Sovereignty SOLVES Immigration Problems

Either States Should Use It, Or Shut Up About Obama’s Amnesty

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Let’s go to Chapter 13 “Sovereignty.”  Every American ought to be forced to read this chapter of New Views of the Constitution of the United States.  What does sovereignty mean?  You heard my explanation last hour.  Let’s go back to the day of the Constitution when it was first ratified and in effect.  What did the men that had to live under it say sovereignty meant?  This is important.” Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  John Taylor of Caroline, the book New Views of the Constitution of the United States — by the way, the John Taylor of Caroline County American Statesman book, this has to be a miracle.  There are still a few copies of the hardback with the gold embossed spine.  It is a beautiful cloth-bound, spine-embossed edition of my book, John Taylor of Caroline County American Statesman, which has his speeches — and one of them I’m about to read part of it to you — in the book.  The paperback will be available with the Founding Father Films paperback trilogy set, which makes a great gift any time of the year.  That’ll be available next week.  There are still a couple of hardback copies left if you’re interested.  Find them in the Founders Tradin’ Post.

Let’s go to Chapter 13 “Sovereignty.”  Every American ought to be forced to read this chapter of New Views of the Constitution of the United States.  I tell you what, I have the digital form of this.  I will publish it in addition, as a download, to the John Taylor of Caroline County American Statesman book.  I can’t get to it right now but I will get to it.

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What does sovereignty mean?  You heard my explanation last hour.  Let’s go back to the day of the Constitution when it was first ratified and in effect.  What did the men that had to live under it say sovereignty meant?  This is important.  If sovereignty meant something then, it would mean the same thing now.  A term like sovereignty doesn’t change.  It’s not elastic like some of you think the term marriage is.  That’s not elastic either.

[reading]

The appellation adopted by the declaration of independence, was, “The United States of America.” The first confederation declares, that the style of this confederacy shall be, “The United States of America.” And the union of 1787, ordains and establishes the constitution for “The United States of America.” The three instruments, by adhering to the same style, co-extensively affirmed the separate sovereignties of these states. It was a style proper to describe a confederacy of independent states, and improper for describing a consolidated nation. If neither the declaration of independence nor the confederation of 1777, created an American nation, or a concentrated sovereignty, by this style, the conclusion is inevitable, that the constitution was not intended to produce such consequences by the same style. The word America is used to designate the quarter of the globe in which the recited states were established, and not to designate a nation of Americans. [Mike: We could use that repeated, couldn’t we?] A league or union of the kingdoms of Europe for limited objects, distinctly reciting the name of each kingdom, would not have created a consolidated nation of Europeans. Suppose in such a union, the phrase, “We, the people of the united kingdoms of Europe,” had been used, would it have destroyed the several sovereignties uniting for special purposes, and have consolidated them into one kingdom? Had these kingdoms conferred upon their federal representatives limited powers, and reserved all the powers not conferred, would they have had no remedy, had their federal representatives assumed the supreme power of abridging the powers reserved, and extending those conferred? If the word state does not intrinsically imply sovereign power, there was no word which we could use better calculated for that purpose. [Mike: Where’s my highlighter? I’m going to highlight that.] Will the words empire or kingdom be considered as of higher authority, because they may exclude a people as a political association, which the word state may comprise?

