How can you possibly support the supreme court ruling?

I'm reading through thread after thread on the supreme court ruling and I absolutely cannot believe people are supporting this.

Some of you just aren't seeing what the ramifications are or what will result from this decision.

Yes......in practice...it supports freedom of speech.

Now let me share with you what this actually does.

ANY corporation....ANY international corporation, ANY CHINESE corporation can now blackmail/buy off/destroy any politician to do their bidding. No man, woman, nor UNION will ever be able to compete with the money they have.

A corporation is NOT a human being. IT has no blood going through it's veins. It has no Social Security number. It has no biological mother or father. It has no sense of right or wrong. Therefore no corporation has individual rights. Our entire political system will know only cater to the wealthy.

Are you afraid of big government?

Do you think it will change with corporate control or by the influence of FOREIGN governments?

Do you think immigration laws will change? Do you think Democracy will be saved? Do you think our country's sovereignty will be upheld?

THE ANSWER IS NO.

Watch as minimum wage disappears. Benefits will disappear. Watch as what is left of our tariffs on imports disappear. Any type of law that benefits individual citizens is now facing extinction. Watch as more dangerous products are able to be sold. Watch as all small businesses face extinction....do I need to go on? These things are already happening now.

We are handing the country to Wall Street...the same people who WE JUST BAILED OUT...the same people who have sent MILLIONS and MILLIONS of jobs overseas leaving us with crappy jobs and less benefits.

With the false premise of protecting the first amendment for the "false" identification that a corporation has the same rights of a breathing individual...we are destroying the very Constitution and Democracy that we are trying so desperately to keep.

I urge many of you to PLEASE rethink what this means.

Until the Congress outlaws all political contributions from 'anyone' with a body count larger than 1; including all unions, PACs, organizations, etc.; then the Supreme Court's ruling is the fairest and most constitutional ruling they could've made. Cry all you want about it, but it's the truth.

From Ferri's thread:

Good lord people.

Why do folks believe these polls? If they don't poll ALL of America, then they cannot say that the majority or 55% of people favor anything.

They should put 55% of the 1000 people we polled think this. Can you get any data on who it is they poll?

That would be interesting I am sure.

On another note, I completely disagree. I think that lobyists have now given themselves a head start, more so than they already have. It's quite disgusting to think that they now have MORE power over elections and campaign adds/slogans and just overall marketing.

Even Obama said this was horrible, and he's right. Free speech my ass, nobody is stopping them from VOICING that they like or dislike any opponent.

That was my response in that thread, and it is mine right here. Me and you are on the same page David, and BTW if that's your daughter (?) she is adorable .

~Keeper

Did you see the argument given in defense of the law and how it was argued by the US Government in keeping the restriction intact? Esentially, any corporation or a subsidiary of a corporation that promotes a political viewpoint or a candidate could be restricted by the law. This also includes products or publications or books or shows. When questioned by the court, if a book of 500 pages had just one sentence that supported a candidate... could it be banned? Answer by US Govt...YES. That's what did in the law...not the law, but the argument by the US Govt.
By that argument, Papers and Press..ie corporations could be banned or penalized for supporting candidates. The law was stricken by the wrong argument. So, do you really want to stop corporations that print papers, periodicals, movies that support a political view to be banned?

reply to post by David9176


I admit I've probably been one of the most vocal supporters for the ruling. People need to know that when a guy is getting big corporate donations... and that is required to be public information... that you shouldn't be voting for them! The problem is you really can't stop corporations from supporting a candidate one way or another. I'd rather say, "okay donate all you want". Then, that kind of thing is more likely to be done legally. When the donations are done legally, they are public information. After they are public information, the voters can know not to vote for them.

I advocate a system of democracy that allows the people to vote for idiots, and then they can be punished with a crappy economy so they can know it isn't working and they've got to try out another idea. What this court ruling is doing is allowing the idiots to surface up more rapidly than ever. Yes we are making fascism show up faster with votes for corporate candidates, but that also means people will be able to figure it out sooner that it is a bad idea, and therefore the disease will get cured faster.

