The Fourteenth Amendment: Epic Levels of Tyranny, Part Two

It may seem kind of counter intuitive for a guy who hails as a 100% constitutionalist to so openly rail against certain amendments to the Constitution. I get how this can be confusing to the really simple minded and superficial thinker. On one hand we have a person such as myself, apparently screaming loudly to the world, “DON’T MESS WITH THE CONSTITUTION!!!” and on the other hand we have me screaming just as vociferously to, “REPEAL UNCONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS!!!”

I can’t believe that there are people out there who do not get this because it is really simple to understand. Amendments to the Constitution that were either passed outside of the Article Five process for amendments or which are in violation of the rights of the protections of the People and the States IS MESSING WITH THE CONSTITUTION, directly and invasively.

Let me give you a simple example. If an amendment is passed by simple majority, rather than two thirds majority, never signed by the president, approved of by a simple majority of States, rather than three quarters of States, and then signed as a constitutional amendment by executive order by the Secretary of State. The proposed amendment says, “The Congress has the power to eat California.”

This would be—it should be unnecessary to say—unconstitutional in the extreme. Article Five was not followed and it gives the federal government authority to deny one of the States and its People the right to exist without the extreme fear of being cannibalized.

Yet in the Fourteenth Amendment we have a case where; Congress couldn’t get the required two thirds votes so it, in violation of Article Five, ejected a large number of congressmen who opposed it from both houses, never sent it to the president, sent it to the States to ratify, which failed, so they ejected those states from the country even after those States supported the Thirteenth Amendment, it still failed to pass ratification, so they gave it to the Secretary of State to sign as an executive order. Then they made it a law that for the States to be allowed back into the country and have their congressmen again seated, they had to accept the amendment or endure military occupation. In the Fourteenth Amendment is a clause that strips away all of the State’s rights with regard to the citizen’s protections from the federal government and transfers them directly to the federal government, so it enjoys not only the distinction of being illegally enacted, it also radically alters the rights of the States and the People.

The corruption was so bad that three States, Ohio, Oregon and New Jersey, withdrew their support for the amendment in protest.

As mentioned in my last blog post, its enactment violated the Constitution six ways to Sunday. Sections Two, Three and Four contain punishments against the South for seceding when there was no law against it at that time. This is called an ex post facto law. As bad as that is, along with the rest of the violations of the Constitution in the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, there are worse things that can happen.

As always I believe that the most important, and most ignored, part of the Constitution is the Tenth Amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This is part of the ever infamous Bill of Rights. It is stated as an absolute. Taking this into consideration as valid and immutable, there is no way that the federal government can expand its powers beyond the enumerated powers of the Constitution.

By contrast  let’s look at Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment; “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Let’s look at this in order. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Prior to the enactment, rather than ratification, of the Fourteenth Amendment there was no such thing as a United States citizen. The People were only considered citizens of their own States. The federal government acted as an agency of the States and the People only in matters of national defense and international relations. Demonstrating this idea we have one of my favorite quotes from the Father of the Constitution, President James Madison.

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people."

We can see from this that the Constitution was never intended to be a direct and all encompassing authority over the individual lives of the People and the authority of the States. The Constitution could have originally been considered to be a strong mutual protection and international agreement between individual and independently sovereign States. We can see from a close inspection of this principle, and through the actual text of the Constitution and its first twelve amendments, that the federal government was created by the States to act as an agency of the States only on matters that were common to all of the States on the national and international stage, leaving personal individual liberties to the protection of the governments of the States themselves. All powers of the federal government were few and well defined and limited by their own definitions within themselves and the Bill of Rights.

That was the whole point of the thing. Hold the country together without subjecting the People to the heavy hand of an oppressive centralized federal government. They’d just fought a war to get away from having a huge government telling them all what they had to do. They weren’t about to create a replacement for the rule of a king under the British government.

Then along comes the Fourteenth Amendment and BAM!!! POW!!! Now the United States federal government takes direct possession of the People.

But what good is having direct possession, and I do mean possession, if you can’t do anything with it? So we come to the next sentence; “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

“But that’s our civil rights!” one may be tempted to say. “If you revoke the Fourteenth Amendment the People will have no civil rights!”

It is a seemingly interesting assessment but ultimately wrong because it is based on ignorance of other parts of the Constitution.

Our civil rights were already protected in Article Four, Section Two which says; “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” And reciprocity of those privileges and immunities was already establish in Article Four, Section One which says; “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” The Full Faith and Credit clause is what makes us a unified country under the Constitution. Due process, as well as the protections of life, liberty or property is already covered by the Fifth Amendment which says in part; “…nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….”

