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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Czechsinthemail who wrote (8324)	12/4/2000 12:04:06 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Your approach is to arbitrarily categorize people by states, counties or whatever, then count the categories. I don't believe that I'm doing ANY such thing.. When the constitution was authored, it was written from the perspective of creating a government that would protect the rights of the individual states, not the individual people. The states exist to represent the citizens who live within their borders. One only has to look at how the articles of confederation were written to discern that states were not considered to be just some form of extraneous governmental superstructure. We must recall that the idea of "statehood" is derived from the history of the 13 independent colonies that existed as part of the British empire. When these colonies decided to rename themselves as "states", they took upon themselves the mantle of being independent nation-states who, in the interest of mutual protection and economic dependence, sought to form a confederation. Under this confederation, each state retain individual sovereignty, while sharing in mutual defense, and possessing a weak form of central government which was not permitted to tax independently. Whatever budget that existed for the national government existed solely in the form of donations from the individual states. So when they opted to strengthen the central government under a constitutional federation, it was NOT individual rights that were being haggled over, but the rights of each independent state entity within that Federation. The Bill of Rights, which became our guarantee of INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, was an afterthought that I believe Thomas Payne was the primary advocate for. And indeed, it was based upon the Virginia Bill of Rights: nara.gov (Btw, long-gone... check out Section 13 as the basis for 2nd amendment rights) But suffice it to say, states were, and are, considered sovereign entities at the time of writing of the constitution. It is this belief that led to southern states believing they possessed the right to secede from the union. Individual rights, although important and later guaranteed in the 1st 10 amendments, were not the primary reason for creating a constitution. The constitution was CLEARLY written for the purpose of delienating where the federal government had sovereignty, and where remaining powers were reserved for the individual states (10th Amendment). Somewhere along the line we have lost sight of this crucial element of our constitution. Regards, Ron