Hey Photius

[patriotman]

Photius (all):

Education is a potential cure for ignorance.  In my case I feel the need to learn more about the Constitiution and the framers intent.

Are there any good Internet based chat forums out there for studying the Constitution that are not run by those trying to pervert it to support their liberal cause?  I have done some searches and did not see anything that had real meat to it.

Do you know of any?  

Thanking you in advance for any consideration you giv ehtis matter,

Patriotman

[Photius]

Patriotman and all,

Unfortunately, I do not know of any good web chat forums (besides this one!) for discussing the original intent of the Founders.

A few web pages I recommend are www.founding.com and www.claremont.org   They have some great information on the Founding.

In print I suggest readings such as the Federalist Papers.  The Federalist is probably the single best source on the Founding.  <br>
Then there is always the Founders personal writings.  Here you want to focus on Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and John Adams, and to a lesser extent James Wilson, George Mason, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine.  Of course Lincoln is essential on the necessity of returning to the principles of the Declaration and the original intent of the Constitution.

(Lincoln successfully led the North in defeating the proto-Nazi American South through the principles of the Declaration.  Like the Confederacy, all attempts to destroy America come at attacking our first principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and codified in law in the Constitution.  All efforts at preserving our regime must come through a concise understanding of the Founding.)

On republicanism James Madison recommends Aristotle, Cicero, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke.  Locke was the single greatest philosophic influence on the Founders; read his “Second Treatise.”  <br>
For scholarship on the Founding I recommend Harry Jaffa’s writings, especially those on Lincoln and the Court.  Thomas West has written much on the Founding as well.  Some others who have keen insight on America include Ed Erler, John Marini, John Adams Wettergreen, and Charles Kessler, and to a lesser extent Pat Buchanan.  Track down Clarence Thomas’ Court opinions; he has some superb thinking on original intent.  <br>
I hope this helps!

Photius

[patriotman]

Photius:

Thank you for the response.  I try as best I can to read the works of, and about our founding fathers.   I shall take your other suggestions to heart.  

I only wish there was a forum for such disscussions and teachings.  The problem I see with this list is the lack of a searchable archive and overall oraganization, as such a forum would need dedicated archives and the like.  

Once again I wish you the very best in this, the most blessed of seasons.

Patriotman

[patriotman]

Gang:

Cripes…I can’t take it any more.   “The Commander in Chief”…the commander in chief…good grief.  Can anyone point out to me where in the Constitution it states that the President is automatically the “Commander in Chief”?   My read of the Constitution only allows the President to become “Commander in Chief” “when called in to the service of the United States”.   This ostensibly means the President only becomes Commander in Chief when Congress confers upon him the title, and only then after a Constitutional declaration of war.

Has Congress made a Constitutional declaration of war.  No they have not.  Has Congress called the President to serve as “Commander in Chief”?  No they have not.  More over the President is suppose to be governed by the regulations established by Congress.    In my opinion this colloquial nonsense that the President is automatically “Commander in Chief” is yet another dangerous perversion of the Constitution.  Photius, any comments?

I remain,

Patriotman

[Photius]

Patriotman,

Yours is an honest misreading of the constitution.  Article II, sec. 2 of the constitution reads: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States . . . .”<br>
The first phrase of Article II, sec. 2 (as seen above) does declare that the president is the commander-in-chief of the United States military simply as president.  “[W]hen called into the actual service of the Unites States” refers to the clause preceding it,  to “the militia of the several states,” and not to the first ‘president as commander-in-chief’ clause.  <br>
Semantically and logically, the above is the proper reading.  When would the United States military not be in the service of the United States?  Insofar as the United States has a military it will be in the service of the United States; and, it will of necessity, like all organizations, need a continuous commander-in-chief.  State militias are not by their nature in the direct service of the United States, but rather in the direct service of their particular states.  The constitution provides the power for Congress to determine when the president may have the militias of the states under his control (under the Congress’ power to govern the militias in the service of the United States—see below).  By the nature of his powers as president, the president is commander-in-chief of the United States military, but is not by the nature of his powers commander-in-chief of the militias of the several states.

The constitution itself in addition to Article II (the powers of the executive branch) helps us read Article II.  In Article I (the powers of the Congress) we see in section 8 that Congress has the power “To raise and support armies” and “To provide and maintain a Navy.”  Sec. 8 also authorizes Congress to make the rules governing the United States military and “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States . . . .”<br>
Congress creates and sustains the United States military, but the president commands it.  (Notice the constitution does not give the president the power to draft his own military apart from the military created by Congress.  Nor does the constitution give Congress the power to “command” the military.)  The states create and sustain their militias, but the Congress can place the state militias under the control of the president, and having done so can govern the militias as it does the United States military (with the exceptions noted in Article I, sec. 8).   <br>
Alexander Hamilton explains clearly the meaning of Article II, sec. 2 in the Federalist Nos. 29, 69, and 74.  Here, Hamilton speaks to the president’s variable control of the state militias as a limit to his powers as commander-in-chief.

You are right about our military deployment in Afghanistan: Congress has not declared war.  (Though the president does not need a declaration of war to command his troops.)  We are in Afghanistan not under the authority the American people have delegated to the federal government of the United States.  Rather, the Bush administration has sought its authority from the UN, specifically Article 51 of the UN Charter which recognizes in sovereign states the right to defend themselves!  This is most disgusting and most troubling!

I hope this helps, Patriotman!

Photius

[patriotman]

Hello Photius:

Interesting; thank you for the response.    Very interesting. My comments were not as "tongue-in-cheek" as I had presented them.   At one time I had actually researche dthis some, bu thtat was a long time ago(13 years now)and I do not remember what "primary source" I based my opinion on, but it was far more than the wording in the Constitution.  Darn it, I wish I couple remember my primary sources, as I truly value your opinion.   And darn this job...I travel 50 weeks a year, and as a result I always have an inappropriate level of research materials availabel for the task at hand.  Hence my disposition toward on-line resources.

Anyway I am greatly enjoying the communciation and learning in the process.  

I wish you all the best,

Patriotman

[patriotman]

Furthering a point Photius made, I wonder a loud how to seek a legal inquest to the vexing problem of Federal employees searching the affects of U.S. citizens at the airport.  

In other words I am strongly positioned to be a real pain in the "xxx" as I fly a minimum of 100 times a year, often more and have "elite" status with a couple of Airlines.

I am not sure how to go about protesting such behvior in an effective manner that calls attention to Photius' point without being viewed as disruptive and arrested.

Suggestions?

Patriotman

[cjelephant]

While enjoying the discussion I came across a ridiculous assertion from Photius:  

"Lincoln successfully led the North in defeating the proto-Nazi American South through the principles of the Declaration.  Like the Confederacy, all attempts to destroy America come at attacking our first principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and codified in law in the Constitution."

Huh?  That is wildly inaccurate.  

1.  The South was not proto-nazi.  Were they completely wrong on slavery? - you bet they were and they paid a dear price for it.  However, they are not comparable to a totalitarian socialist movement.

2.  Since when is secession not constitutional?

3.  The South's belief that the federal government was becoming too powerful and that states should defend their rights - is COMPLETELY constitutional.  

[Photius]

I am always happy to provide instruction on American government and American history.  Let the lesson begin.

Today’s exercise will focus on dispelling three pretensions.

The first falsity is that “The South was not proto-nazi.”  What we must understand is that the South existed for and by slavery, and it was over slavery that the South committed treason and left the Union. Alexander Stevens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, stated: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [of equality found in the Declaration of Independence]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”  Stevens continued his diatribe against the Founding by asserting that “This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.”<br>
The great “truth” of the Confederacy is that the superior race is the master and subjugator of inferior races.  This truth has been discovered by and is part of the body of “scientific” knowledge.  These thoughts on race are not simply the thoughts of one peculiar man; they are the deluded ramblings of one of the luminaries of the Confederacy.

Now, what about “Nazism.”  Hopefully the parallels are clear.  Both Nazi Germany and the American Confederacy were founded on the belief that modern science reveals the natural superiority of one race to the exclusion of all other races.  Does this race exclusivity amount to a “totalitarian socialist movement”? Again, let us look at the parallels.  The root of tyranny in the modern world is the belief that those of a certain class (Aryans, whites, Bolsheviks, al-Quaida, etc.) are the natural masters of those who are members of the inferior class (non-Aryans, non-whites, non-Bolsheviks, and non-al-Quaida).  Though the South was arguably socialist, would it make much difference if the South were simply totalitarian (tyrannical) as opposed to socialist totalitarian?  

Now that we see the true foundations of the Confederacy we can address the question of the rightfulness of the southern states in leaving the Union.  Is there a constitutional right to secede?  Since the word “secede” is not in the constitution we may presume secession is not constitutional, that secession is a delusion.