If the Fourteenth Amendment, which couldn’t be passed in accordance to well established due process of the law, contains a phrase against violation of a person’s due process of the law, a curious person would have to wonder how much the proponents of the Fourteenth really cared about the subject.

So if everything was already covered why would the proponents of the Fourteenth Amendment repeat these parts which were already stated in other parts of the Constitution? Well, my friend, that’s the easy part to see if one is just a little distrustful of unfettered centralized government power. It says, “No State shall make or enforce any law….” The effect of this is to take all of the State’s government’s power, and their already existing protections of their citizens, then transfer that power to the federal government. If a State does something that D.C. disapproves of, the federal government can rule by force against it.

That’s what is different. And that’s the only difference. Either the States have that power or the federal government has that power. Not both.

One might be tempted to question what the big deal is. If a State abuses its people then the federal government should come in and save them. Right?

The problem comes into being when the people in control of the federal government can use force to establish itself as superior to the States and to proclaim itself the sole judge of its own powers. (Note: I have to give credit to James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy for this brilliant and pithy point. It comes from their book; The South Was Right!: A New Edition for the 21st Century (p. 223). Shotwell Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition. Some people may disagree with some of their points, as is natural, but it really is a great read.)

That singular idea regarding the use of force to establish itself as superior to the States and to proclaim itself the sole judge of its own powers is the exact dividing line between freedom and tyranny.

If we say that if a State abuses its citizens then the federal government should come in and save them then what exactly is it which we would hope for as a means of rescue if the federal government becomes abusive of its citizens?

“Well if that happens we can just vote them out!” a few people have answered to this question.

Okay. So they accept that they can vote out the abusive federal officials, over the massive conflicts of interest and numbers of People who might oppose them at the federal level, but for some reason can’t vote out the smaller numbers of abusive State officials closer to them in the same way? They would rather trust their chips to the big federal government rather than the smaller and easier to manipulate State governments?

This country was established in part on the basis of a series of checks and balances through divisions of power rather than having all of the power in one place. States are separations of power and part of the system of checks and balances against the federal government. If we accept that the federal government has direct control over our individual lives, over the will and power of the States, then there is no division of power or check and balance against federal power.

Putting in another and more personal way, if a State abuses you and it gets too awfully bad to endure, and it becomes impossible to vote the abusers out, under the original design you can just move to another State which is more amenable to your personal interests. Under monolithic federal rule there is no place you can go within the United States to escape. If you can’t vote the abusers out your only choices are revolution or to leave the country.

This is a fundamental shift in the form of the United States system of government. It is no longer what it was.

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote of this, that if you wish to subvert or overthrow a system of government and still keep control of the people you would have to “at least retain the semblance of the old forms” so the people think “that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones.”

The simple fact is that under the pretense of “general welfare” and under the Fourteenth Amendment the federal government of the United States can control every aspect of the individual lives of the People and there is almost nothing your State can do to protect you. The federal government of the United States, through the president, Congress and Supreme Court, three parts of the same thing, is now the sole judge of its own powers.

Here we have another warning from the Father of the Constitution; "If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."—James Madison

Do you wonder as a patriotic American what has happened to your country? Does it seem to you to have become rather radical and insane? Does it seem like you can’t even recognize it as the same nation you were born and raised in?

Every single item on the modern liberal agenda depends on this. I cannot overemphasize this. Name anything the liberals in the federal government are doing and this is the source of their power. From abortions to gun control to men pretending to be women using the girl’s restroom and vaccine mandates based on junk science, all of it at the federal level depends on what the federal government arbitrarily calls “privileges and immunity.”

People have from time to time asked me when I think the United States will finally collapse and fall into a tyrannical and oppressive rule. I submit to you, my dear readers, that we will collapse and fall into tyrannical and oppressive rule on the Ninth of July, in the Year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty eight.

The Fourteenth Amendment: Epic Levels of Corruption, Part One

The Amendments: Part One

The Amendments: Part Two

The Fourteenth Amendment: Epic Levels of Corruption, Part One

I have focused my last two blog posts on a simple thumbnail sketching of the amendments to the Constitution and what I think of them. There is a philosophic doctrine called Occam’s Razor which in layman’s terms states that the simplest of competing theories is most often the correct one. By simple it is meant the one that has the least unnecessary things included. Sometimes it can go grossly wrong if something critical is left out by accident but generally speaking, when something that you are trying to solve which is really complicated begins to simplify, you’re on the path towards the truth.