The problem isn't the corporations... it is stupid voters. Voters need to get smarter, and if takes a few incredibly bad apples to see that then so be it. The faster politicians sell out to corporations, the faster voters can figure out that voting for people getting the $5M checks from Goldman Sachs are the people to avoid when they go to the polling place.

If you think democracy works, then let democracy work. Otherwise, don't have democracy. If people are too stupid to not vote for the guys getting the $5 million dollar corporate checks and then just keep on voting for them, then democracy does not work and we'll have to do something else. I don't know, but I think democracy may work better than people think.

While I think voters are too stupid to avoid voting for a guy getting 1,000 $3k checks from the big banks, perhaps they are not too stupid to avoid voting for a guy getting 500 checks for $300,000... or perhaps even if they would do that over the short term, they would not over the long term.

EDIT: Parts were hard to read as phrased... changed wording slightly.

[edit on 23-1-2010 by truthquest]

Politicians hate this bill, this is why I love it.

Politicians want to be shielded from as much criticism as possible.

The politicans complaining about this the loudest are the ones you need to watch!

How many threads does this subject really need?

reply to post by David9176


I would first suggest that what you meant by "in practice...it supports freedom of speech.", was that in "theory it supports freedom of speech". I am presuming this by your very next statement which is: "Now let me tell you what it actually does." What ever it actually does is what is done in practice.

Your assertion that no man, woman nor UNION, will be able to compete with the money that corporations have only diminishes the actual inherent political power that each individual holds, and presumes that voters are bought instead of voting their own good conscience. Voters are not paid to vote, they vote their own best interests.

It is intriguing you mention CHINESE corporations, since China is a communist country with steep controls over its corporations and I wonder if you have ever heard of "Chinagate" which was the political scandal over campaign finance controversies where it was alleged that the Peoples Republic of China attempted to influence the political process. This was in 1996 when Section 441b of the BCFR was still in play.

SCOTUS did not rule that corporations have individual rights in the same way natural persons do, it did acknowledge a 14th Amendment right existing, but that unfortunate Amendment deigns to grant rights where no valid government has the authority to grant rights at all. Rights preexist governments and can not be granted nor taken away legitimately by any government.

The point of corporations lacking human qualities is moot, and what was ruled was that due to the complexity of the BCFR and 441b, and the nature of the criminal punishments that came with that law forced actual persons, with blood coursing through their veins, regardless of whether they have Social Security Numbers or not, (which is another moot point, since possessing a S.S. # is not a prerequisite for enjoying rights), who have or had both biological fathers and mothers, to petition the government for a ruling on what they could say or not say.

This need to petition, which could only be done by a human, and the insistence that the legislation itself could fine or imprison violators, which would be actual persons put in prison not the artificial entity of a corporation, was what caused the SCOTUS to rule in the manner they did. It ruled that this was equivalent to prior restraint and effectively chilled speech which is expressly forbidden by Constitution and Congress can make no laws abridging speech.

Am I afraid of big government? I despise big government and am currently faced with a government too big as it is. How did the BCFR protect me from big government?

The SCOTUS spoke directly to the idea of foreign corporations having the same right as domestic corporations and while it made no ruling on whether they did or not, they did rule that Congress erred in attempting to regulate the speech of all corporations instead of regulating solely foreign corporations. It was because Congress sought to expand the scope of their jurisdiction and do what they were expressly forbidden from doing that SCOTUS rebuked them and 441b and struck down this law as unconstitutional. Had Congress left domestic corporations alone and merely attempted to chill the effects of political speech made by foreign corporations, then this ruling would not have even happened, since Citizens United is a domestic corporation and not a foreign one.

I am unclear why you think immigration laws will change because of this, and you would have to speak more specifically to what you mean by that question before I could respond intelligently. However, your question asking if I think democracy will be saved by this ruling, I can answer. I am not concerned with saving democracy and deeply concerned with saving the republic for which it stands.

