Where have the firewalls gone?

Firewalls are, as everyone knows, built into many modern structures to prevent fire in one section from spreading to another.

The organic Constitution created national borders as national firewalls to protect the contiguous united States from outside invasion. That is also the reason state boundaries were established, to make it illegal for one state to impose laws upon the people of another state who found those laws repugnant.

The Constitution states in article IV, section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.

The Ninth Amendment guarantees..."The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people".

The tenth amendment guarantees that powers not granted to the United States are reserved to the States or to the people. – United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 733 (1931).

These are contractual guarantees. The federal government has no legitimate authority to breach the firewalls they themselves created and guaranteed, except in very limited and detailed instances. The federal government had no legitimate authority to rip out the State's firewalls and declare itself the ultimate lawgiver, thus abridging the original contract.

During the debates in the Virginia State Convention of 1788, John Marshall stated that if the States possessed a power prior to the adoption of the Constitution and a like power was granted to the federal government, the States retained a concurrent power unless there was a conflict in the exercise of power or there was a clause that specifically prohibited the States from exercising that power.

Following the Civil War, otherwise known as the war of northern aggression against State’s and people’s unalienable rights, when the population was still reeling from the wanton destruction, two amendments were adopted regarding the rights of former slaves. Only one of them was legally ratified: the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery and was legally ratified. The other abridged the original contract and tore down the firewalls:

Amendment XIV

“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Note that the 14th amendment does not say that the federal government may not make or enforce laws abridging the privileges or immunities of the newly declared federal citizens, or that they may not deprive those citizens of life, liberty or property. Persons are regularly denied equal protection and due process under federal law, some of whom are never charged with a crime, receive a fair trial or are convicted by a jury, but are deprived of property, imprisoned, and in extreme cases, extra judicially murdered by that same government.

The encroachment of federal law enforcement over the constitutional guarantee of a Sovereign State’s autonomy has never taken a day off work, there are no lunch breaks, holidays or 40 hour work weeks for central planners and executioners of federal control. Hundreds of bills have passed muster over the approximately 150 years since the 14th was deemed ratified, giving the appearance of substance and legitimacy to a fundamentally failed amendment.

There is No "Fourteenth Amendment"!
David Lawrence
U.S. News & World Report
September 27, 1957

“There were 37 States in the Union in 1867-8, so ratification by at least 28 was necessary to make the 14th amendment an integral part of the Constitution. Only 21 States legally ratified it. So it failed of ratification.”

www.constitution.org...

The frogs finally noticed they were getting uncomfortable and the water was beginning to steam. They looked for a shut off valve.

In 1995 eight states adopted resolutions to restore the tenth amendment to America, they were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut and Delaware. Most people within those states never even knew their governors and legislatures were demanding such sweeping reforms and therefore did nothing to sustain those efforts. Corporate media was mum and the internet was still in its infancy.

Wake the heck up! For the past 80 years and more the federal government has been working just as diligently to tear down the national firewalls and sell its citizens to the highest foreign bidders as they previously did with the state's firewalls.

Is there any better mechanism, or is there even any other mechanism available to us to stop the constant erosion of our rights than to go back and correct the original fraud that led to the federalization of everything with ~ and without ~ a pulse in America?

As always, individuals can do nothing much to force the genie back into the bottle, but the state movements haven’t gone anywhere, they’re still fighting for our sovereign rights.

A Summary of the original 10th Amendment State ResolutionsAs of 1/15/2010 - Ongoing Process.) www.scribd.com...

The resolutions were all much the same, but here is the exact wording from Colorado. forum.prisonplanet.com...

Although Fox News and CNN are not telling you about it, a growing number of states are declaring sovereignty. Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, and Georgia have all introduced bills and resolutions declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment. Colorado, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Alaska, Kansas, Alabama, Nevada, Maine, and Illinois are considering such measures.

New model legislation from the Tenth Amendment Center breaks today as part of the uproar over the National Defense Authorization Act. It’s called the Liberty Preservation Act and it actually comes in 3 bills. One part is a non-binding resolution, the second part a non-compliance act, and finally the state nullification. “With this you can act to resist them right now instead of asking those in Congress to repeal what they already passed,” says Michael Boldin.

blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com...

What can we do to push this forward? Or backward, if you will.

