Sovereignty of these United States

[TheStatutoryApe]

Defining who is legitimate in guiding others and who isn't is a status issue. The core question is whether you think that autonomy should be respected when people are acting unreasonably and irrationally, especially when they put themselves or others directly in danger. As long as you're capable of reasoning with people, it is reasonable to do that instead of intervening. When they refuse to reason back, do they have a right to pursue activities that are destructive to themselves or others? To a certain degree, yes, but once it can be established that they are incapable of reasoning or they are directly harming themselves or others, don't you think intervention is required? Or do you recognize them as being sovereign to do harm without providing and defending reason?

The federal government is allowed to intervene in state issues when it can show a 'compelling interest' and only to such a degree as is absolutely necessary to rectify the issue. Typically though the state is considered to be made up primarily of competent individuals who can recognize an untenable situation and enact measures to rectify the issue. The federal government need not step in unless the situation is entirely out of hand. Consider the relationship between parent and child. An adult child is free to its own devices. Parents may advise but they have no right to step in until such time as the child has shown themselves to be an eminent danger to their self. Otherwise the child is considered competent enough to make its own decisions and deal with its own mistakes.

I do not believe that the intention of the constitution was to defend the rights of state governments to abridge the rights and freedoms of individuals according to collective sovereignty. I don't see how you could possibly insist on that.

Do you believe that it is the intention of the UN to allow the US, or any other country, to abridge the rights and freedoms of its citizens? The UN has strictly outlined procedures for when intervention is allowable and recognizes the sovereignty of nations. It will not impede the right of any national entity to make its own choices and is not allowed to hold any nation to its own standard of decency through force unless absolutely necessary.

Recognition of sovereignty is not consent to allow any manner of atrocity.

Individual is sovereign over personal property. Conflicts between individual authority have to be resolved by laws and courts. Laws and courts are subject to rights of fair and public trial, etc. No state government is allowed to carry out secret trials without explicit charges, due process, etc.

Due Process is found in the 14th Amendment. It also does not define due process. The courts have been interpreting the exact extent of due process for over a century. Even the federal government before the fourteenth amendment was not held to the same standard of due process that we have today. Civilizations evolve.

In other words, some people were afraid that federalism would limit their sovereignty to be dictators over others at the state level?

Nor is recognition of sovereignty consent to allow dictatorship.
Note that political and philosophical forces led to the eventual institution of a nation standard of rights.

Cohesion need not be the motive. It could just have been the limitation of governmental power at the state level in the interest of freedom/republic.

I can look for sources and cite them later if you like (I need some sleep) but it is the historical reasoning that these limitations on states were to form a more cohesive union. Many of them address issues specific to the failure of the Confederate States. Individual states would print bank notes that were more or less valuable depending upon which state you were in and some would not accept any other currency. The states levied variable taxes and tariffs on one another to reduce out of state competition or just to turn a profit. States would invalidate contracts from out of state lenders to free its citizens of their obligation to consideration.

I'm very sorry. I am more of a theorist and a philosopher. You sound like a lawyer trying to approach the language in a way that pushes certain implications and interpretations without putting them on the table explicitly for discussion. I hope you realize that people twist these things in different directions by interpreting in one way or another. My interpretation is that the constitution was designed to promote a democracy of multiple free authorities/powers checking and balancing each others at various levels. That is a republic-oriented interpretation, though. There are many people who attempt to interpret any and all language with assumptions of absolute authority wherever possible. I do not subscribe to that ideology because it is anti-democratic and anti-freedom.

Freedom is not absolute. It is subject to checking and balancing, which is what makes it democratic. Defense and respect for the constitution also means defending the spirit of republic and democracy. The problem is that authoritarianism is not ultimately excludable. It is always possible for people to assert absolute authority of a document or institution by claiming it is a prescription of democracy or republic. This is actually the most successful means of undermining freedom and democracy, because it takes some critical work to first recognize that freedom and democracy are being authoritarianized and, second, you have to figure out a way to re-assert freedom and democracy without reproducing more authoritarianism. It is very tricky and I always get confused trying to figure it out.

I may respond more to this later. Right now I would just like to say that I am referring primarily to historical interpretation. We are in "History & Humanities" discussing the history of constitutional interpretation and its changes over time. Your posts and arguments seem to be applying a modern interpretation of constitutional principle. I am only saying that this sort of interpretation was not always in force. Realizing and understanding the history of the document, its various interpretations, and the context of its creation and amending is important to our modern perspective.

 

[edpell]

I don't even get what the meaning of "union" is except to the extent that it protects again separatist violence.

So in the union of marriage you would oppose all divorce?

