CRAIGforCONGRESS
Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2008
GOVERNMENT
The Fourteenth Amendment
Congress should
  • repeal the 14th Amendment
  • The 14th Amendment: No good fruit comes from this poisonous tree
    • The un-American Roots of the 14th Amendment
    • The un-American Fruits of the 14th Amendment.
    • The Disastrous Future of Expanded Reliance on the 14th Amendment.

    The Meaning of the Constitution
    A Document of Enumerated Powers
    The History of the 14th Amendment: Not Legitimately Ratified; Imposed by Military Dictatorship
    Truth About the 14th Amendment
    The Squalid 14th Amendment
    Fourteenth Amendment Resources
    Commentary at LewRockwell.com
    LewRockwell.com Blog: Healy on States' Rights and Libertarian Centralists
    The Fruits of the 14th Amendment
    Government by Judiciary by Raoul Berger, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and then at Harvard Law School
         The U.S. Supreme Court does not believe it is "chained down" or obligated to follow the letter of the Constitution nor the original intent of its Framers. The Judiciary can govern any way it wants.
         Berger famously argued that the great 1954 school desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education was incorrectly decided because the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend its equal protection clause to require racial integration of the public schools. According to Berger, the sole purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, was to reinforce the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 and protect it against repeal by a future Congress. Plainly the act did not outlaw segregation itself. Indeed, Berger argues that racial integration of the sort eventually mandated by the Supreme Court in Brown was anathema not only to virulently racist Democrats who opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, but even to many of its Republican supporters, whom he describes as "negrophobic."
         Ironically, in rejecting the idea that the outcome in Brown can be squared with the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment, Berger, the great critic of judicial usurpation, finds himself in the company of Ronald Dworkin, Laurence Tribe, and other prominent liberal supporters of expansive judicial power. They too believe that the equal protection clause was not intended to prohibit de jure racial discrimination. They differ with Berger, however, in rejecting the proposition that the equal protection clause and other "majestic generalities" of the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment ought to be construed to give effect to the intentions of the framers and ratifiers. From the alleged incompatibility of the outcome in Brown with the "original intent" of the Fourteenth Amendment, Berger infers the illegitimacy of judicially mandated desegregation. Liberal constitutional scholars and activists, by contrast, infer the illegitimacy of "originalist" arguments for judicial restraint. Having dismissed originalism, they then invoke the moral authority of Brown to justify, for example, the judicial manufacture of a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.
    Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment [Book Review]
    But Shouldn't the Federal Government Have Forced the States to Abolish Slavery?
    "Slavery" is (1) kidnapping followed by (2) imprisonment. If Mr. Black kidnaps Mr. Brown and enslaves him, how is Mr. White morally superior to Mr. Black if White threatens to kidnap Mr. Black and lock him up in prison? When the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to a slaveholder named Philemon, Paul did not threaten Philemon with eye-for-eye vengeance. Paul used moral argument to persuade Philemon to release Onesimus the slave.
         Slavery is unChristian, but the Constitution allowed the states to retain the power to have slaves if they wanted. The Bill of Rights did not free the slaves. The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights together give states the right to legalize slavery. I'm sorry, but that's a fact. The Constitution would not have been ratified if it took away the states' right to have slavery. And the Declaration of Independence says that each state has the right to secede from the union if the federal government infringes on the rights retained by the states. Lincoln did not choose to follow the Constitution. He decided not to follow the Amendment process in Article V. He decided moral argument was inadequate. Unlike William Wilberforce, who abolished the slave trade in Britain without killing any British, Lincoln -- who cared little about Negroes or the slavery issue, more about federal control -- ordered nearly 700,000 American casualties. The 14th Amendment was imposed unconstitutionally on the southern states as an act of war.
         Do we really want to start down the road to end abortion the way slavery was ended? Libertarians (who also oppose slavery) say no, standing in the tradition of great Christians like William Wilberforce, who recognized the importance of changing culture. Others are willing to follow Abraham Lincoln. History will judge.

    We must de-mythologize President Lincoln, unquestionably one of the worst Presidents in American history:

    King Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
    Pro Libertate

    Examples of "Government by Judiciary" through the 14th Amendment -- and Bad Government, at that.