I'm sorry to be so obvious, but what better and simpler solution than to put Constituionalists in office? People who want to centralize government, or reduce the states influence should go. This seems especially important for the Presidency because of his influence (control?) of the Supreme Court's makeup.

A very simple solution, but very hard.

Originally posted by charles1952
I'm sorry to be so obvious, but what better and simpler solution than to put Constituionalists in office? People who want to centralize government, or reduce the states influence should go. This seems especially important for the Presidency because of his influence (control?) of the Supreme Court's makeup.

A very simple solution, but very hard.

I think it will never be more obvious than it is right now in the current election cycle of what happens to true constitutionalist candidates. Voters are toothless creatures with no influence on the federal level. Even elected delegates have no clout against the established party moguls.

Yes, the Supreme Court is a problem since "good behavior" has never been clearly defined, nor has "bad behavior" and not one has ever been ousted for the latter. Institutions become corrupt and unresponsive without someone holding their feet to the fire and no president or congress has ever done that with activist judges, so I would suggest that that's up to the States, as well.

Mostly I'm interested in hearing what people would want the federal government to stop doing IF the state's got their autonomy back.

Me, I'd like to see the state's deny the federal government's right to tax incomes and then parcel that money back to the states in exchange for particular lawmaking the feds want, or to fund state agencies that are actually branches of the federal government. So I guess that would mean more and better challenges to the 16th amendment as well. That's overdue, even tax specialists and tax lawyers can't figure out what that one says.

freedom-school.com...

reply to post by frazzle

Mostly I'm interested in hearing what people would want the federal government to stop doing IF the state's got their autonomy back.

Are you asking what federal departments and activities could be cut? I would think that there are some that have to be performed and paid for at the federal level: military, foreign relations, air traffic control, etc. Of course the states could take back things like education.

But maybe I don't get your point.

reply to post by charles1952


Education is a prime example, IMO. Its no secret that the feds are failing big time at educating our kids.

That's what I'm wanting to know, what departments, agencies and services people think would be better handled at the state level. Thanks for your feedback, its a good start. What else?

reply to post by frazzle

Dear frazzle,

Perhaps we could get rid of most of Agriculture, Energy (except for the portion that dealt with nuclear stuff), Labor, (except for statistics), Maybe the EPA could be cut to only include pollution crossing state lines, and maybe Commerce, again except for statistics.

That's just off the top of my head.

With respect,
Charles1952

P.s. Homeland security seems to do work that really falls into other departments. They deserve a strict look.

Originally posted by charles1952
reply to post by frazzle

 

Dear frazzle,

Perhaps we could get rid of most of Agriculture, Energy (except for the portion that dealt with nuclear stuff), Labor, (except for statistics), Maybe the EPA could be cut to only include pollution crossing state lines, and maybe Commerce, again except for statistics.

That's just off the top of my head.

With respect,
Charles1952

P.s. Homeland security seems to do work that really falls into other departments. They deserve a strict look.

Just thinking about the dept of agriculture's cost benefit ratio is enough to boggle the mind because its so broad and complicated. It includes all of these sub agencies:

Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services
Commodity, credit, conservation, disaster, emergency assistance programs...

Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services
Dietary guidance, nutrition policy coordination, nutrition education...

Food Safety
Meat, poultry, and egg inspection, food recalls, food labeling, packaging...

Marketing and Regulatory Programs
Organic program, animal and plant health, grain inspection...

Natural Resources and Environment
Forestry, conservation, damage prevention, land management, sustainable land management...

Research, Education and Economics
U.S. food and fibers system, library, statistics, research, analysis, education...

Rural Development
Financial programs, water and sewer systems, housing, health clinics, economic development, loans, lending pools...

Some of these "duties" sound helpful on the face of it, but most of them are duplicated by other departments and agencies just on the federal level. Then add similar departments and agencies that exist on the state level and ask youself how anyone could sort it all out. Who knows how the heck much all this micromanagement costs or what good it does anyone? So yeah, I think agriculture would be one that could go away and the necessary parts of it should be picked up by the states. Different regions of the country deal with such a wide variety of geographical issues that its impossible to think one central agency could oversee it all, anyway.

DHS deserves a lot more than a strict look. And I also agree with you that energy and EPA need a good housecleaning.