 

[edpell]

The better question, imo, is whether it is ever wrong for any force to intervene in the affairs of another when universal rights and freedoms are being abridged. If you believe that some individual(s) have the right to abridge the rights of others, then you would probably defend the sovereignty of their authority to do so. If you believe that no individual(s) have the right to do so in the name of sovereignty or otherwise, you would support the use of power to intervene.

This is a central and important question.

I suppose women's rights but I would not suppose the U.S. Army invading all countries that have Shiria law (with their population of about a billion). I suppose religious freedom but I would not suppose the U.S. Army invading China (with their 1.3 billion people). This is for pragmatic reasons.

If we had a magic wand that would allow the U.S. Army to impose U.S. values on the whole world I would have to wonder which values would those be? The values of the religious or the non religious? The values of the north or the south? the values of the urban or the rural? The values of those who want to nationalize all industries or the values of those who do not want to nationalize all industries? etc, etc...

 

[brainstorm]

The federal government is allowed to intervene in state issues when it can show a 'compelling interest' and only to such a degree as is absolutely necessary to rectify the issue. Typically though the state is considered to be made up primarily of competent individuals who can recognize an untenable situation and enact measures to rectify the issue. The federal government need not step in unless the situation is entirely out of hand. Consider the relationship between parent and child. An adult child is free to its own devices. Parents may advise but they have no right to step in until such time as the child has shown themselves to be an eminent danger to their self. Otherwise the child is considered competent enough to make its own decisions and deal with its own mistakes.

I think we agree on the principle that intervention should only be undertaken as a last resort and more diplomatic/democratic means pursued first. Where we disagree is in viewing collective sovereigns as deserving the same respect as individual sovereigns. The very idea of collective or state sovereignty presumes the right for some individual(s) to be sovereign over others. So it seems hypocritical to me to say that intervention in the right of some individuals to be sovereign over others should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Power checks sovereignty to protect individuals from state/collectivist tyranny.

Do you believe that it is the intention of the UN to allow the US, or any other country, to abridge the rights and freedoms of its citizens?

I think part of what the UN does is to make it very difficult for anyone to intervene in anyone else's business out of ethical concerns without facing a discourse of submission to authority of sovereignty. In other words, the first thing UN agents do is attempt to preserve sovereignty as long as possible as war-avoidance. Cultural relativism and moral relativism are held as reasons that no one should interfere in the affairs of someone else with "a different culture." The fact is that defining cultural differences and boundaries is itself a relativist power-claim, and there is no reason why national-state authorities should be able to define culture for individual citizens and therefore claim special jurisdiction over intervention in their affairs. Granted, any authority should operate in dialogue with the authority of whosever affairs it is intervening in, but this must occur at the individual level, imo.

The UN has strictly outlined procedures for when intervention is allowable and recognizes the sovereignty of nations. It will not impede the right of any national entity to make its own choices and is not allowed to hold any nation to its own standard of decency through force unless absolutely necessary.

This language assumes that collective self-determination is ontologically possible. I dissect collectivist language-claims and always find that collectivism involves some individuals being subjugated to the will or interests of others. A "national-entity" can't make "its own choices" because "it" doesn't exist except as conflicting interests and individuals. Why should individuals be subject to exclusion from interaction with other individuals on the basis of statism? If one individual is defined as having the same nationality as another, she is free to intervene in the other's affairs but if they are defined as having different nationalities, it can be called an act of war? What kind of nonsense is that?

Collectivist action is a different story. If multiple individuals coordinate their actions to exercise oppressive force over others, shouldn't that be checked, regardless of whether the individuals are defined as having the same or different nationality from the people they are attacking?

Recognition of sovereignty is not consent to allow any manner of atrocity.

Maybe not, but it is itself the means to allow the atrocity of discrimination on the basis of national citizenship.

Due Process is found in the 14th Amendment. It also does not define due process. The courts have been interpreting the exact extent of due process for over a century. Even the federal government before the fourteenth amendment was not held to the same standard of due process that we have today. Civilizations evolve.

I'm afraid that informal trial and punishment occur in various forms regularly and pass as everyday affairs. Employers can investigate and punish or fire employees without due process or even explicit notification. Managers just base their decision on one thing and give a different reason for disciplinary action. Look at media scandals. Was Tiger Woods given the privilege of due process or rights of the accused? No, he was simply subject to public humiliation protected by freedom of speech. I'm not arguing against freedom of speech, of course, just pointing out that people still find informal ways of exercising pre-modern power tactics without giving much thought to the fact that they are acting as judge, jury, and disciplinary agent.

Nor is recognition of sovereignty consent to allow dictatorship.
Note that political and philosophical forces led to the eventual institution of a nation standard of rights.

What is sovereignty except a form of dictatorship?

I can look for sources and cite them later if you like (I need some sleep) but it is the historical reasoning that these limitations on states were to form a more cohesive union. Many of them address issues specific to the failure of the Confederate States. Individual states would print bank notes that were more or less valuable depending upon which state you were in and some would not accept any other currency. The states levied variable taxes and tariffs on one another to reduce out of state competition or just to turn a profit. States would invalidate contracts from out of state lenders to free its citizens of their obligation to consideration.

I suppose standardizing currency can be called a form of cohesion. It can also just be called a convenience for market exchanges. Appropriating governmental institutions for business discrimination is corruption, not incohesion. All of these things sound like abuses of power the way you describe them, but I'm sure their are situations in which they would be a lesser evil of necessary evil to check/balance some other act of corruption. It's always handy for one side to point out the ethics abuses of the other as part of a discourse to claim legitimacy and redress. In reality, democracy like war usually involves some level of ethical shortfalls on the part of both sides. The only hope is de-escalation since allowing them to subject each other to political accountability only adds another dimension to the bickering.

I may respond more to this later. Right now I would just like to say that I am referring primarily to historical interpretation. We are in "History & Humanities" discussing the history of constitutional interpretation and its changes over time. Your posts and arguments seem to be applying a modern interpretation of constitutional principle. I am only saying that this sort of interpretation was not always in force. Realizing and understanding the history of the document, its various interpretations, and the context of its creation and amending is important to our modern perspective.

I don't think you have access to any interpretation except through the lens of your current interpretation. You may believe that you can transparently survey different interpretive frameworks as changing through time, but you seem to ignore that to interpret those frameworks, you have to interpret them from your own perspective. I'm willing to discuss reasoning and evidence that one texts exhibits one interpretive framework and another another, but I disagree that you can assume cohesion among everyone living during a particular time of how they interpreted constitutional passages or anything else. If anything is certain about interpretation, it is that there are always conflicts and dissent.

 

[brainstorm]

So in the union of marriage you would oppose all divorce?

I would say that marriage is a statement of commitment by individuals but not a union, per se, although I say this because I'm uncomfortable with what "union" can or should mean. Divorce is indeed an expression of separatism. Practically it allows people to guarantee parental rights and protect their assets against abuse by a person who may no longer take their interest into consideration.

Personally, I had to study the bible for my perspective on divorce. It says that no believer would ever seek divorce out of the commandment of forgiveness. Yet if an unbeliever seeks to divorce a believer, the believer is supposed to forgive their unforgiveness. The reason given is that by forgiving unforgiveness, the believer is supposed to be offering the unbeliever the chance to experience the gift of forgiveness and thus the opportunity to have faith in its power. Complex but nice.

I suppose women's rights but I would not suppose the U.S. Army invading all countries that have Shia law (with their population of about a billion). I suppose religious freedom but I would not suppose the U.S. Army invading China (with their 1.3 billion people). This is for pragmatic reasons.

Is this the same as saying that you would sacrifice a certain number of individual's rights that you believe into protect others? Is damage-control ethically tenable when it willfully allows victimization of innocents? By comparison, would it have been ethical for the military to have allowed the European holocaust of the 1930s-1940s occur without intervention as a means of avoiding creating war-casualties? It can be disturbing, but I sometimes think that this is the lesson of Christianity with "turning the other cheek," i.e. that it is better to suffer at the mercy of an oppressor than oppressing back. On the other hand, if you can intervene in oppression, why wouldn't you except to avoid committing greater violence? These are hard ethical issues without easy answers.

If we had a magic wand that would allow the U.S. Army to impose U.S. values on the whole world I would have to wonder which values would those be? The values of the religious or the non religious? The values of the north or the south? the values of the urban or the rural? The values of those who want to nationalize all industries or the values of those who do not want to nationalize all industries? etc, etc...

This question is easier for me to answer because I believe in Foucaultian truth-power. Truth/morality/culture is relative but only within the regime that defines it as such. Truth-power is the ability or means of commensurating conflicting truths to generate a reasonable victor. It's not that power defines truth, but that truth is its own unique form of power. So, once you recognize that you are situated in a position to apply truth-power and evaluate conflicting values, you can do that - the only problem being that to claim the truth of what you come up with, you have to engage in truth-power negotiations with others who have their own reasoning and conclusions. It basically comes down to the politics of arguing your reasons and truth against others' and vying for power and influence by doing so.

