Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Scalia-Breyer Debate--Scalia would repeal 17th Amend.

Supreme Court Justices Steven, "the Huckster" Breyer and Antonin, "The Originalist" Scalia, had a public debate recently. One of the topics was the 17th Amend. The debate appears to be pretty-much a draw. LINK However, in Court opinions, IMHO, Scalia usually demolishes Breyer.

1 comment:

  1. Scalia was absolutely on target about the 17th Amendment when he said "We changed that in a burst of progressivism in 1913, and you can trace the decline of so-called states' rights throughout the rest of the 20th century. ...".

    Breyer's answer to this was "... and one of the things that's been quite ugly -- didn't save us from the Civil War -- is that there is a system of changing the Constitution through amendment. ...".

    It was progressive thought like Breyer's that greatly contributed to civil conflict. The reason was Philadelphia's heavily debated government charter, the U.S. Constitution, formed the foundation of our post-revolutionary country. For this reason, Southern states were not going to sit back and allow a self-serving federal government to overreach their delegated limits. Although slavery was an ongoing problem at the time, it was certainly not the genesis of America's great civil war. Rather it was a power grabbing progressive GOP from the industrial North forcing Southern agrarian democrats to revolt.

    Such division still largely exists today between urban and rural communities nationwide, with the political parities at completely opposite ends of their original 19th Century platforms.

    States lost all representation in the federal arena while national government greatly increased their own power and corrupting influence with passage of the 17th Amendment. Shame on Woodrow Wilson and his collaborating congressional cronies. We need more justices like Scalia to make things right.

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