The Preamble to the constitution tells us the document was drafted for “ourselves and our posterity.”  The constitution was not meant to die with those who ratified it, but last indefinitely in the states that did ratify it.

Article IV of the constitution explains the matter of preserving states in their republican character and of adding new states to the Union.  Nowhere is there a proviso for how a state may leave the Union once entered.  

Article VII speaks of the manner in which the constitution shall take effect.  Once in effect in the ratifying states there is no time limit on how long the Union shall endure, again testifying that the Union was meant to be perpetual.

Secession is not synonymous with revolution.  The Confederate States did not claim the right to revolution and never did they cite one injustice done to them by the North.  To be just, a revolution must serve the first principles of republican government, principles Alexander Stevens and the Confederacy repudiated; secession is always and everywhere in the service of tyranny and anarchy.

The doctrine of “states rights” is yet another rejection of the Founding.  Rights inhere in individual people, not in groups of people, even when grouped as states.  Nowhere does the constitution speak of “rights” which belong to states.  

Defenders of the Confederacy have been pregnant doging and moaning for one hundred fifty years about the growing power of the federal government leading up to the Civil War.  Such sentiments are deeply mistaken.  What we must find most astonishing is the extent to which the South wanted to expand federal power in the territories.  The South demanded federal troops to protect the “property” of slave owners in the federal territories!  This demand for federal intervention was unprecedented in its day.  It was the South that wanted the expansion of federal powers, not the North.  And that corrects the third error.

Photius

[Photius]

This is funny.  "B-i-t-c-h-i-n-g and moaning" in my post above was altered automatically to "pregnant doging and moaning."

Ok.

Photius

[patriotman]

Is it possible that "we", collectively, as a group refrain from personalizing attacks on individuals?   Might I suggest that if the word “ridiculous” was removed and the statement “That is wildly inaccurate“ was replaced with “I believe this to be inaccurate for the following reasons:” the overall post would have stayed the same but a “warmer” less “demeaning message would be conveyed.  

It occurs to me that as a whole, the people who come to TheAmericanCause share a commonality that is far greater than our differences.   Why deliberately increase the tension between members?   People should find support in a group like this, and respect even in spirited debates.  

I hope Photius will endeavor to temper his reply.

Wishing you the best,

Patriotman  

[patriotman]

Photius wrote:

The great “truth” of the Confederacy is that the superior race is the master and subjugator of inferior races.  This truth has been discovered by and is part of the body of “scientific” knowledge.  These thoughts on race are not simply the thoughts of one peculiar man; they are the deluded ramblings of one of the luminaries of the Confederacy.

My reply:

Ok. I shall except your point without qualification.  However kindly explain to me how intrinsically this is different from Manifest Destiny?   I do not have ready access to that doctrine, but did it not express a similar sentiment in reference to the Native American population?   Perhaps by your other comments it is different in that the supremacy of the white man was pronounced as “God’s will” under manifest destiny rather than as an extension of science.   Remember I ma go back in time now, probably about 30 years for me since I last discussed manifest destiny.  But I remember even then thinking of it as a rather unusual proclamation.

Photius wrote:

The doctrine of “states rights” is yet another rejection of the Founding.

My reply:

What do you mean by “Founding”.   To be clear, I am asking for a operational definition.

As always I wish the best,

Patriotman

[Photius]

I am happy to address your inquiries, Patriotman.

On the surface I do not know that “Manifest Destiny” was anything more than a slogan to arouse certain expansionist sentiments in the 1840s.  After Jefferson authorized the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, a mass of land which nearly doubled the size of the existing America, it did not take long for many people to foresee that the Republic might one day extend to the Pacific coast.  The “destiny” of America, then, was her eventual expansion to cover the width of the continent.

Now, the South certainly wanted all new territories that entered the Union to be slave territories one way or another, and so eventually slave states.  This desire to spread slavery to the territories led to many contentious divisions in the Union, particularly over Kansas-Nebraska and California.  But to the point, I have never heard Manifest Destiny associated with or identified as the desire to spread slavery to the territories.

I have never come across any accounts that held Manifest Destiny was a program of the white man conquering “inferior races.”  All the land west of the Mississippi River, not to mention the land to the east, had been occupied by any number of white men.  The point was not that the land would be taken from non-whites and those non-white people subjugated, but that the land would become American soil.

By the “Founding” I mean the establishment of the American regime under the Constitution.  The Founding is the time from the initial claims of the colonists of “abuses and usurpations” at the hands of the British to the actual establishment of the regime under the Constitution.  The time of the Founding is roughly 1760 to 1800.  