I try to keep these posts in holding with that. Not to talk down to anybody or dumb things down so more people can understand them but to weed out all of the extraneous details and get to the basic facts. Let’s face it, we are all busy and have things to do in our lives. Most people reading something on the internet are doing it with the morning’s cup of coffee in hand and looking for something to think about. So in keeping with that idea as a target I try to hold my posts to being a somewhat light hearted, person to person, here we are chugging our liquid ambition while thinking a bit about Political Philosophy.

Last week’s post included the following statement regarding the Fourteenth Amendment. “Which brings us to the next of the unconstitutional amendments, the Fourteenth. And you know what? I’m going to skip it for now. It’s so bad from top to bottom that it deserves a posting of its own. People have written entire books on the subject.” I wrote this in the hopes that I would write something more complete on it this week.

While doing my research this morning I ran across several articles that cover the subject so completely that for a moment I thought the things that I would have to add to them were so few that it would be pointless for me to do so. Well, that’s the thing. Most of the objects of my studies are very long and detailed. I try to write my posts so that they are rather simple and direct, being focused on the big picture. As it turns out, just by focusing on what the Constitution actually says, which is what I do, I have something to write about after all.

As my subtitle suggests, the Fourteenth Amendment is the most horrible case of political corruption and tyranny ever accomplished in the history of the United States. Several times in considering what I would write here my blood reached the boiling point to the degree that I broke out in full sailor language.

If you are interested in the painstaking details of the history of the Fourteenth I invite you to check out these sources of information:

1) A Treatise, authored by Judge Lander H. Perez, Louisiana. This is an actual case where an attempt was made to nullify the Fourteenth Amendment on the basis that it was not legally ratified. If you love to read legal cases (yawn) then this is for you.

2) Senate Joint Resolution No. 1, withdrawing consent to proposed 14th Amendment. This link is a timeline for New Jersey’s process for ratifying the Fourteenth. It starts with it being accepted. When the corruption in the federal government became obvious the New Jersey legislature withdrew their acceptance in a joint resolution. The governor, Marcus L. Ward, vetoed the withdrawal. The legislature, both houses, overrode the veto. This is where it stood as of March 24, 1868, until one hundred thirty four years later, January 24^th 2002, the legislature of New Jersey flipped and over turned their decision.

The reasons why New Jersey withdrew their support of the Amendment are listed in this .pdf from their website. It’s a pretty scathing review of the actions of the Amendment and the federal government at the time. Never have seen worse.

3) The Unconstitutionality of the 14^th Amendment. This is a rather detailed accounting of events at the time surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It includes where the documents can be found on all of the States who refused the Fourteenth, the presidential veto of the act and the measures that were taken to illegally force the Southern States into accepting the Amendment. It relies heavily on the findings of Judge L. H. Perez.

There is at the end of the above article the main three points, as follows: “A) New Jersey was disenfranchised in the Senate by having its lawfully elected Senator accepted, and then rejected, and without a 2/3rds vote; B) Oregon’s faulty ratification vote with unlawful state legislators being allowed to cast votes; and the lawfully constituted state legislature then rejecting the Fourteenth, but too late. C) Non-republican [Reconstruction] governments of the southern States imposed by military force and fiat, cannot ratify anything. Either the Fourteenth is legal and the anti-slavery amendment is not, or the anti-slavery amendment is legal and the Fourteenth is not.” And it fully supports all three of these with enough blood and guts details to satisfy most rational arguments. The only objection I would have is that under the Tenth Amendment both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth are unconstitutional.

What’s more it provides a chain of evidence that in the lack of the valid ratification process, President Andrew Johnson, Signed by William H. Seward, Secretary of State, an executive order declared the Amendment as valid. So the Fourteenth Amendment is really not an amendment. It’s an executive order.

Alright then. Those are the other people’s arguments that I have found compelling in constructing my own. My own arguments tend to rely on them somewhat, as long as they are in agreement with what the Constitution actually says. One thing that I always feel compelled to point out is that it doesn’t matter what other people’s opinions are regarding the Constitution. Other people’s opinions are not the supreme law of the land. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. What it says about itself is far more important than someone’s opinion of it. Even the Supreme Court’s.

So from the Constitution we have Article One, Section Three which says; “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State.” If a State is a State then within the federal government they have to have two senators to represent them. If each State doesn’t have two senators then they are not a state. If they are not a State they can’t be counted as a vote for ratification of a constitutional amendment.