Thus, the answer you provide offers me nothing in the way of any explanation or illumination of the consequences of this ruling. You offer up reactionary claims intended to scare people by insisting that minimum wage laws will disappear, benefits will disappear, tariffs on imports disappearing, and businesses facing extinction, as well as any law benefiting individuals facing extinction as well.

As to your assertions that minimum wage will disappear, I would suggest to you that no one can feasibly survive on minimum wage as it exists today and every person would be well advised to negotiate a better deal in exchange for their labor or services than the paltry amount of minimum wage.

The same goes for benefits, and I respectfully submit that each individual has the right to negotiate their own benefit package as form of compensation for labor or services and no legislation is required to make these kind of contracts with business owners.

As to your assertions on tariffs, this a matter of taxation and some tariffs are good and benefit the public and others are bad and do great damage to economies. As Chief Justice Marshall famously said in the seminal ruling of McCulloch v. Maryland; "the power to tax is the power to destroy.", and any tariffs that are destroying vital businesses that are essential to a strong economy should be tariff's that disappear.

All laws can do to benefit individuals is act in a negative sense as all they can do is punish those who have abrogated and derogated the rights of an individual or more, and in doing so created an absence of justice. The laws can only hope to put justice back in through punishing those who took it away. Any other form of legislation that purports to "benefit" individuals, usually comes in the form of "legal plunder" and plunder is plunder regardless of the legislation that backs it.

If you as an individual continually opt out of doing business with small local businesses in order to do business with corporations this will help contribute to the extinction of any small business. You have the choice to support your small local businesses and the ruling of Citizens United did nothing to remove this choice.

As to more dangerous products being sold, there is plenty of evidence to support that dangerous products are sold regularly in spite of the numerous administrative agencies that exist to regulate the safety of products.

The bailout of the "Wall Street" corporations that you refer to happened in blatant disregard to the well established anti-trust laws in place and also happened before the ruling in question.

Claiming that the premise of relying upon the 1st Amendment to rebuke Congress for its blatant usurpation of power, and striking down a law repugnant to the Constitution only serves to undermine the meaning and intent of the 1st Amendment. That Amendment makes no distinction as to who or what has the right of speech, it instead prohibits Congress from making any laws abridging speech.

This is not freedom of speech.

Money is the "all good". It can purchase almost anything, so you are essentially giving someone "anything" when handing over money.

I posted the below in another thread and feel it is relevant.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The problem with an issue like this is that the participants wanting legislation like this stopped have the first amendment behind their side - not necessarily in a good way.

Lobbyists/corporations as a single unit are in the minority when grouped against the rest of the nation, yet the wealth such a corporation can lobby compared to a normal individual is enormously different.

This issue is not about freedom of speech but a flaw in the capitalism/(representative) democracy conglomerate itself.

In capitalism, money buys power, but in a democracy the people "rule".

Where is the fine line in issues like this? Do we protect our capitalist ideals that help promote competition and spur economic growth, or do we let the majority of people win which could possibly hamper the economic system all together? After all, the majority does NOT know best most of the time, because 90% of people follow strict family tradition or get their information directly from the MSM.

Like others said, corporations ARE people.

My final opinion is that lobbyists should be allowed. They are not the problem. The problem is the politicians. Whether or not they get donations, they should be voting for what is right.

Politicians represent the people WHO VOTED THEM IN, NOT WHO GIVE THEM THE BONUS MONEY!!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama got more campaign contributions from unknown sources than any politician that ever lived. He doesn't have to tell us where he got it from, who contributed it or where he spent it.
Obama is the most opaque president we ever had. Were any of you foolish enough to cast a vote for him?

As long as we know who is contributing to who, we the people can decide to support or reject a candidate.

The Supreme Court's ruling changes nothing.

My biggest problem with this ruling is that the vast majority of our corporations are skirting anti-trust and monopoly laws as it is already.

America became a powerhouse nation based on the entrepreneurial spirit and innovation of small enterprise and the quick wealth generation that being a successful entrepreneur can earn.

