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Thread: The Constitution: Originalism or Living?

  1. #11
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    jillian's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alyosha View Post
    Post-Constitution so the point you're attempting to make is weak. What was Jefferson's option at the time? Could he have thrown out the court's decision or be careful in future appointments?
    do you recall any of the then living founders screaming that what the court did was an abuse of power?

    the founders established a common law system. they'd have expected it to be interpreted. we're not a code state like france. so why would you treat the document in a way that diminishes it?

    "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
    except its our system of government.

    Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so.
    yes, which is why most (scalia and thomas aside) recuse themselves when there is an appearance of impropriety or a conflict of interest.

    but i've seen some of the "constitutionalists" on these boards and i know for a fact i don't want *them* deciding what's constitutional.

    again...what you want isn't the form of government under which we live and it isn't the form of govenment the founders devised. you want what you want, and that's fine, but then change our system of government, don't usurp the one we have.

    The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."

    —Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277


    what a politician of his day said is really of no moment to me. it has no more meaning than the spouting off of an idiot like ted cruz saying something is unconstitutional.


    Untrue and unkind.
    and yet they allowed those things to exist...

    and i'll just mention the name sally hemings....

    they were what they were. and that's fine. but they don't run our government from the grave.

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    Our legal system is a combination of common and civil law.

    Interpretation in law doesn't mean change the meaning, it means apply it to cases brought before the court.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by jillian View Post
    do you recall any of the then living founders screaming that what the court did was an abuse of power?
    Thomas Jefferson? John Adams? Samuel Adams? They were founders that thought it was total $#@!.

    I cannot imagine Jefferson screaming, no. Scribbling angrily to John Adams, yes.


    the founders established a common law system. they'd have expected it to be interpreted. we're not a code state like france. so why would you treat the document in a way that diminishes it?
    They built upon the common law system.



    except its our system of government.
    Except that it was not at that time, and that is why Jefferson--that guy who was invited to actually write the Constitution but let Madison do it instead and advised him on it--said that it was bull$#@!.



    yes, which is why most (scalia and thomas aside) recuse themselves when there is an appearance of impropriety or a conflict of interest.
    Roberts, Sotomayer and Kagen helped write what piece of legislation that's in the news today?


    but i've seen some of the "constitutionalists" on these boards and i know for a fact i don't want *them* deciding what's constitutional.
    I could say the same for the living constitutionalists because you guys scare the $#@! out of me with your support of the NSA and NDAA and any other authoritarian tool Obama uses as long as its Obama.

    But luckily for the country you and I are not the sole deciders, as Bush would say.


    again...what you want isn't the form of government under which we live and it isn't the form of govenment the founders devised. you want what you want, and that's fine, but then change our system of government, don't usurp the one we have.
    It is exactly that form of government the founders devised. The Federalist papers and their letter back me up. I am changing absolutely nothing to affirm that.

    You are just unhappy that younger people are swinging the other way again.

    [quote]
    and i'll just mention the name sally hemings....
    Who by all accounts was fond of him. You realize that he took everyone to France and that some historians believe he did that to give them the opportunity to leave that he could not do in Virginia with the laws of that time, yes?

    I love the lack of depth Democrats delve when they want to prove their point.

    Just so you don't sally forth with this conclusion of yours in the future...had Jefferson freed his slaves, who were all related to his wife and his children, they would have been absorbed the second they left his property onto another slave holding estate.

    This is why he tried to change the laws of the state so that he could free them and they remain free.

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    In defense of Mr. Jefferson

    Virginia Slave Law of 1723:

    $#@! and Indian slaves could not be set free except for meritorious service, which was to be so adjudged, by the Governor and Council. If slaves were freed without the approval of the Governor and Council, the parish Church wardens were to sell the emancipated slave a public auction. The proceeds were then to be applied for the use of the parish.

    Only in death could slaves be freed so many slave owners in Virginia sold their slaves out of fear they would be killed. This lasted until the 1830's.

    According to Miller's history, Jefferson freed all those that looked white enough not to be pursued and didn't report their emancipation until the following year.

    This is my point about public school indoctrination. The whole story is not told. How could Jefferson have freed his slaves under this existing law, except to change it?