The deputation and reservation are both bottomed upon the sovereignty of the states, and must both fall or both stand with that principle. If each state, or the people of each state, did not possess a separate sovereignty, they had no right to convey or retain powers. If they had a right both to convey and to retain powers, it could only be in virtue of state sovereignty. Admitting the utmost which can be asked, and more than ought to be conceded, by supposing that these sovereignties, in conveying limited powers to the federal government, conveyed also a portion of sovereignty, it must also be allowed, that by retaining powers, they retained also a portion of sovereignty. If sovereignty was attached to the ceded powers, it was also attached to the powers not ceded, because all or none of the powers of the states must have proceeded from this principle. In this observation, no use is made of the power reserved to the states to amend the federal form of government, by which a positive sovereignty is retained to the states over that government, subversive of the doctrine, that the constitution bestows a sovereignty upon it over the states. [Mike: He says “subversive of the doctrine.” In other words, the two can’t exist in the same sphere.] But a delegation of limited powers, being an act of sovereignty, could not be a renunciation of the sovereignty attached to the powers not delegated. A power to resume the limited delegation, was the strongest expression of sovereignty, and rejects the idea, that the delegated authority may positively or constructively subject the sovereign power to its own will; that no sovereignty may destroy an actual sovereignty. By this power of amendment, the states may re-establish the confederation of 1777, and thus unquestionably revive their separate sovereignties said to be extinct; because they are positively asserted by that confederation. If it is not absurd, it is yet a new idea, that a dead sovereignty contains an inherent power to revive itself whenever it pleases.

[end reading]

Mike:  Let’s just review this real quick, just to sum up what you just heard.  If we read Article V of the Constitution, we read how it can be amended.  We learn that Congress can propose an amendment and it’s got to go to the states for ratification.  People think that’s just a formality.  No, it’s not a formality.  That’s not a formality at all.  That is an admission that the states brought forth the federal government.  The states control it.  It acts on their behalf.  If the powers that were conferred are going to be amended, changed, or altered, which is what the amendment does, then the sovereign powers, the parties that granted the powers to be used in the first place, they have to concur.  They have to approve.  They must lend it their approbation.  This is undeniable.  There is no doctrine on Earth that can say anything that is counter to that.

I’m going to give you the best example that I can of this that all of you know.  Every single one of you knows this.  Let’s talk about the 17^th Amendment for just a moment.  We all know that the Constitution as originally framed said that the states will choose the senators.  If Congress wanted to alter this and say: We’re tired of the states sending us bad senators.  We want to have elections for senators.  Could they do it?  For all you geniuses out there screaming and hollering right now, [mocking] “I don’t know why you’re reading this and boring me with all this.”  Answer the question.  Could they do it?  No, they couldn’t do it.  They knew that they couldn’t do it.  So what did they have to do?  They had to go and amend the document that granted them power.  They had to go and amend the Constitution.

Who can amend the Constitution?  Congress can propose all day long.  Three-quarters of the states have to ratify.  What does a ratification mean?  That means we accept the terms and conditions.  We’re granting you a new authority.  We’re altering the deal, like Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back: I am altering the deal.  Pray I don’t alter it any further.  How could the same states then that have to be consulted when the Constitution needed amending in 1915 via the 17^th Amendment, and then the ten amendments that came after that, the mode of ratification is still the same.  Nothing has altered it and nothing can alter it.  What is that an admission of?  That is an admission that the states are sovereign.

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One more doctrine here that you heard Taylor of Caroline expound.  If the sovereign states conferred a power upon the federal government, let’s just say the power of uniform rule of naturalization, if they conferred that power, they had the sovereignty then to confer it.  A power to confer is a power to revoke.  Let me repeat, a power to confer is a power to revoke.  If you want this issue of immigration ripped from the clutches — I don’t think the federal government has entire power over this anyway.  I don’t think that power was ever conceded.  Only the power of naturalization was conceded.  The power over legal alien friends was never conceded, ever.  It’s been assumed and implied but never conceded.

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If the states want to reclaim that power, then they just revoke it, either by amendment or convention to produce an amendment, or by convention to produce a new federation, a new union, a new Constitution, a new agreement.  In other words, the states are still in the driver’s seat.  They are still the sovereign entities to the compact that make up what gives it power.  In other words, the feds can’t just create their own — they do it all the time.  We allow this.  We should either A, stop whining about it and just accept that that’s the way it is, move on, and all work on becoming saints and getting through the narrow gate.  Or, B, do something about it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript