Abel Upshur: States Are In Charge of Feds SCOTUS Hearing; Marriage Case is an Outcry

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Brion McClanahan has an essay that is posted at The American Conservative Magazine today.   In his essay “Is Secession Legal,” at one point in here, he gets to a great historical document that has not even been introduced on this show.  It is Abel Upshur’s A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government.  Upshur wrote this in response to the lunatic Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.  The fact that this guy ever had a vote on the high court is a testament to how bungled and screwed up Article III of the Constitution was and remains. Check out the rest in today’s transcript…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Brion McClanahan has an essay that is posted at The American Conservative Magazine today.  McClanahan is the author of Forgotten Conservatives in American History, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes, and many other books, some of them available at the Founders Tradin’ Post autographed by the author.  In his essay “Is Secession Legal,” at one point in here, he gets to a great historical document that has not even been introduced on this show, although I have the text version that we’ll post.  It is Abel Upshur’s A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government.  Upshur wrote this in response to the lunatic Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.  The fact that this guy ever had a vote on the high court is a testament to how bungled and screwed up Article III of the Constitution was and remains. Here’s what Upshur wrote in part about the states’ role in the government and whether or not they can opt out:

[reading]

The checking and controlling influences which afford safety to public liberty, are not to be found in the government itself. [Mike: By the way, he is channeling John Taylor of Caroline’s definition of sovereignty in that first sentence, which I have written, talked about. It’s in What Lincoln Killed: Episode I. It is the republican principle.] The people cannot always protect themselves against their rulers; if they could, no free government, in past times, would have been overthrown. Power and patronage cannot easily be so limited and defined, as to rob them of their corrupting influences over the public mind. It is truly and wisely remarked by the Federalist, that a “power over a man’s subsistence is a power of his will.” As little as possible of this power should be entrusted to the federal government, and even that little should be watched by a power authorized and competent to arrest its abuses. That power can be found only in the states. In this consists the great superiority of the federative system over every other. In that system, the federal government is responsible, not directly to the people en masse, [Mike: In other words, we don’t have a direct election of presidents for a reason] but to the people in their character of distinct political corporations. However easy it may be to steal power from the people, governments do not so readily yield it to one another. The confederated states confer on their common government only such power as they themselves cannot separately exercise, or such as can be better exercised by that government. They have, therefore, an equal interest, to give it power enough, and to prevent it from assuming too much. In their hands the power of interposition is attended with no danger; it may be safely lodged where there is no interest to abuse it.

[end reading]

Mike:  In other words, the states aren’t just counties.  They’re not just corporations that the federal government created and can order about and rain holy havoc and terror on.  AG, did you see that the SCOTUS is going to hear a review of the California amendment to their constitution to outlaw homosexual marriage?  You saw that, right?

AG:  Yeah.  They’re hearing two cases involving it.

Mike:  The big one is going to be the one from California.  This is the people of California acting in a republican manner, choosing to amend their own constitution in a manner in which they think may affect their public safety and happiness.  This is their right.  There is nothing in the federal Constitution about the act of marriage that says they cannot do this.  Why in Dude’s holy name is the Supreme Court of the federal government of the United States even going to hear this case?  That’s an outrage in and of itself.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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