Ann Althouse says about folks who may be a bit upset about the current trends of our national government.
So all these people have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War. They think secession is possible, but would they support secession in their own state?
18% said yes. In the South: 24%. And 35% of the under 30 group were ready to secede.
Fascinating(ly stupid). Blogger: Althouse - Post a Comment
Given the disdain that politicians have for the law and their constituents I don’t think it is a surprise that folks want to secede. With Judges inventing rights from the bench, politicians lying from the floors and Presidents barely able to form complete sentences the nation is a wreck.
Furthermore I do not care for the intrusion unto my life that other more liberal states believe is good for me. That they may force me to behave in the manner of their choosing by using judges is insulting and clearly is asking for trouble. Sooner or later the bills will come due.
About whether they have the right or not it is clear that the founding fathers were not so sure that succession was “fascinatingly stupid”.
John Quincy Adams…
In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a State to nullify an act of Congress, is too absurd for argument, and too odious for discussion. The right of a state to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Nations acknowledge no judge between them upon earth, and their Governments from necessity, must in their intercourse with each other decide when the failure of one party to a contract to perform its obligations, absolves the other from the reciprocal fulfillment of his own. But this last of earthly powers is not necessary to the freedom or independence of states, connected together by the immediate action of the people, of whom they consist. To the people alone is there reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent power, and that power can be exercised by them only under the tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice of Heaven.
With these qualifications, we may admit the same right as vested in the people of every state in the Union, with reference to the General Government, which was exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the Supreme head of the British empire, of which they formed a part - and under these limitations, have the people of each state in the Union a right to secede from the confederated Union itself.
Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.
While the Constitution was thus accomplishing the first object declared by the people as their motive for ordaining it, by forming a more perfect union, it became the joint and co-ordinate duty of the legislative and executive departments, to provide for the second of those objects, which involved within itself all the rest, and indeed all the purposes of government. For justice, defined by the Institutes of Justinian, as the constant and perpetual will of securing to every one his right, includes the whole duty of man in the social institutions of society, toward his neighbor.
I guess that with many folks elevated opinions of themselves perhaps even John Quincy Adams is “fascinating(ly stupid).
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