States have different power and authority than the federal government; neither have rights ...Show me that I'm wrong.
I already have. As I stated, the Articles of Confederation declared that the States rights were reserved, the Federalist Papers refer to the rights of the State Legislatures, and the requests for the Tenth Amendment, the "States' Rights Amendment", referred to the rights of the States. The term "States' rights" has been in the dictionary for well over a century now ... I see no point in you making up your own language, the accepted term is "States' rights".
And it still sounds like libertarian nonsense to me to say that a people have a power to alter and abolish government but no right to do so, a power to ordain and establish a Constitution but no right to do so, a power to declare war but no right to do so ... it reminds me of something I once read in the record of the reconstruction congresses, where yankees admitted that States had certain powers under the Constitution, but questioned if they had a right to exercise those powers.
The Tenth Amendment is very clear in making a distinction between States and individuals.
Or maybe it's clear as mud ... Patrick Henry said that they only added "or to the people" to muddy the water and confuse the intent.
I understand the Tenth to say that undelegated powers in Virginia are reserved to the government of Virginia or to the people of Virginia if we have not delegated the power in question ... the point being that what the States did not delegete remain intrastate affairs.
The whole "States' Rights" nonsense is a rehash of the Lost Causers to justify their treatment of Blacks after the Civil War.
Or maybe this whole yankee pretense that States don't have rights is reconstruction propaganda intended to subvert our frame of government into something wholly national which yankees might then control with their simple majority, because yankees are imperialists.
The 14th Amendment extended the BoR to the States to protect Blacks but you treat it as some form of oppression.
First off, the 14th does represent oppression. My region was put under military rule until we agreed to the 14th. The war was over and the States were back in the Union, and when the South started voting against the 14th we were put under military rule. Virginia became "Military District Number One". If that isn't oppression, I don't know what is.
If we pretend that the 14th was properly ratified and is worthy of our respect, then I would say that it was intended to extend certain P&I to negroes or rather to all races under US jurisdiction (as opposed to Indians on Reservations). If these P&I are so broad as to include the USBOR, then why wouldn't the P&I include the right to vote? Certainly the right to vote is a fundamental political right in a republican form of government. Yet the 14th's P&I did not include the right to vote and the 15th was needed for that.
The Constitution guarantees a republican form of government and the rank oppression that Blacks faced meant that their rights were being trampled by State governments and that was not permissible.
The Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government was intended to preserve the existing forms of State government which were considered to be republican in nature, it was not intended to empower the US to overturn and reconstruct the State governments.
To avoid hissy fits over race, let's pretend that the slaves were white and were captured from primitive tribes in the woods of foreign lands. And these white slaves were kept ignorant. And a State like SC had more slaves than citizens. Now, if the bottom rail was put on top, as they said, such that the educated and property owners were suddenly a minority, and the ignorant white freedmen could control the government, is that a republican form of government, when the property owners lose their voice in government and those without property determine the property taxes and how they are spent?
the infamous Dred Scott decision uses the words "privileges and immunities" some 30 times in denying blacks any type of equal access to the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment uses the same "privileges and immunities" language. I would have to say that it seems like the framer of the 14th Amendment would have a clearer idea of its purpose than opposing Senators
The 14th was needed to make the civil rights act part of the Constitution. The civil rights act listed out the privileges and immunities, and there was no correlation with the USBOR. If the civil rights act had listed the RKBA as one of the P&I then I think that would be evidence that the 14th's P&I embraced the RKBA. I realize that if we go shopping for our favorite definition of "P&I" then we might pick Taney's dicta in Dred Scott, but I think a more rational approach is to refer to the civil rights act.
Of course the 14th was intended to overturn Dred Scott because Taney explained that negroes were not citizens and the 14th made them citizens ... I don't think we can conclude that Taney's description of the P&I is binding upon the 14th, especially when the civil rights act had a different enumeration of the P&I.
It is very clear that the Framers intended the 14th to apply to the states
Well of course the 14th applies to the States, it says "no State shall" in there. But it does not say anything about the US Bill of Rights. Isn't the important thing what the States understood themselves to be ratifying ... and how were they to know that they were ratifying an amendment which made the USBOR binding against the States when the amendment in question didn't say anything about that?
The Lost Causers were deeply concerned about Blacks having guns. This was their primary motivation in attacking the 14th Amendment, then and now.
The civil rights act said nothing about the RKBA, so what was the primary motivation in attacking that?
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I think it might help, when we go back and read the US Congressional record from the 1860's, to realize that only one side is represented. Of course they blame it all on the South. But in reality, the North had black codes that were the most extreme and these were also the object of the 14th. For instance, Illinois and Indiana had Constitutions which would not allow any negro or mulatto to move into the State. And so the civil rights act was needed to extend to negroes the right to move to any State, to own property there, reside there, and have equal protection and due process of the law. And the 14th was needed to make the civil rights act part of the Constitution. Now let's look at the enumeration of P&I in the civil rights act:
"to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property
When I read that, I do not see the USBOR.
I think a simple view of the reconstruction amendments would begin with the 13th freeing the slaves but not making them citizens ... oops ... then the 14th making them citizens with P&I but not giving them the right to vote ... oops ... then the 15th giving them the right to vote. It kind of flows and makes sense, in a blundering kind of way, doesn't it? In contrast, it seems an aberration to say that the 13th freed the slaves and then the 14th made the USBOR binding against the States.