imported post
Citizen wrote:
arentol wrote:
TehGruu wrote:
All I can say is WOW...Our country had power hunger a-holes from the get go. I guess I should have known, after all, people are people.
SNIP Either that, or these a-holes were the only ones smart enough to realize that if the states did not hang together they would surely hang separately.
Imagine what might have happened if North Carolina had done something to piss off Spain bad enough that the Spanish came over to kick their butt. Because we were a mere confederation many of the other states might have felt that since it was NC's own dang fault they shouldn't be obligated to intervene. Next thing you know the whole confederation has broken apart and turned on each other and Spain has overrun NC, SC, and Georgia. It is actually not that far-fetched an idea.
The Articles of Confederation had that point covered already.
Article III of
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union:
The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. (emphasis added by Citizen)
http://www.usconstitution.net/articles.html#Article3
Completely fails to address my point.
What if NC, acting independently, started a war while at the same time our central government consisted of 13 guys in a town hall somewhere who had to decide on everything as a committee, and who lacked the authority to commit their individual states to anything of significance? This while the states themselves were spending all their time bickering about minor issues, imposing tariffs on each other, and just generally not getting along and having TONS of issues within just three years of winning the war?
If you think that would not be the beginning of the end of the United States of America, you are a king of fools, because the end had already begun. Interstate commerce issues alone would have killed our nation off inside of 20 years.
Valley Forge and the two years of war leading up to it taught the "Federalists" (many of whom were officers in the army during that period) that a weak central government would be the death of our nation. A general reporting to a sub-committee reporting to a committee reporting to individual state senates, spread hundreds of miles apart during a war and a time of very slow travel and communication is no way to run a war. The writing was on the wall, and it said "A nation with a completely ineffectual central government is no nation at all." They were right of course, and they took the necessary steps to calmly and reasonably correct this issue.
I mean gesus, look at the articles. If I had to live in that nation today (not that it would have made it this long) I would move to Canada in a heartbeat:
If you are poor you can't cross state lines. WTF?
Rights are established on a per-state basis and you have only the rights given to you by the state you are currently in. Meaning you could have no freedom of speech in Virginia, and if you published something Virgina didn't like while in New York then you could be arrested the second you entered Virgina. Nice.
The central government is run by a committee of 13 Congressmen. Meaning even the most trivial issues would have to be debated and voted on. No executive branch to make day-to-day decisions... Not that they had much to power to do anything anyway though.
The Congress was the final arbitrator for disputes between states, and a Quorum was sufficient to do most things. So if 7 states decided to back each other up against the other 6 there would be nothing the others could do about it. Recipe for disaster.
The states are required to pay into the central government so it can do its thing, but the central government has no ability to actually force any state to make its payments. Delinquency had no meaning, states could ignore the central government entirely if they liked (and some did like).
Oh, and the best part of the Articles, which resolves all issues:
The articles could be altered by Congress as long as the states Ratified the changes.
How does all this dovetail together. Lets see:
The convention held in 1787 was not some random meeting. It was 100% legal and approved meeting of Congress, you know, the very people set out in the Articles as the only people with the ability to alter the articles. "But Citizen says they didn't have that right!!!" He is wrong, by definition that was precisely their right (with ratification), and clearly nobody else had more right than Congress itself!
Well, wasn't this the wrong TIME to be changing the Articles? Nope, just the right time actually. After just 4 years of peace a special Convention was being held because the Articles were NOT WORKING, and needed to be rewritten to keep states from having so many disputes with no acceptable resolutions in a timely manner. Speaking of which, it is funny that Citizen brought up Rhode Island earlier too. Basically every state but Rhode Island OPENLY admitted the Articles were broken. Rhode Island knew the articles were not working, but they also knew that if anything significant was changed at the convention they were going to lose their lucrative tax on trade coming down a vital road that ran through the state. So Rhode Island chose not to attend hoping that would keep the Articles from being altered. Obviously RI didn't ratify they constitution, they probably had a surplus so big from those taxes that even their rats wore suits and ties (or the appropriate time-period equivalent)!
So, congress had the right to change the articles, and they were there TOO change them. How is there any debate over whether they had the right to create a new constitution? I suppose one could argue that they should have only modified the articles, not re-written them entirely. However, that is merely semantics since they had the right to re-write them in any way they chose and were there to do just that.
I said it before, and I say it again. If they didn't have the right, they couldn't have done it. If more than one state had said no, it wouldn't have happened. They all agreed. WTF is the problem?