The corporate landscape has all but driven most entrepreneurs from the American landscape by using their overwhelming purchasing and advertising and bargaining power to make it close to impossible for the little entrepreneur to compete in any real fashion.

This has led to a stagnation of wages and a lowering of the living wage by corporations who now dominate the employment markets. It’s led to a lowering of educational standards by corporations who basically want functionally illiterate workers who can’t rock the corporate boat. It’s led to a decrease in innovation, and it’s led to a rise in lawsuits and huge payouts to attorneys who specialize in going after the deep pockets of corporations. All this is passed on though ultimately to the consumers through higher prices and higher insurance fees. It has gotten so ridiculous that most medical doctors who go to school for eight years have to go to work for a corporation because of the high costs involved of creating a practice that can compete with corporate medicine. On top of it all it has led to literally tens upon tens of thousands of laws being passed each year by politicians that are designed to skirt anti-trust laws, facilitate mergers and acquisitions, and regulate the markets and licensing and standards that make it even harder for the entrepreneur to make a living the traditional American way.

In reality some of our corporations have been declared ‘To big to fail’ based on a perception that the public at large would be harmed if they failed. This though says two other things, if they are too big to fail, they are likewise too big to succeed, and we all suffer when they do succeed because they can manipulate to much of the markets in a way that only the insiders at the top tier players have any chance other than blind luck in succeeding in these systems they create for them to flourish.

Yet at the same time if these corporations are deemed ‘to big to fail’ that should make them ‘utilities’ then owned and run by the government, and not owned and run by private individuals who look for increasingly dubious ways to ensure their own stratospheric compensations.

Corporations are literally destroying the fabric of what American life is supposed to be all about. They are doing it with government help, a government that they elect and pay for because they have a whole lot more money to buy it and make it work for them, than you or I do as citizens.

America is being destroyed by corporatism, and the only just ruling regarding corporations that the Supreme Court could make is to start enforcing the anti-trust laws and monopoly laws to the letter and not just handing them another vehicle and means to keep transforming America in their image.

If you have spent anytime on the phone with any big corporation to be told much to your frustration how you have to follow their policies like they are the constitutional law of the land, and still pay them for bad service, and insulting your notions of propriety and freedom and the customer is always right then you know what I am talking about.

It would not surprise me if based on how our corporations are going they will actually set up a computerized automated system for funding politicians and running the government.

Enough is enough already, and it really frightens me that so many Americans would actually try to find intellectual and political reasons to justify this tyranny.

We either need to become the death of corporations or the corporations clearly are going to become the death of us!



[edit on 27/1/10 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


It surprises me my friend that you would have a problem with a ruling that held as sacrosanct the 1st Amendment and rebuked Congress for overstepping its authority and blatantly ignoring the restrictions the 1st Amendment placed upon that legislative body.

I do not disagree at all with what you say about corporatism and have long railed against this anti-capitalistic system, but Citizens United v. F.E.C. was not a ruling that empowered corporations, it was a ruling that demanded Congress behave in the way they are supposed to.

It surprises me that someone who is usually as clearheaded in their thinking as you are would be so willing to allow your distaste for corporatism to cloud your judgment and ignore the obvious reasoning of the SCOTUS ruling. The Supreme Court did their jobs as they should have and the problems that We the People face with corporations could not be addressed in this ruling. As is the case with all court cases, they deal with the narrow facts of the case before them.

It is folly to believe the the BCFR and the sections that were struck down as unconstitutional, somehow reigned in corporate malfeasance. You yourself have pointed to many of the problems that corporatism creates and those problems were every bit as much of a problem before Citizens United reached a ruling.

Corporations being a statutorily defined legal entity require charters in order to exist. Those charters are granted by states and as such are granted by We the People and as the holders of the inherent political power, We the People have the power to petition for revocation of corporate charters at any time. It is a power that We the People should rely upon much more than we do. Criticizing a ruling that showed great reverence to freedom of speech only distracts from what We as the People need to do.

For too long have the people comfortably made reference to "the powers that be" and sat back in apathy expecting "leaders" to do the jobs that are our responsibility. It may not be convenient to stop doing business with certain corporations but it is always in our power to do so. Further, there is much data that exists today that directly contradicts your assertion that entrepreneurs are on the decline. The Kaufman Foundation reports a consistent entrepreneurial growth claiming that 456,000 people, on average, start up new businesses each month.

This is not to say that corporatism is not a problem, as it is indeed a very serious problem, but the criticism of this recent SCOTUS ruling misses the point and for too many criticizing the ruling they do so by willfully ignoring the very real fact that Congress blatantly ignored the prohibitions placed upon them and made laws that abridged the freedom of speech.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


My friend, Congress lost all its ability to pass laws as a legal body in 1862.

No law passed since the legal congress disbanded at the start of the civil war is constitutional.

The constitution did not recognize corporations as citizens, only the post civil war illegal congress did.

In reality because the congress was illegally called back into session and continued to operate throughout the war without a quorum the only way it could have become a legal body again was having another constitutional convention and either re-ratifying the original one, or ratifying another one that all the states could have accepted of their own free will and not at the point of a gun barrel.

The Ammendment that made corporations citizens is illegal because there has been no legally sat congress since 1861.

The civil war was in fact fought to create the corporate state and government and to make us all employees and property of that government.

It was not fought to end slavery but to make it illegal for slaves to own slaves.

We the citizens are property, and the Corporations are our owners and Masters that was why the Civil War was fought and that was the outcome of the Civil War.

An honest examination of history bears that out.

Thanks.



[edit on 27/1/10 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Whether or not Congress lost their ability to legislate as a legal body, they have not only continued to legislate they have done so at an alarming rate.

If it is true that no law passed since the start of the Civil War is Constitutional then I would suggest that the SCOTUS has their hands full and any laws struck down passed since the Civil War is a job well done by that Court.

By your reference to the Amendment that makes corporations "legal" I am guessing you are referring to the 14th Amendment, is this correct? It is an Amendment I have long criticized and am often called a "bigot" and "racist" for doing so. That unfortunate Amendment is the height of legislative arrogance in that it deigns to grant rights where no government has the legal authority to do so.

It would be nice to see this Amendment challenged and brought to court but in my research I have not been able to find any successful or even unsuccessful challenges to it. I have also looked for challenges to the 17th Amendment, which strikes me as another unconstitutional act and it is disheartening to read about its history as such sites as Wikepedia report that the 17th Amendment "supersedes" the Constitution and I know of no law that can legally do so.

I am aware of your historical claims and tend to agree with much of them, which is why I was so perplexed to see your criticism of the SCOTUS ruling. Not that your criticism was heavy handed or unreasonable, just that I couldn't understand why you would believe this ruling accomplished anything more than striking down a legislative act, or sections to it, that ignored Constitutional constraints, the history you speak of not withstanding.

...Because to condemn it is to be looking down the wrong end of the telescope.

The UK has a system that works, but, traditionally had no limits on corporate spending.

The concept was simple and the US should consider this as a substantially better alternative. In order to broadcast by TV or radio, one must have a licence. To have a licence, each braodcaster has to broadcast FOR FREE, party political adverts of 10 to 15 minutes. These are rationed at the rate of one per every 50 candidates standing at each General election.

Additionally, wherever a candidate is interviewed, ALL other candidates and their parties must be recited before the close of the piece., hence if there is a by-election in a seat, and it is being hotly contested by the main Labour, Liberal and Conservative candidates, the programme must also state, at the end "Also standing are Joe Smith for the Green Chicken Alliance and Lord Sutch for the Monster Raving Loony Party." no matter how ludicrous they might seem (and yes, they are both actual real British Political Parties).

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


The Supreme Court likewise stopped acting as a Constitutional Court during the Civil War when Lincoln had the Chief Justice temporarily arrested for his outspoken stance in the Press against Lincoln striking down the use of writs of Habeas Corpus for the duration of the war.

Habeas Corpus since the time of the Magna Carter is the most intrinsic basic principle of law that protects the rights of the average citizen.