    And did he try? Yes, he did @jillian

    (approx 1770): “ I made one effort in (the Virginia legislature) for the permission of the emancipation of slaves,
    which was rejected: and indeed, during the regal government, nothing liberal could expect success.” (published in
    1821. ) (Jefferson, 1984, p5.)

    1774: “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies (America), where it was
    unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary
    to exclude all further importations from Africa…” (Jefferson, 1984, p115.)

    1776: (King George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life
    and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in
    another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
    opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a
    market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative
    attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact
    of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and to purchase that liberty of
    which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them thus paying off former
    crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of
    another.” -from TJ's draft of the Declaration of Independence. This paragraph was voted down by the
    Congressional Congress. (Jefferson, 1984, p22.)


    1778: “I brought a bill to prevent (the slave’s) further importation (to Virginia). This passed without
    opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.”
    (published in 1821.) (Jefferson, 1984, p 34.)



    Actually @Ethereal @Codename Section and @Green Arrow will appreciate this, as well, maybe even @Chris


    William and Mary is big on correct American history and we were forced to take classes that told the whole story for our general education credits.
    Last edited by Alyosha; 10-04-2013 at 03:30 PM.

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    Oh, I forgot

    When faced with the inability to emancipate them and only selling them, Jefferson replied:

    1787: “This unwillingness (to sell slaves) is for their sake, not my own; because my debts once cleared off, I
    shall try some plan of making their situation happier, determined to content myself with a small portion of their
    labor.” (Miller, p57.)

    http://millercenter.org/president/jefferson

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    The text of the constitution should carry the same meaning throughout time. This is what the founders intended. They knew the idea that it could be "interpreted" differently from generation to generation would result in an out of control government.

    Of course they also realized it would need to be modified in the future, so they left us two difficult avenues to pursue those changes.
    Trolling you from deep cyberspace.

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    Funny how the amendment process does not include judicial fiat.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Alyosha View Post
    Oh, I forgot

    When faced with the inability to emancipate them and only selling them, Jefferson replied:

    1787: “This unwillingness (to sell slaves) is for their sake, not my own; because my debts once cleared off, I
    shall try some plan of making their situation happier, determined to content myself with a small portion of their
    labor.” (Miller, p57.)

    http://millercenter.org/president/jefferson

    bummer that it's only partly true
    Jefferson freed two men in his lifetime and bequeathed freedom to five men in his will. All were sons or grandsons of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings. At least three others were unofficially freed, when he allowed them to run away without pursuit (Beverly Hemings, Harriet Hemings, and James Hemings, son of Critta Hemings Bowles).
    A single paragraph cannot do justice to the issue of Jefferson's failure to free more than a handful of his slaves. Some of the possible reasons include: the economic value of his human property (at certain times, his slaves were mortgaged and thus could not be freed or sold); his lifelong view that emancipation had to go hand-in-hand with expatriation of the freed slaves; his paternalistic belief that slaves were incapable of supporting themselves in freedom and his fear they would become burden to society; his belief in gradual measures operating through the legal processes of government; and, after 1806, a state law that required freed slaves to leave Virginia within a year. Jefferson wrote that this law did not "permit" Virginians to free their slaves; he apparently thought that, for an enslaved African American, slavery was preferable to freedom far from one's home and family.



    http://www.monticello.org/site/plant...avery/property

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    Quote Originally Posted by jillian View Post
    I'll let @Alyosha handle the full rebuttal, but why is Lincoln so adored by some liberals and blacks when he was himself a complete and total racist who didn't actually care about freeing slaves?
    "Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most — that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least."
    - Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926), five-time Socialist Party candidate for U.S. President

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    Quote Originally Posted by Green Arrow View Post
    I'll let @Alyosha handle the full rebuttal, but why is Lincoln so adored by some liberals and blacks when he was himself a complete and total racist who didn't actually care about freeing slaves?
    Lincoln supported the notion of black deportation because he thought that once freed, the former slaves would never be fully integrated into white society. Not to mention colonization of Africa by blacks wasn't a far fetched idea, the Republic of Liberia has already been established by this time.

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