant. and yet today, based on facts, history attributes his rules, as having lifted over 100million chinese citizens out of poverty...

but but but, the beatles said he was the embodiment of all that is wrong in the world.

lulz.

everything youve typed in the whole diatribe, screams of "they had no right to tell us, the confederates, what to do. they just had no right"...

" Lincoln did all he could to provoke war."

good. GOOD. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"...stop trying to spin this as if Lincoln was some blood thirsty devil. its just pathetic.

seems like the only tears here, are yours. nobody, gives two craps about whatever pseudo-crimes were enacted upon the south, leading up to, during or after the Civil War. nobody.

N O B O D Y.

harping on it all day and night just means you are belligerent.

It is obvious that you are incapable of objective historical analysis and intelligent discussion. You are hooked on the koolaid. Keep the propaganda alive.

Yes, the Confederate constitution had many good ideas in it not the least was one bill, one subject but to believe that the Confederacy was anything more than an attempt to maintain slavery is naive at best. If the Confederates actually believed secession was legal than it was doomed to disintegration as regional interests diverged and the economic and political losers withdrew from the Confederacy as they had done from union. If you believe that the Confederacy was a permanent union than you would be admitting that Confederacy was an exercise in losers hypocrisy. The Confederacy was about slavery and nothing else. Live with it.

"The Confederacy was about slavery and nothing else."

Simple-minded analysis.

some truths are pretty simple

Veritas: "10% of Southerners owned slaves and its hard to believe anyone would
fight for something they had no stake in, and that four states of the
South left the Union after Lincoln decided to use unlawful force against
the States that left the Union"

Some subjects are just too complicated for simple minds to understand, so you make up your own truths. We see that a lot with todays liberals, who are often are out of touch with reality.

A lot of those who didn;t own slaves were children of slaveholders, who stood to INHERIT those slaves.

non sequitur

Perhaps you missed my discussion of Confederacy as a product of the failure to accept the outcome of the Constitutional process in the 1860 election and their defeats on economic issues, mainly the tariff, in Congress. But then again as I said below Neo-Confederates are not really into the Confederacy as much as they are into devolution.

You are not into historical accuracy as much as you are into your own opinion and casting aspersions. Devolution is what liberals are into with their lowering of standards, values and decreasing liberties. You must be one of them.

You quibble or "u" versus "e" and yet don't know what devolution means in this context. It means the decentralization of political power. You may not be a Liberal but you are an idiot.

Taking your word, with multiple meanings, and using it in a different context to make a point is entirely my prerogative. Idiot? I am not the one who thinks "The Confederacy was about slavery and nothing else".

Given that the Articles of Succession of almost every state put slavery right up front, it would be hard to deny slavery was the issue. But of course an idiot like you would miss that.

And I am not buying your BS about multiple meanings. You didn't know what it meant.

No, it wasn't. There were several dissatisfactions it embodied. But it probably would have broken apart if it had survived the vicious, illegal federal attack.

I am going to use your stamping of the feet as a foil because you have hit the nail on the head. The structure and culture of the Confederacy would have ended up in continous devolution into smaller and smaller governing areas. This is why faux Libertarians have embraced the neo-Confederate cause and not slavery. So it allows BenGladden to embrace the Confederacy without the slavery baggage. Modern neo-Confederates are so much interested in what the Confederacy actually believed in. They see it the structure of the Confederacy as blue print for the devolution of society into small homogeneous governing bodies.

Do you have anything to say that you can prove? Speculation and claims of racism like yours are the last resort of weak minds who are losing the debate. If you were honest and intelligent, you would know that "small homogeneous governing bodies" is the basis for the founding of these United States. You would know that what the Confederacy, "neo-Confederates" as you call them and many of the founding fathers including Jefferson and Madison are and were defending is the 10th Amendment and the rest of the Bill Of Rights.

It seems the last 6 years of rule by Obama and the Democrats have bolstered our case. Anti-federalism was around long before the Civil War and is gaining steam once again, thanks to your incompetent and corrupt federal administration. Have you seen recent polls on Americans' attitudes toward the federal government? Thanks Democrats!

Without the 10th Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be NO United States. And without the 10th Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights, there will be NO United States in the future. Don't let your ignorance and dishonesty be your demise.