Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Prattville Dragoons Commander's Column for March 2018


Commander's Column: The Confederate Constitution Addressing State Sovereignty and Burueacracy

Mark Levin, whose somewhat conservative but abrasive and anti-Confederate voice I have bemoaned before, recently wrote that he believes our nation is in a constitutional crisis because of the growth of the federal bureaucracy.  In an interview he “discussed the wave of activism and politics in the United States that is running counter to the Constitution (saying), “We are at a precipice now.  The cause is nothing less than saving this republic.”  Levin said the bureaucratic state and forces of progressivism are misreading the Constitution.  Levin mentioned how there are Articles I, II and III in the founding document - laying out the roles of each of the three branches of government but that "someone forgot to put the extra Article in for the bureaucracy."” (http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/02/24/mark-levin-cpac-speech-constitutional-danger-praises-donald-trump)  This is the “deep state” Trump has exposed. Levin and many neo-conservatives of Yankee ilk seem to turn a blind eye to the constitutional crisis that led to the Southern states secession and attempt to form a Confederate States of America.  Just as these founders of the CSA initially sought to retain the look of the Revolutionary U.S. flag as they loved their mother country from an originalist perspective, they sought to emulate much of the U.S. Constitution while clarifying and strengthening the issues of state sovereignty and limiting the federal bureaucracy.  These Southern patriots certainly believed in the Declaration of Independence from 85 years prior which stated, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”  So, in Montgomery in their own constitutional convention they shaped the Confederate Constitution to address their grievances with the Republican-controlled U.S. federal government.
Wikipedia has a good article which provides a (seemingly objective) comparison of the U.S. and Confederate constitutions.  In regard to most articles of the (Confederate) Constitution, the document is a word-for-word duplicate of the United States Constitution.  Regarding the reinforcement of state sovereignty though one difference is the Confederate constitution stating/clarifying, “Each State Legislature is free to make their own decisions except where the Constitution has laid out other rules.  The Preamble to the Confederate Constitution begins, "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character” and the Confederate States gained several rights that the U.S. states did not have. For example, they gained the right to “impeach federal judges and other federal officers if they worked or lived solely in their state.”   But some state’s rights were restricted, “States lose the ability to restrict the rights of traveling and sojourning slave owners.  No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State, except by a vote of two-thirds” of the CS legislature.  Additionally, the Confederate President must be a resident of the geographical limits of the CSA for at least 14 years and would have a six year term and would have line item veto authority. 
The other issue driving the Southern secession was Lincoln’s tariffs and appropriation of this revenue to build Northern industrialism.  In this regard, the Confederate constitution stated/clarified, “(No) duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederate States.” No aids to interstate commerce adding to the US constitution, “nor any other clause contained in the constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation.” Bills allocating expenditures had to specify an exact amount with no eligible additional payments.  Each bill would have just one subject. The CSA Congress would have limited “ability to tax ships and negotiate treaties concerning water ways”.   Limitations on federal overreach and growth of the centralized bureaucracy. 
Some additional differences included the provision that “no state shall be sued by a citizen or subject of any foreign state.”  A 2/3 vote in the legislature was required for constitutional amendments and for adding states.  The CS Constitution mentioned African slavery by name instead of using the term “Person[s] held to Service or Labor” and while both prohibited African slave trade, the CS constitution permitted slave trade with the US while indicating the CS Congress may prohibit same.  One of the final recognized causes for the Southern state’s secession involved the determination of the western states and “the Confederate Constitution added a clause about the question of slavery in the territories (the key Constitutional debate of the 1860 election) by explicitly stating that slavery (would be) legally protected in the territories.” 
Clearly, the Confederate Constitution and the differences between it and the U.S. Constitution after which it was closely patterned reinforce the complexity of the numerous issues which caused the great divide between the Northern Republican interests and those of the Southern Democrats.  It was certainly not a single issue which precipitated the secession and hostilities as is evident by a comparison in the constitutions. The Confederacy sought to preserve the founder’s originalist sovereignty of the states and limit the overreach and bureaucracy of the central federal government.  Levin refuses to accept and acknowledge this historical truth as it does not serve his mainstream politically correct agenda and threatens the lining of his pockets with advertising dollars. 

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