It is a well known historical fact that the Senate unlawfully removed twenty-eight senators from Congress in order to change the balance of votes towards the acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment. From the New Jersey resolution: “That it being necessary by the Constitution that every amendment to the same should be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of congress, the authors of said proposition, for the purpose of securing the assent of the requisite majority, determined to, and did, exclude from the said two houses eighty representatives from eleven states of the union, upon the pretence that there were no such states in the Union: but, finding that two-thirds of the remainder of the said houses could not be brought to assent to the said proposition, they deliberately formed and carried out the design of mutilating the integrity of the United States senate, and without any pretext or justification, other than the possession of the power, without the right, and in palpable violation of the Constitution, ejected a member of their own body, representing this state, and thus practically denied to New Jersey its equal suffrage in the senate, and thereby nominally secured the vote of two-thirds of the said houses.”

Which brings us back to the United States Constitution, Article Five, which says; “…and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” So, if for example Mississippi’s senators were given the boot from the Senate and Mississippi did not agree to it, that would by definition be in violation of Article Five of the Constitution, especially because we are talking about amendments which is want Article Five is all about.

Next up in constitutional quotes regarding this subject is from Article One, Section Nine. Article One, Section Nine, for those who don’t know this already, deals with things that the federal government, particularly Congress, is not allowed to do. Clause Three says, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Because I’m all about clearly understanding what words mean, especially in the Constitution, the simple definition of a bill of attainder, per the Legal Information Institute, is; “Bills of attainder allow the government to punish a party for a perceived crime without first going through the trial process.” This means if Congress thinks you’re guilty, no trial, no lawyer, no charges, just go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

Another important point of today’s subject is the ex post facto law. Ex post facto is from Latin which means “after the fact.” You walk across the road at a specific place. There is no law against it. Someone sees you cross the road at that place and thinks people should not be allowed to cross the road there. They go to Congress and shout, most likely incoherently that, “there ought to be a law!!!” Congress passes a law that says anybody who ever crossed the road at that specific place, past, present or future, is guilty of a crime. You are then put in jail for crossing the road at that specific place, when it was not illegal to do so at the time you did it.

There is no constitutional law that forbids a State from seceding from the Union. There was no constitutional law forbidding a State from seceding from the Union in 1861. In fact, while I have many disagreements with the Supreme Court, especially Salmon P. Chase, there is this one where he seems to have by some cosmic accident gotten it right. “If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."—Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, 1867.

So there was no law that said the Confederate States couldn’t cross the road at that time. Rightly or wrongly they crossed the road. Several years later Congress said “there ought to be a law!!!” Then along came the Fourteenth Amendment, Sections Two, Three and Four, which include punishments for the States that had seceded…

“2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

“3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

“4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

It is very obvious to me that the consideration of ex post facto, as well as the rest of the Constitution with regards to the proper procedures necessary to the passage of an amendment, was the furthest thing from the federal government’s collective minds at the time.

And with that thought I have just noticed my word count for this article has surpassed the two thousand mark which is where I try to make my posts come as close as possible to. We can see that there were some problems in passage as well as violations of other parts of the Constitution in getting the Fourteenth through. Yet I still haven’t gotten close to the part of it that really horrifies me as a limited government kind of guy; Section One.

I’ll just have to save that for next week’s post.

The Amendments: Part One
The Amendments: Part Two

The Fourteenth Amendment: Part Two

The Amendments: Part Two

I have read a lot of history about the United States “Civil War.” There are those who tend to side with the South and there are those who tend to side with the North. Any conversation engaged on by either side of this issue tends to become quite heated, quite quickly.

As an historian or political philosopher I would make the case that it is our understanding of the past which defines us. Where the war-time historian’s axiom, “history is written by the victor,” comes into play, with as much propaganda in circulation at the time of the conflict, finding the truth can become quite difficult. In my mind one of the biggest problems in this country, to this date, is that the real history is not popularly known, and thus, the conflict known as the “Civil War” remains unresolved.

There is one thing, however, which historians on both sides of the continuing conflict between big and limited government universally agree on is that the size and scope of federal power under the rule of Abraham Lincoln was vastly increased.

I, as a big fan of limited federal power under the Tenth Amendment, would like to know what makes the federal government, especially one president named Lincoln, think that they have the constitutional authority to do such a thing.

Thus far this discussion of the amendments to our beloved Constitution has been limited to the Bill of Rights, being composed of the first ten amendments, one amendment to limit federal judiciary power and one amendment to change the manner of presidential elections so as to eliminate ties in the electoral voting system. All of them are either restrictions on the size and scope of federal power or a redefinition of already existing federal power.

