From: peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: NPR, Marrou and the U.S. Constitution
Date: 17 Nov 1992 01:05:28 -0600
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: cairo.crhc.uiuc.edu

mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:

| peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy) writes:
| >mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
| >| Probably more apropos would be Article VI:
| >|     Section 2.  This Constitution, and the laws of the United States
| >|     which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made,
| >|     or which shall be made, under the authority of  the United States,
| >|     shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every
| >|     State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws
| >|     of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
| >
| >| Implicit in this article is the responsability of individuals to follow
| >| the laws, and the ability of the laws to constrain freedoms where not
| >| otherwise prohibited by the constitution and ammendments.
| >
| >I disagree.  This Section is specifically relevant to the supremacy
| >of the Federal government over the States.  It hardly applies to
| >individuals.

| Oh, you want to interpret this as "supreme law of the land EXCEPTING ANY
| INDIVIDUALS"?  Yes, it is specifically relevant to the supremacy of the
| Federal government over the States.  That's EXPLICIT.  I said IMPLICIT.

You know, you have moved the point you are trying to defend from
"the Constitution states the responsibilities of individuals" to "the
Constitution implicitly grants the Federal government supremacy over
individuals."  I will not argue against your new position.

| >Also, the whole point of contention here centers around the words
| >"made in pursuance thereof."  I, and the other advocates of my
| >postition, argue that the laws of today are not made in pursuance
| >of the Constitution, the fact that the bodies created by the
| >Constitution disagree with this notwithstanding.

| That's nice.  It's good to know that you have the ONE TRUE INTERPRETATION.
| I'm positive that as soon as everyone hears it, they will be enlightened,
| and with missionary zeal spread this gospel truth that the satanic
| government has suppressed lo these 200 years.

I'm not trying to pick a fight, so you don't have to yell.  I am simply
trying to make it clear to you that you and your opponents here have
different foundations from which you and they are arguing:  they believe
the Constitution never gave the Federal government a great many of the
powers it has granted itself, and you believe that whatever the lovely
US does was quite what the Founding Parents would have wanted the
Constitution to empower them to do.

Neither of you will convince the other.  However, just to keep the
senseless argument going, what do you think of the Constitutionality
of the internment of the Japanese-Americans during WWII?

By the way, to rectify an omission in my previous post, there is another
school of libertarians who would argue against your assertions that the
Constitution dictates individual responsibilities:  those who believe
the Constitution isn't worth the paper it's written on anyway.  They
didn't sign it, and all the people who did sign it are quite dead.

| So what is your interpretation of "made in pursuance thereof" that will
| flush out the past 200 years of lawmaking?  Is it something different than
| enacted by congress and signed into law by the president and not found to
| be unconstitutional by the supreme court?

Would this be the Supreme Court that found virtually the entire New
Deal unconstitutional until the President and Congress threatened to
pack the bench?  In that case, yes, my interpretation is vastly
different.

Mike Peercy
peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu