Anyway, Ms. Cunningham seems to be upset that some of us are calling for the reassertion of states rights and the Tenth Amendment. She seems to believe that if we just "...talk to each other, respect each other and work together" everything will be alright. I suppose we should all hold hands and sing kumbaya, too.
Ms. Cunningham believes that a strong central government and a whole host of social programs can cure anything. She has bought into the lie. Further, she is either ignorant of history or so ideologically driven that she is blind to it. This isn't supposition on my part. I've been reading her letters for years.
I wrote a reply to her letter which is so long it will never be published (I'll submit it though. Sometimes I think the local paper is happy to have something to take up some column inches) but since I have this blog and I've now got something to fill space I figured I'd go ahead and post it here.
On page 16A of the February 2010 issue 2 your newspaper published a letter from Susan Cunningham addressing the issue of state sovereignty and states rights. She believes that the states hold a position inferior to that of the federal government, a view that would have been totally foreign to our Founding Fathers. Ms. Cunningham is echoing the sentiments of political leaders that harken back to the Whig party, from which sprang the Republican Party and its first President, Abraham Lincoln.
Ms. Cunningham writes that she is “…not sure how states can become “sovereign” without seceding…”. I would like to help clear this up for her. States are sovereign political entities because their sovereignty was given to them by the people that make up the members of the state.
Sovereignty exists in the individual. He receives it from God along with his unalienable rights. Man possesses rights and sovereignty because God extends them to us as a gift. The Founders recognized this. Individuals working together in an act of free will created states, endowing the states with a portion of human sovereignty and rights, a loan if you will. Those states, acting at the direction of their citizens and through their chosen representatives, created the federal government with first, the Articles of Confederation and finally with the Unites States Constitution. The states do not hold an inferior position to the federal government but in fact hold a position of superiority. The citizens are then in turn superior to the states. The lesser cannot create the greater and all government in America is created by the people and meant to serve them. From the Declaration of Independence:
“…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The Founders recognized the superiority of the states. In their writings they consistently acknowledge the fact that the states superseded and created the federal government and that the states were to hold a position of higher rank over the federal government. Alexander Hamilton, a champion of strong central government, had this to say in Federalist 32:
“But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.”
James Madison in Federalist 45 says this:
“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.”
And Thomas Jefferson in The Kentucky Resolves of 1798:
“…That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government…”
So you see, Ms. Cunningham, the idea of sovereign and independent states was central to the design of our Republic. The primary purpose of the federal government was to be, according to Madison, “… exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected.” The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution addresses this point specifically:
“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.”
Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution list the eighteen powers specifically granted by the states to the federal government as a loan.
It’s true that the Supreme Court decided that the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause expanded the powers of government beyond the limits established by Article 1 Section 8 but this is not what the Founders intended. Of course, one must ask why the Founders wrote a specific list of eighteen powers granted to the federal government if they intended the Commerce Clause and General Welfare Clause to give carte blanche to the legislature. James Madison warned of the consequences of just such a decision, consequences we see played out on a daily basis:
"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."
It is this very usurpation of power by the federal government that those of us that seek the resurgence of state sovereignty hope to curtail. We don’t want secession. We want the Republic to function as it was intended to function, with power coming from the people, through the states and to the federal government, not the other way around as we have it now.
Like most supporters of a strong central government Ms Cunningham places Abraham Lincoln high upon a pedestal. She brings up the War Between the States and correctly points out that it was a war over the issue of states rights but she never tells us how the South believed those rights were violated. Ms. Cunningham then goes on to dismiss the issue of states rights as “rhetoric”, just words, all sound and fury signifying nothing. She tries to change the subject to slavery in a backhanded attempt to point to it as a primary cause when this is not the case. She goes so far as to quote Lincoln's words in the Gettysburg Address:
“…conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Wonderful words yet said for political affect, not because he believed them. Like most members of the Lincoln cult Ms. Cunningham neglects to quote the words from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address:
“…I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so…
…No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
Nor does she quote these words from the same address, the words that give the real reason Lincoln started a war that killed over 500,000 Americans:
“The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”
For, while Lincoln felt no obligation to the enslaved, he was more than willing to go to war to collect taxes and tariffs. And that was the real cause of the war, tariffs and taxes imposed on the states in a manner that violated the Constitution and state sovereignty.
We are facing a similar situation today as the federal government forces unfunded mandates on the states, forcing them to pay for programs that the Founders would have never allowed and that violate the clear intent of the Constitution. The states must take back the power that is rightfully theirs and restore the Republic to a sound and sustainable footing. Few want secession and to say that this is the purpose of those that want strong sovereign states is a lie. We want our country back and we want to be left alone! If secession were the only course left after everything else had been tried, well then I suppose, so be it. The destruction of our Constitution and the slavery of a Socialist Utopia are not the answer and not an option. The Constitution and its original intent must be preserved, for the good of America and the world.
My favorite President, Jefferson Davis had this to say:
"I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.''
I think that accurately sums up the feelings of a goodly number of Americans today. Pray that we can find our way through this without destroying ourselves.
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