From 1787, when the Constitution was signed, to 1865, where the 13^th Amendment was “ratified,” a period of time lasting seventy-eight years, the country experienced unprecedented growth.

Got that?

Zero growth of the federal power under the Constitution—unprecedented growth of the United States.

From 1865, when the 13^th Amendment was “ratified,” until 1992 when the 27^th Amendment was ratified, a period spanning 127 years, the growth of the United States ever increasingly slowed with each amendment until finally with the acceptance of Hawaii into the country in 1959, it stopped completely.

I have talked more fully about this in this post from 2016. Prior to 1867, when Nebraska joined the United States, the growth of the country was one State every 2.16 years. That’s thirty-seven States in eighty years. Since 1867 a new state has joined the country on average every 11.92 years. Since 1959 the net growth of the United States has been zero. That’s thirteen States in one hundred fifty five years. Zero in the last sixty-three years.

That’s seventy-eight years and twelve amendments which did not expand federal power, verses one hundred twenty seven years and fourteen “amendments” most of which do expand federal power. And somewhere during the later period in time the United States stopped growing.

I wish at this time to mention again an idea that seems rather alien to most of the good People of this country. This is the idea that an amendment to the Constitution can in itself be a violation of the Constitution. I get it that this idea seems kind of crazy at first but please again consider with me the Tenth Amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This, as stated, is an absolute. There is nothing equivocal about it at all. This far, no further. Per this, were the Constitution to be actually followed, it is impossible for the federal government to expand its power without violating the Tenth Amendment or repealing it.

So along comes Lincoln, who in violation of the Constitution, waged war on States who wished to do nothing other than leave the country, rightly or wrongly, and set the precedent that the guy with the biggest and most guns has the right to decide whatever the federal government should be.

And for those of you who would argue that it was unconstitutional for the Southern States to secede I urge you to consider this quote; “If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.”—Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, 1867. Should you wish for more information on this subject I most humbly suggest that you read this article also authored by myself.

So here we are at the Twelfth Amendment, considering the Tenth Amendment versus the Thirteenth Amendment, and at stake is the idea of if the federal government and a majority of States have the authority to expand the government any damn way it wants. As stated in my post “The Amendments: Part One” I make the case that the answer to this question is a very solid “NO!” Were the answer to this question in the affirmative it would then be possible for the federal government, plus a majority of the States, to take unto themselves whatever power, based only on whatever whim they deemed necessary, including the power to cannibalize a minority of States, if they so wished.

I’m fairly certain the Founding Fathers would have opposed this. I’m also fairly certain that I agree with them on the point.

The Thirteenth Amendment contains a recurring idea never before written in the Constitution. It is stated as in its own Section Two as, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” For the first time in history the federal government had, by force of arms, expanded its own power and established a beachhead directly into the individual lives of the American People.

Should slavery have ended? Absolutely. But the power to end slavery has always rested upon the States as a Tenth Amendment, State’s Rights, issue.

The proper way to do this with federal power would have been to first repeal the Tenth Amendment (Repeal part of the Bill of Rights? Fat chance of that as a popular issue!) then pass the Thirteenth. As they are they are mutually exclusive to each other. You can’t have both in a logical universe. With the general acceptance of the Thirteenth as a federal power, the Tenth Amendment, an inherent and vital part of the Bill of Rights itself, was simply ignored as if it were not even there.

All laws are subject to constitutional scrutiny. Amendments to the Constitution are themselves laws and as such are not above the same considerations as any other law. Where they contradict each other, the latter is logically in violation of the other, unless the previous law is specifically repealed. This is the way all law works.

By this logical standard any law that gives Congress more power is a violation of the Tenth Amendment, unless and until, of course, the Tenth Amendment is repealed.

So continuing with the amendments as they stand, the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery, is the first of the amendments that should be considered unconstitutional. Yes, slavery, which the United States inherited from the British, is a very bad thing and should have been ended as soon as humanly possible. My point is the federal government had no authority to do it. Even Lincoln has said this.

Don’t believe me? That’s fine. But you have the problem of all of his quotes like this one; “I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists, because the constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so.”—Lincoln’s Speech, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 17, 1859. As often as I am inclined to disagree with Lincoln and his actions I am occasionally forced to agree with his words.

Again, lest I be misconstrued, I believe slavery is evil and should be ended as soon as possible. What I do not believe is that there is some supreme arbiter of such issues within the federal government of the United States. The federal government was conceived as a servant of the States in issues of national defense and international relations. Not the master.