The big issue isn't "whose truth should win" but whether the battle should be fought with truth-power dominating power or social-power dominating truth. Asking, "whose truth should win" presumes social-power should dominate truth. Asserting that the truest truth should win and gain power presumes that truth-power is a legitimate critical discourse whose outcome is valid insofar as it is a truer truth than whatever truth is invalidated by it. Of course, this also presumes that truth-claims are in good faith and not simply will to social power disguised as truth-claims in the interest of adding legitimacy to social power. Of course, true truth is the ultimate legitimacy, but it can only be truly legitimate when it isn't merely a derivation of social-prerogative.

 

[mheslep]

As I am reading "The Real Lincoln" by DiLorenzo now. I will use that for references.

Hamilton page 89 from "The Federalist Papers" (number 81) he states

"It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of any individual without its consent. This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union."

Marshall page 90 a state can not be "called before the bar of the Federal court."

Webster page 90 'said in 1851 "if the Northern states refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other side."

Adams page 87-88 a quote from a speech in 1839 it is long so I will quote only a small part "Then will be the time for reverting to the precedencts which occurred at the formation and adpotion of the Constitution, to form again a more prefect Union by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separate parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center."

Jefferson page 86 quoting DiLorenzo "Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, was a strong supporter of the Union, but he nevertheless defended the right of any state to secede from it."

from the back page of the book DiLorenzi is professor of economics in the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Maryland. Specializing in economic history and political economy, he is the author of eleven books and is widely published in academic journals and such national pubilcations as The Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest, USA Today, National Review, and Barron's.

edpell, in your first mention of the sovereignty issue, I had the impression you meant those founders were stating that the US states were sovereign over the US Federal government in all cases. Clearly this is not the case. For the cases detailed in the Constitution, e.g. who runs the Post Office and so on, the Federal government is sovereign. None of the quotes above run counter to that idea. The disagreements stem for those cases not so clearly spelled out in the constitution.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

This language assumes that collective self-determination is ontologically possible. I dissect collectivist language-claims and always find that collectivism involves some individuals being subjugated to the will or interests of others. A "national-entity" can't make "its own choices" because "it" doesn't exist except as conflicting interests and individuals. Why should individuals be subject to exclusion from interaction with other individuals on the basis of statism? If one individual is defined as having the same nationality as another, she is free to intervene in the other's affairs but if they are defined as having different nationalities, it can be called an act of war? What kind of nonsense is that?

I see this not as ontological claims but practical claims. Intervention into 'sovereign' relationships carries with it the danger of imposing only an alternate form of oppression and 'dictatorship'. Even with only the best of intentions and the most careful consideration any intervention at all may only cause strife and suffering either directly or indirectly. Regardless of ontological correctness the perception of collective will is rather thoroughly ingrained and presents issues for practical consideration.

What is sovereignty except a form of dictatorship?

I believe that even at its most broad interpretation "dictatorship" is defined as the rule of the minority over the majority. Sovereignty in itself does not equate to this.

I suppose standardizing currency can be called a form of cohesion. It can also just be called a convenience for market exchanges. Appropriating governmental institutions for business discrimination is corruption, not incohesion. All of these things sound like abuses of power the way you describe them, but I'm sure their are situations in which they would be a lesser evil of necessary evil to check/balance some other act of corruption. It's always handy for one side to point out the ethics abuses of the other as part of a discourse to claim legitimacy and redress. In reality, democracy like war usually involves some level of ethical shortfalls on the part of both sides. The only hope is de-escalation since allowing them to subject each other to political accountability only adds another dimension to the bickering.

Corruption leads to incohesion. Being in a depressed community and traveling to another to find resources only to find that the depression of my community has led to my currency being worth even less anywhere else creates disparity and incohesion. Doing business with persons in another community only to find that that community has decided I am owed no consideration and will use force to prevent me from recuperation of my losses creates incohesion. "To form a more perfect union" one may see fit to mitigate these issues.

I don't think you have access to any interpretation except through the lens of your current interpretation. You may believe that you can transparently survey different interpretive frameworks as changing through time, but you seem to ignore that to interpret those frameworks, you have to interpret them from your own perspective. I'm willing to discuss reasoning and evidence that one texts exhibits one interpretive framework and another another, but I disagree that you can assume cohesion among everyone living during a particular time of how they interpreted constitutional passages or anything else. If anything is certain about interpretation, it is that there are always conflicts and dissent.

I am referring primarily to interpretation by the court. There has rarely been a strong consensus of interpretation of the constitution but it is the function of the Supreme Court to make such determinations and their interpretation affects the practical application of the law. For a historical and legal perspective their interpretations are authoritative. I am sure that my own biases of perception may colour my presentation of those interpretations to some degree or another but I assume an ability on the part of readers to filter any bias and glean useful information for discussion from my communications.