Lincoln in fact was running a De Facto and not De Jure War Time Military Dictatorship, with both a rump congress that lacked a legal quorum and a Supreme Court that faced military imprisonment and possibly summary execution for defying any Presidential edict.

In reality the Civil War has never ended, and the Southern United States is still carved up into Military Government Districts. The United States abandoned constitutional law for the United States Codes which are nothing but Contract Law that the Military Government is adept at tricking and coercing people into signing either through non-disclosure other forms of fraud or intimidation and coercion.

Nothing done in the United States is even remotely constitutional anymore and in fact the constitution is a legally unenforceable document because it has fallen out of widespread use and fallen out of it for a very long time.

The Supreme Court lacks a military presence of its own to enforce its will and simply puts on a show. The same is true for Congress, Congress impeached Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors and he didn’t go anywhere except back to the Oval Office to keep running the Military Dictatorship.

That would be the Military that has bases in 152 nations throughout the world and runs roughshod over them all with gunboat diplomacy.

There are only three Constitutional Laws you can not murder anyone in cold blood, you can not steal, and you can not commit treason. Everything else is pure wishful thinking on the part of the Corporate and Military Dictatorship that functions as a De Facto Wartime Government and has for over 140 years now.

The Supreme Court could not stop it when it was going down, and they sure can’t stop it now.

It would take a new Constitutional Convention and a New Constitution being ratified by all fifty states to restore the Republic to legal governance and the reality is that the United States has become some a multi-cultural and varied landscape of opposing ideologies that there is no chance a new Constitution could honestly be agreed upon and ratified by all fifty states.

Like it or not, deny it or not, we live under a corporate military dictatorship with our money controlled by foreign sources.

While many people will look for ways to justify it, tolerate it and accept it, I am not one of those people, never have been, never will.

Thanks.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I am unclear why you believe a re-writing of the Constitution is the answer. What would be wrong with simply enforcing the Constitution as is? The 14th and other Amendments can and in all likelihood should be repealed, those that come after the Bill of Rights, with the exception of the suffrage Amendment for women, are largely needless.

That there has been blatant usurpation's in the U.S. seems to be self evident. That We the People still hold the inherent political power is also self evident. That far too many of the people have abdicated this power is also evident.

This notion that we are somehow slaves to power that was legislated long ago, can only have power as long as people are willing to grant that power. No one can be made a slave without some form of agreement on part of the one who becomes a slave. Even the dreaded Dred Scott case, illustrates the power of what one individual can do when they refuse to go into agreement with slavery.

While Mr. Scott ultimately lost that case in a court of law, the notoriety he gained from that case led to he and his wife being emancipated, albeit a bizarre turn of events, even so, Dred Scott was a man who refused to agree to slavery and ultimately won his freedom nearly four years prior to the firsts shot fired in the Civil War.

No piece of paper, regardless of how crafty the language may be, can enslave people not willing to be slaves. Some may die fighting for their freedom, but no person who cherishes freedom will ever agree to slavery. There is indeed, great apathy and ignorance in today's culture, but there is this internet and there is a growing movement of people willing to learn how these usurpation's began, and how they can extricate themselves from the trap of "legal entities".

That said, this ignorance will never evolve into knowledge while pointless distractions such as declaring Citizens United a criminal act and "bad" for the country continue. Corporations can not control us without our agreement and insisting that SCOTUS somehow empowered corporations even further only further diminishes the personal power those people have who insist upon viewing this decision as such. Blame is irrelevant, fixing the problem will not happen by affixing blame, it will happen by a willingness to exercise our inherent political power.

Originally posted by David9176
ANY corporation....ANY international corporation, ANY CHINESE corporation can now blackmail/buy off/destroy any politician to do their bidding. No man, woman, nor UNION will ever be able to compete with the money they have.

Dave are you STILL ranting about this?

I want you to tell me how McCain/Feingold HELPED AMERICA for the 9 years it was enacted without challenge?

You CAN'T tell me. You can't prove a negative.

