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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (11877)	2/22/2000 9:44:00 PM
From: chalu2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

>>Their solution of distributing power to sovereign states and between 3 coequal branches on the Federal level is beautiful and has worked better than any system yet conceived by man. It breaks my heart to see my countrymen turn their backs on it.<< The system didn't seem so beautiful to black people in the South between 1776 and at least 1954. The states lost much of their power by enacting and enforcing laws that flew in the face of the concept that all men are created equal. I guess, in your view, blacks that didn't like Jim Crow could move North. Many did, both to and beyond the capacity of the states of the North to gainfully employ them. But let's look at a few less racially charged examples. Let us say that some states enacted laws either permitting or mandating the following, in accordance with the wishes of a majority of their citizens: polygamy, prostitution, partial birth abortion, the teaching of creationism only in the public schools, with the teaching of Darwinian theory prohibited, segregated public schools. Utah allowed polygamy at one point; the nail in polygamy's coffin was a federal Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Reynolds? What right did a federal court have to intercede in this Utah issue? What if Utah wanted to revive polygamy tomorrow? Is that okay? Nevada allows prostitution in some circumstances. Is that Nevada's right, or should the federal government stop this now before we morally disintegrate further? Is abortion, even partial birth abortion, a local issue? Should the federal government, the Supreme Court, or the Constitution (by way of amendment) be used to abolish abortion, if localities wish to permit it? What if the County in which Bob Jones University resides wants its schools to teach that the races must never mingle, either through dating or marriage, and orders up textbooks that teach that? Nothing in the Constitution to prohibit it, as far as I know. A federal matter, or local decision that should not be disturbed by anyone outside the state, or by a federal court? What about if the school will not teach any scientific theory that cannot be supported by a strict reading of the Bible? What if the County School Board wants to enforce this, but the state legislature disagrees? What should be the resolution? Not so easy on a case by case basis, is it? That's why the same U.S. Constitution was read one way by the Supreme Court in Plessey v. Ferguson and the same exact Constitution read the opposite way years later in Brown v. Bd. of Education. Because it had become clear that the people of Topeka and many other localities could not be trusted to accord their citizens basic human rights--and the federal government had to intervene.