    • Abortion
      • Supreme Court strikes down all anti-abortion laws based on 14th Amendment.
    • Religious Freedom
      • Supreme Court removes God, voluntary prayer, and the Ten Commandments from all classrooms based on the 14th Amendment.
        • U.S. v. MACINTOSH, 283 U.S. 605 (1931) - Allegiance to federal government must take priority over allegiance to God.
        • EVERSON v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) - "The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion .... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the "wall of separation" that was constitutionalized in Everson. Wm.Rehnquist
        • MCCOLLUM v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 333 U.S. 203 (1948) - "We are all agreed that the First and the Fourteenth Amendments have a secular reach far more penetrating in the conduct of Government than merely to forbid an 'established church.'" Justice Felix Frankfurter
        • TORCASO v. WATKINS, 367 U.S. 488 (1961) - The day after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, every state in the union believed that an oath was an appeal to God. Since atheists did not believe in God, they could not take an oath, and so atheists were not permitted to hold public office or testify in courts. The First Amendment was designed to keep the federal government from interfering in the way states understood their duties to God. "Congress shall make no law . . . ."
          All of that changed in 1961 when the Supreme Court determined that the 14th Amendment gave the court the power to amend a state constitution where that constitution dealt with religion.
        • ENGEL v. VITALE, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) - Every session of Congress begins with prayer. Do Christians in schools have the same rights? Because of the 14th Amendment and this case, No; they're not even allowed to read the prayers from Capitol Hill (State Brd. of Educ v. Netcong, 262 A.2d 21 (1970).
        • ABINGTON SCHOOL DIST. v. SCHEMPP, 374 U.S. 203 (1963) - 14th Amendment used to remove voluntary Bible reading from government schools
        • WALZ v. TAX COMMISSION OF CITY OF NEW YORK , 397 U.S. 664 (1970) - Churches could be destroyed under the 14th Amendment, but Court says they serve the secular purpose of making America look "pluralistic."
        • LEMON v. KURTZMAN, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) - Based on the Walz case and the 14th Amendment, the Court invents the "Lemon Test": Every legislation must have for its purpose a goal which is acceptable to Secular Humanists, its primary effect must not be to advance the interests of those who oppose Secular Humanism, and it must not bring the government "under God" in an "excessive" way. Is there any wonder that Secularism has advanced so?
        • STONE v. GRAHAM, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) - 14th Amendment allows federal courts to reach into local school classrooms and rip any copy of the Ten Commandments off the wall because they might "induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments." Horrors! Thanks be to the 14th Amendment!
        • WALLACE v. JAFFREE, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) - An Alabama law authorized a one-minute period of silence for students. In striking down the law, the appeals court and the Supreme Court agreed: "It is not the activity itself that concerns us; it is the purpose of the activity that we shall scrutinize." After the bill became law, one legislator admitted he hoped school children might use the moment of silence to pray. That secret intention and the 14th Amendment gave the Court the power to strike down the moment of silence.
        • EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) - 14th Amendment empowers court to prohibit teaching evidence against Darwinism in government schools.
        • ALLEGHENY COUNTY v. GREATER PITTSBURGH ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989) - 14th Amendment empowers Court to order Pennsylvania county to remove nativity scene from public view.
        • LEE v. WEISMAN, 505 U.S. 577 (1992) - 14th Amendment allows Court to order local school not to permit a Jewish Rabbi from uttering a non-sectarian prayer in front of graduation ceremony.
    • Proposition 187
      • In 1994 California passed a ballot initiative, Proposition 187, which would have denied "free" (that is, taxpayer-funded) social services to illegal aliens. Californians, under the delusion that they had the right to govern themselves, defied fashionable opinion—liberal and "conservative" alike—in passing the initiative. But they found out who really governed them when the federal courts prevented the implementation of 187, in the name of the Fourteenth Amendment. What does forcing a state to bankrupt itself by giving away "free" services to people who are in the country illegally have to do with the Fourteenth Amendment? Who knows. But this is why many people opposed it in the first place: Language in the amendment that meant something specific and finite when taken in its proper context became a recipe for federal domination of the states when torn from that context. Thomas E. Woods
    • Forced Welfare Payments
      • Thanks to California's relatively high welfare payments, the Golden State attracts a large number of people who want to collect welfare. This has resulted in serious and persistent economic difficulties for the state. To cope with the strain, California adopted a policy in which new settlers, for the first year of their residence in California, were limited in the welfare benefits they could receive to what they would have had in their state of origin. In Saenz v. Roe (1999), however, the Supreme Court found—surprise!— that California's law violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This time it was the "privileges or immunities" clause that was cited. California, by limiting the amount of welfare money it paid out to settlers in the first year, apparently violated the "right to travel." By forcing California to increase its welfare payments to new residents, the Court had in effect raised taxes on Californians without their consent. (Wasn't there a revolution fought over that somewhere?)  Thomas E. Woods
    • Forced Busing, Tax Increases
      • In North Carolina Board of Education v. Swann, the Court struck down a state statute providing that no student would be compelled to attend any school for the purpose of improving racial balance in the schools. In Washington v. Seattle School District, the Court did the same with a statewide voter initiative preventing mandatory busing for purposes of integration. In U.S. v. Yonkers, a federal judge held the Yonkers city government in contempt, ordering it to integrate its schools by building scattersite public housing in predominantly white areas. This line of cases reached its coercive nadir in Missouri v. Jenkins, when the Supreme Court held that, to further integration, a federal judge could order a local government to increase property taxes, even though the increase was barred by the state constitution. Gene Healy

    Federal Enforcement of Unenumerated Powers is an Invitation to Totalitarian Dictatorship

    Using the 14th Amendment to give the federal government authority over every law in every state that relates to life, liberty or property is a prescription for a totalitarian dictatorship of unimaginable horror.

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