Which brings us to the next of the unconstitutional amendments, the Fourteenth. And you know what? I’m going to skip it for now. It’s so bad from top to bottom that it deserves a posting of its own. People have written entire books on the subject. The only comment I will make on it for now is that it further invaded the individual rights of the People with federal interference. The thing to take away from it that is necessary to go on beyond this point is that prior to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments the federal government had exactly zero power over the lives of the People as individuals. The Fourteenth gives the federal government, under “privileges” and “immunities,” omnipotent power over the lives of the American People. The protection aspects of the privileges and immunities of the citizens were originally covered by the States in Article Four, Section One and Two. With the Fourteenth taking that power from the States, again without repealing Article Four, Section One and Two, and the Tenth Amendment, the Fourteenth is in violation of the Constitution and has established its ownership of all of the People.

The Fifteenth continues this trend on the invasion of the People’s individual lives by the federal government through dictating to the States which people can vote. As I’ve pointed out in this post, election powers are given by the Constitution to the States. It is a violation of those powers to enforce federal authority in State held elections, at least without repealing those powers first.

The Sixteenth Amendment, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration,” is just a crude and gross example of a bunch of thugs with guns saying “give us your money.” And why the hell not? The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth already gave them the power to do anything they want. Why not codify it some more?

More than that there is the lingering question about the irregularities in the ratification process. A very valid argument can be made that ratification was incomplete and thus, invalid from the start.

The Seventeenth Amendment, while constitutional, was just a bad idea from the beginning. As it was originally written in Article One the Constitution gives the People their representatives through the House of Representatives. The Senate was composed of representatives, chosen by the governments of the States as the representatives in the federal government for the States themselves. The senators as such were obligated to follow the orders of the governments of the States. Under the Seventeenth the States have no representatives within the federal government and the People have them all. This grossly undercuts the power of the States themselves to protect the rights of the People from the unlimited powers of the federal government.

The Eighteenth, banning liquor, was again an unconstitutional violation of the Tenth. As with all federal interference outside of the Tenth Amendment, it was such an unmitigated disaster that it had to be repealed lest the country succumb to the likes of Al Capone.

The Nineteenth, and I’m hoping the ladies will understand me when I say this, is unconstitutional and never should have been ratified as a federal power. Yes, ladies, you should be allowed to vote and I fully stand up for your rights to do so. What I’m saying here is that under the Tenth Amendment this is something that should be done by the States. This as it is represents yet another encroachment of federal power directly into your lives. And who really thinks it’s a good idea for the federal government to dictate the terms of our individual lives?

The Twentieth is completely valid and proper. It changed the dates when a new president takes office and establishes a line of succession because…well…stuff happens.

The Twenty-first repeals the Eighteenth.

The Twenty-second, term limits for the president, while completely constitutional, fixed forever every single problem that there could ever possibly be with the presidency. All presidents of the United States since February 1951 have been like Mary Poppins; practically perfect in every way.

***SARCASM ALERT!!!***

As we are continuously told by the proponents of term limits, the way to fix the United States Congress is to impose term limits on them. As I’ve said here, this will fix nothing. It fixed nothing for the president. It will fix nothing for Congress. But I digress…

The Twenty-third gives the District of Columbia a presidential vote. I haven’t bothered to consider if this was a good idea or not but it is unconstitutional, again in violation of the Tenth it gives more power to Congress over the States and People.

The Twenty-fourth bars poll taxes. This is pretty grossly unconstitutional being not only in violation of the Tenth but in every other part of the Constitution that gives powers to the States over their elections. It presumes again the authority of the federal government to tell who can and can’t vote.

The Twenty-fifth, completely constitutional, establishes and further defines the presidential line of succession should the president be somehow incapacitated…because…you know…stuff happens.

The Twenty-sixth sets the voting age to the tender young age of eighteen. While I think anybody who is of an age where they can fight and die in combat for their country, should have the right to vote, I very strenuously object to that authority being pulled from the States where it properly belongs, again under the Tenth Amendment, to where it does not belong. The federal government should have zero authority over voting rights, ages, sexes, colors, mental dispositions, financial dispositions or any other real or imagined ability or disability.

The Twenty-seventh is all together fitting and proper. It limits the Congress’s ability to give themselves pay raises.

That brings us, with the exception of full coverage of the abomination that is the Fourteenth Amendment, up to date.

Were I to propose a constitutional amendment myself I would choose the one I wrote several years ago, which basically repeals all of the ones above that I think are in violation of other parts of the Constitution, particularly the Tenth. You can read about that here.

The Amendments: Part One.