I know how McCain/Feingold HURT AMERICA — it prevented us, the grassroots activists, the non-profit organizations, from running issue-oriented advertising AGAINST a candidate in the last 60 days before a general election.

That is to say, negative campaigning against a candidate was banned in the final two months before a general election — the period of time when voters are most likely to change their minds and switch their votes based on negative advertising.

This was the worst case of anti-free-speech legislation that I've seen in my life.

I opposed McCain/Feingold when it was first proposed, and I rejoiced when the U.S. Supreme Court finally struck it down. A blow for freedom.

As for Chinese Corporations influencing American elections, I want to ask you if you were old enough to understand current events during the Clinton Administration?

Because the Clinton Administration PROVED that Communist China pulls our strings much more directly than by influencing elections. Communist China goes straight to the top and pays off Presidents and Vice Presidents DIRECTLY. Clinton and Gore were accepting Chinese pay offs, as was the Democrat National Committee.

Lot of dirty dealing under Clinton, but it wasn't corporations influencing our government, it was the Communist Chinese government itself.

— Doc Velocity






[edit on 1/27/2010 by Doc Velocity]

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


For one simple reason the Union was held together at gun point through violence and not democracy.

It is still held together through gun point and not democracy. These boards are full of people, citizens who object to many of the laws that have been illegally passed.

At the point that the South wanted to leave because the North was not following the Constitution and wanted to amend it unlawfully then clearly a new agreement needed made, an agreement that in fact could not be made, so violence was employed and might makes right was employed not the actual will of the people.

The military industrial complex was born out of the Civil War, the Corporate Citizen was born out of the Civil War and the forerunner for the modern enslaving Federal Reserve and Lincoln's use of the Greenback Dollar attached to nothing of wealth but simply an instrument of debt attached to a promise to pay was born out of the Civil War.

The original constitution could never be ratified at this stage in time as it allowed for slavery and women having no rights.

So that can't even be used as a starting point.

The nation will not survive in its present form, it is simply to diverse and to fractured and held together through the largest police and prison apparatus in the world.

The Union should in fact be disolved, the illegal debt that the Military Industrial Complex and the Banks have saddled us with should be renegged upon, and a number of new countries made up of like minded states where people can reach a majority consensus to come up with constitutions that will allow them to honestly self governed would be the way to go, with any citizen of any state having a predetermined period to move to the new country that best suited their lifestyle and a gaurantee that they could emigrate into it during that period.

That way everyone could have a country that worked for them, instead of everyone having to work to try to fit into a country that insists citizens conform to it or risk violence and prison for not doing so.

The system is totally broke it can't be fixed, too much water under the bridge to many self defeating ellements at work throughout the land from special interests that each want a greater degree of acceptance and power than they can attain.

Let there be a seperate nation for each special interest, and see how special they feel when they actually have to pay for that special interest all on their own instead of everyone else having to lower the bar and pay for it for them.

The nation is broke financially, morally and legally, it's all over but the shouting, and it has been for a long time.

We all live in increasing states of fear, fear imposed on us by the government that is no way for people to live.

People deserve a better life, and a more honest system.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


It is not true that the Constitution "allowed for slavery and women having no rights". The Constitution makes no distinction at all about who doesn't have rights and acknowledges that all people have rights. While the "three-fifths" compromise will always remain a shameful black mark upon that Constitution it was worded in such a way that certainly did not "allow for slaves" but merely makes mention of "all other persons" and since the passage of the 13th Amendment, this compromise has been rendered moot.

The 14th Amendment, on the other hand, is a great problem and can and should be repealed, and no re-writing of the original document is required. The "all other persons" compromise in terms of apportionment need not be given any attention as it is purposely ambiguous enough to have no meaning today. It was unfortunate indeed, that our Founders could not find the temerity to stand strong and insist then that slavery was a deal breaker and simply not allow into the Union those states that insisted on relying upon slavery for an economy. That unfortunate circumstance, however, does not mean the document as it stands today can't be used to form the more perfect union you speak of.