To reject the Founding is to reject the principles by which the American colonists threw off British tyrannical rule and established a Constitutional republic.

Photius

[cjelephant]

Photius-

The Foundation of Nazi Germany was the idea that the STATE was more important than the individual.  The murderous policies of Nazi Germany were a result of totalitarian government.  That is why it was called National Socialism.  To compare that to the American South is simply inaccurate.  Slavery was a blight on the American South.  However, if you are going to say that slavery and the idea that one race is superior to another, are the defining characteristics of Fascism, than you are simply wrong.  Using your loose definition of Nazism, one is forced to conclude that Imperial Rome and Britain were equally proto-nazi.  

States Rights is completely in line with the US constitution.  You  continually cite the founding of the union as pre-eminent over the sovereignty of States.  Two points - one, the union was a voluntary contract among free people and therefore if one party (in this case northern states growing the FEDERAL government) violates the intent of the founding, than parties to the contract can opt out (South Carolina).  The idea that states must accept anything that happens after the founding, even violations of the principle of founding, is not accurate.

Lastly, you mention, almost casually, that the South was arguably Socialist.  That is unfortunately, complete bunk.  I wish I could put it more delicately, but I trust that you are confident in yourself, so I am sure you can take the honest criticism:  you are woefully misunderstanding socialism if you can make such an absurd statement - the American South was not a socialist economy.  

[Photius]

Christmas travel has prevented a more timely response from me.

The political insight of the American South was that there need not be any moral limits to politics.  As I have shown in Alexander Stevens’ words, it was in a scientific discovery that the South came to knowledge of the true relations between the white and negro races.  Hitler claimed to know that Aryans were superior racially to Jews, but wanted to prove it “scientifically.”  Modern experimental science as such does not recognize any moral limits; as a method it can not.  Modern science only speaks of possibilities and potentialities; modern science does not speak of what should be done or what ought to be done.  

In choosing atheist science over moral nature (the laws of nature and of nature’s God), the American South was, as I stated previously, a proto-Nazi regime.  What does this mean exactly?  It means that like the Nazi regime, the traitors of the confederacy saw no limits placed by the laws of nature or by God on their politics.  If there are no moral limits on politics, everything is reduced to an arbitrary choice—a choice to be proclaimed and enforced by the power of the will, or the national or confederate will.  

Stephen Douglas in his candidacy for the Senate from Illinois in 1858 made this argument.  Douglas wanted the people in the territories to choose (to will) for themselves whether they would have slave or free territories, and therefore slave or free states when the time came for statehood.  Douglas cared not whether slavery was voted for or against, or more importantly whether slavery was right or wrong.  Douglas cared simply for the will of the people.

I know of no argument which condones slavery as in the American South and does not at the same time condone abortion, theft, murder, rape, homosexuality, genocide, etc.

Again and again I hear from the defenders of southern tyranny that states’ rights are very much constitutional.  Never have I heard on what principle of constitutional republicanism the concept of states’ rights stands.  People have rights; states have powers delegated to them by the people who create them.

It is odd that a man who bemoans the parallels between Nazi Germany and the American South would argue for states’ rights over the rights of individual people. Those who argue for the rights of states are in fact arguing for the supremacy of states over people!  I think the parallel here is obvious enough.

Again and again I hear from the defenders of southern tyranny that secession is very much constitutional.  If secession is constitutional, then why is the process by which a state may leave the leave Union not spelled out in the constitution as is the process by which a state may be added to the Union?  Oh, but what if the federal government violates the constitution?  When the terms of a contract are violated the contract is not automatically negated.  Political remedies exist for affected parties to seek recompense for their injuries.  When political remedies do not exist revolution is the final solution.  The concept of the right to revolution, as opposed to the false right of secession, is described in the Declaration of Independence.  

What rights of southerners were violated by the federal government?  If the rights of people were violated and no political remedy existed, then why did not the confederate states issue their own declaration of independence on behalf of the people of the south?  No one has read from me that federal tyranny is to be tolerated, embraced, and celebrated.  Indeed I have argued in these pages in opposition to the unconstitutional expansion of federal powers in the coming “federalization” of airport security screeners against one who has no serious objection to this abuse of federal power.  

The same one who welcomes the federalization of airport security screeners now tells us he knows federal tyranny when he sees it.  As I have demonstrated time and again, you have no credibility on matters constitutional.

Photius