The Fourteenth Amendment: Part One

The Fourteenth Amendment: Part Two

The Amendments: Part One

There are very few things about the Constitution that are more important than how it has been amended over the years. Certainly some of them are frequently talked about, objected to or highly praised. Some of them are highly neglected or even totally ignored. It is a totally arguable fact that some of them were passed through the Senate in violation of the Constitution or should be repealed because they were not properly ratified in the first place. Some of them were outright bad ideas to begin with and never should have happened.

One of the more frustrating things to get people to understand is that the validity of all law, even the Constitution itself, should be questioned. Each person should read and decide for himself what right and wrong is. This applies as much to his own life as it applies to the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, and all rules and laws in between. With some sarcasm I have to say that it should be no surprise to anybody that government is not always run by the most honest sorts of people and as such bad laws do get passed. Not to question the validity of laws, in principle, is to blindly accept the rule of the King.

I’ll say again that this applies to the Constitution and its amendments as much as any other law.

People, as I have observed them, have a tendency to believe that just because an amendment is added to the Constitution, it is unarguably constitutional. Here’s a line of thinking you may not be used to but a constitutional amendment is just as any other law. Some of them are in direct conflict if not in outright violation of the principles of the Constitution. To believe that all amendments to the Constitution are constitutional is to believe that two thirds of the legislature of the federal government and three fourths of the States can amend the Constitution any old way they want, to do any old thing they want, common sense notwithstanding.

California is a problem to the rest of the country? No problem! Two thirds of the legislature and three quarters of the federal government can then amend the Constitution to disband the government of California, seize and liquidate all of the property and money of the State and People therein, sell the population into slavery and pay off the national debt with it.

Would this be constitutional?

As ridiculous as this example sounds, under the belief that the federal government and majority of the States can amend the Constitution any old way that they want, it would be from that perspective perfectly legal. As batcrap crazy as California is (as evidenced clearly by the continuous election of Nancy Pelosi) and has been, I would not be in support of such an amendment. It would violate a plethora of other parts of the Constitution which restrict the actions of the federal government.

Yet this example is not as wild as it may seem to be. In the 16^th Amendment the government and States did just simply decide that they have the perfect and valid authority to take your money. No reason given. No limitations on it expressed. Just pretty much a straight forward, “we have enough men with guns that we’ve now decided that we can take your money and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

And that is setting aside completely the argument that the 16^th Amendment was never properly ratified by the legislatures of enough States to make it official. The Wilson administration didn’t even wait for all of the returns from all of the States. They just said, “well, we’re gonna take your money and that’s that and we’ll call it the 16^th Amendment.” I, having discharged my civic duty in making the reader aware of this fact, leave it to you for your own research.

Going through the problems with any specific amendment is not the subject of this morning’s article. I’ve noted a general lack of knowledge in the minds of the People on what the amendments are, what they mean, the effect they’ve had and if it is important to you, what I think of them. That’s mainly what I want to address today.

So, the First Amendment is for obvious reasons one of the most talked about. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

As I’ve pointed out in at least one previous article regarding the dangers of accepting decisions of the Supreme Court, the First Amendment does not say “nobody in government, anywhere, at anytime, for any reason, shall ever be allowed to pray.” It does not say that “there is a wall of separation between church and state.” It says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” This is directed at a specific portion of the federal government and restricting a specific action. It is not directed at the federal government in general or the government of the States or local government. It is directed at the federal congress and only the federal congress.

Freedom of speech and the press are obvious to the maintenance our freedoms. Even if it’s something I don’t want to hear for the sake of hearing it, it should be out there so we know who the crazies are and can keep an eye on them.

The right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances is taken as the right to protest. While that is included what is petitioning the government for redress of grievances? Well a lot of people don’t like lobbyists. I myself do not mind any of them, for any reason. If you can’t get a group of like minded people together, private citizens or corporations, and approach your government and ask them to do something on your behalf, even in their exchange for support, which is what lobbying really is, you can’t possibly petition your representatives for redress of grievances. The only time it is a problem is when they are lobbying for something unconstitutional and the representative accepts, particularly money, in exchange for doing something that violates his oath of office or other laws of the land.

The Second Amendment protects the right of the People to keep and bear arms. This is important for their individual lives as well as the security and freedom of the country.

One of my friends brought up a very worthy comment on the First and Second Amendments. They are not government granted rights. They recognize that these rights are inherently ours rather than granting them. The First and Second Amendments, as well as most of the Bill of Rights amendments, are restrictions on the power of the federal government.

The Third Amendment keeps the government from forcing you to accept soldiers, without your consent, living in your home. It’s simple enough.

The Fourth is again a restriction on the federal government against unreasonable search and seizure. They have to have probable cause sworn to by oath, a warrant approved by a judge and be specific about what they are looking for and seizing. They can’t just bust in and start fishing for anything that a citizen might be doing wrong.

The Fifth is also a restriction on the actions of the federal government. They can’t just take you and chuck you into prison without due process. They can’t make you testify against yourself. They can’t put you up for trial for the same crime more than once. They can’t just take your money and your stuff or your life.

The Sixth, should you be accused of a crime, recognizes the right to a speedy trial, to be faced by your accusers and know the charges against you. It also provides a mechanism by which your lawyers, via the court, can subpoena people as witnesses on your behalf.

The Seventh recognizes the right to call for a trial by jury regarding civil issues rather than criminal issues.

The Eighth is a restriction against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Ninth is basically a statement that the rights listed in the Constitution are not complete. There are a lot of other things that are rights held by the People but the ones listed in the Constitution are the ones that apply to the federal government.

The Tenth Amendment, simply put, is that all powers not listed in the Constitution as powers of the federal government, are for the States and the People. This is the most neglected part of the Constitution and it is right here in the Bill of Rights. I think it is also the most important part of the Constitution. It’s the part, more than any other single thing, which argues for the limited federal government model of the country. Entire books have been written about this one alone. The liberal left hates it because what it means is that the federal government can’t do any frickin thing it wants.

(Side note here: can you even believe I actually get in heated arguments with people who claim the federal government has no limits placed on it by the Constitution? Yet this really happens.)

This is also the amendment which should, but according to liberals doesn’t, limit how the Constitution can be amended. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Please notice that this is stated as an absolute! “They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

The similarities between the current United States government and Star Trek’s Borg cannot be denied. While the Founding Fathers didn’t have fictional stories of Borg assimilating them, they had the very real possibility of foreign invaders and this government reverting the country back into a British style of rule, to worry about. I believe they meant for the 10^th Amendment to prevent the federal government from growing past the limits imposed on it by the Constitution of the time.

“Yes, but Brett,” a friend once said to me, “the powers they are talking about in the Tenth are meant to be the things that are also not in any of the amendments. Those are the ones reserved to the States and the People. If they amend the Constitution to include something as a federal power, it becomes constitutional as a federal power.” A classic case of circular reasoning.

If the power proposed to be amended to the federal government is unconstitutional for the federal government to be involved in, per the Tenth Amendment, how the hell can Congress pass it to get themselves the proposed power?

This is chicken and egg type stuff here…so let’s go with that. Congress sees the need to regulate chickens but there is the problem that the regulation of chickens is a power of the States under the Tenth Amendment. So the federal government, who doesn’t have the power to regulate chickens, passes a proposed amendment to give themselves the power to regulate chickens. Well where do they get the power to pass an amendment to regulate chickens? It’s not listed in the Constitution anywhere as a power of theirs. Also nowhere within the Constitution is a power to take powers from the States and transfer them to the federal government.

So here’s the thing; the Tenth Amendment logically either means the federal government is absolutely forbidden from doing anything not previously listed in the Constitution or the Tenth Amendment means absolutely nothing, in which case one would have to question why it is there at all. If the federal government plus the majority of States can expand their power any way that they want, even by amendment, then the Tenth serves no purpose at all. What can’t they ever do if they can just amend themselves the power to do everything? From that point, as in the example of California above, it would be perfectly constitutional for forty-nine of the States to eat the fiftieth.

Yes. The Constitution can be legitimately amended to rearrange the already specified powers. But the way I see this it cannot be amended to add additional powers to the federal government.

The Eleventh and Twelfth Amendments provide valid examples of constitutional amendments.

The Eleventh provides a restriction on the judicial powers of the federal courts. The States can’t sue each other and foreign States can’t sue States. Okay, they can, it’s just not a federal power.

The Twelfth changed the way the president and vice president were chosen. There were some problems with how it was originally done with regard to problems resulting in ties with the counts. (Reference Jefferson versus Adams, 1800.)

And there, my dearest and patriotic, constitutional readers, is where I’m going to have to leave it for now. Discussion of valid and not valid amendments will have to continue in some part two extension of this article, hopefully in the not too distant future. Up to this point everything is above board and valid, not to mention wise and restrained uses of constitutional amendments.

It’s hit and miss but mostly downhill from this point on.

The Amendments: Part Two
The Fourteenth Amendment: Part One

The Fourteenth Amendment: Part Two