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Domestic enemy of the Constitution?
- Thread starter DadSmith
- Start date
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What if someone was a domestic enemy of the government for defending the constitution? Wrap your think goo around that.
I don't think there is much to consider here, but I understand the question. WE do not get to decide what is "constitutional" or not. There is a system in place of elected officials, a separation of powers to give the courts and especially the Supreme Court the final say. That is lawful authority the "people" do not possess.
Once Joe Bob from Podunk USA decides he's going against the man with violence to defend the Constitution - congratulations! Joe Bob just became a domestic enemy, or a criminal, or a terrorist.
Joe Bob has power to work for a candidate, to exercise his 1st amendment right to speak out against something the man is doing, to donate money, to buy ads, etc etc etc. But Joe Bob cannot defend the Constitution with force and remain within the law at the same time.
This goes back to my issue of not following lawful orders, mostly for the military. If I am an active member of the armed forces and, during a combat situation, given an order that I deem unlawful I must, in good conscience, refuse to follow that order. This will then immediately bring me into a court martial hearing where I will be allowed to explain how I determined the unlawfulness of the order in question. It will then be for the court to decide whether or not the order was lawful, not me. I will be placed in legal jeopardy until the court rules that the order was unlawful. Until the court does that I am a charged criminal.
Just my opinion.
Regards,
Doug
Guys I'm still at a loss of what a domestic enemy of the Constitution is. It doesn't say enemy of the Government it says Constitution. The government is not the constitution. Would it be an enemy of the ideals set forth in the constitution?
The Alien and Sedition Acts [ushistory.org]
The problem is adherent to the "ideals set forth in the Constitution" is in the eye of the beholder. Most of us here probably would agree that the 2A means the Feds have 0 authority to pass any gun infringing law. But there are others that sincerely believe they are right in their belief that the 2A only applies to those in the National Guard or some such. In their eyes, we're probably enemies of the Constitution.
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I wouldn't go nearly that far with Crenshaw. If you've listened to a lot of his interviews he's always had that twinge in him. His justification for it is that he represents his constituents, not the party, and his constituents want X, Y, or Z thing and his district includes a large swath of Houston. Everyone knows how lefty the giant cities in TX are getting. They only just recently flipped from being solid blue.
So...I don't like all of Crenshaw's positions, but I feel he's far less of a snake than most of them. I wouldn't vote for him the primary if given the chance, but I wouldn't vote for AOC in his place either... I also feel that he does more to damage the left than he does the right, and these days, that's a start.
The ideals set forth in the constitution is not the constitution either. You can make the case that those ideals are the spirit of the law. And I believed they are. But then when you go to enforce the spirit of the law apart from the law itself, you’re trodding on the subjective ground of men (figuratively). But we’re supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of men.
Ah very good point. I'll think on that awhile.
The Constitution- constitutes the government (words mean things), that is, defines what it is, what it may and may not do and how the people who work within it are chosen.
To protect and defend the Constitution is to protect and defend the system set up by the Constitution and the government constituted thereby. Clearly, this means that when people try to overthrow or violently rebel against the duly constituted government, "protect and defend" means to stop those people from doing that regardless of where they are from (foreign or domestic).
It is fair, at the philosophical level, to include attempting to influence the government towards what you believe the Constitution means through the means set forth in the Constitution, but that is probably not what the oath was aimed at.
...it is does not mean to decide for oneself what you think the Constitution really means, and to used armed rebellion, a/k/a extra-constitutional means, to try to advance your ideas...that would make the people doing that people who need to be defended against...enemies foreign or domestic.
To protect and defend the Constitution is to protect and defend the system set up by the Constitution and the government constituted thereby. Clearly, this means that when people try to overthrow or violently rebel against the duly constituted government, "protect and defend" means to stop those people from doing that regardless of where they are from (foreign or domestic).
It is fair, at the philosophical level, to include attempting to influence the government towards what you believe the Constitution means through the means set forth in the Constitution, but that is probably not what the oath was aimed at.
...it is does not mean to decide for oneself what you think the Constitution really means, and to used armed rebellion, a/k/a extra-constitutional means, to try to advance your ideas...that would make the people doing that people who need to be defended against...enemies foreign or domestic.
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The founders of this nation began armed insurrection against their lawful government, the British Crown. As British subjects, the founding fathers from Sam Adams all the way to George Washington were all insurrectionists. So I don't see insurrection alone being a suitable criteria for condemnation. Not when 99% of what our current government is doing is outside and against the Constitution that it is supposed to obey. It's not insurrection when you take up arms against those who are perverting our form of government from within and making the government "...destructive of the ends for which it was created".
You're right, however, about people in government not having the stones to throw down and refuse orders on the grounds that those orders are unlawful. Every time the police commit Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, they are the felons. But they always use the (illegitimate) Nuremberg Defense: "I am just following orders". So remember that when they start doing large numbers of Red Flag confiscations and use that old Nazi excuse about orders.
Americans tend to forget that we are the masters, and government officials & other employees are the servants.
They become domestic enemies of the Constitution when they knowingly and deliberately create, cosponsor, and pass or sign bills that are repugnant to the Constitution. Bills which, if Stare Decisis is correctly applied, are VOID from the word 'Go' because of Marbury v. Madison.
The example you gave doesn't really reconcile with the idea of "domestic enemies of the Constitution." If some one "creates, co-sponsors, and pass or sign bills," then they are following the method set forth by the constitution. Let me put it another way. If the our elected officials passed a law making our republic a dictatorship, in the way laws are typically passed, then it's law, and Constitutional. Despite the act being at odds with the spirit of the founds, it would be quite constitutional to do so. There's nothing that can't be done under the form of government we live, hence why we should always be vigilant.
Doug, maybe I'm picking nits here, but for a Libertarian you sure have a funny way of showing it. If Joe Bob is put in the position of defending himself with force from the government's unlawful / unconstitutional initiation of force, that's not terrorism. One man's terrorist, after all, is another man's freedom fighter. If the government becomes criminal in and of itself (i.e., Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia), the citizen is not only justified in resisting it by force of arms but in fact is DUTY-BOUND to do so!
I believe that the current and deplorable state of liberty in America is the direct result of citizens not adhering to their duty as masters in the citizen-government pecking order. People should be holding the government accountable but they do not because their sense of liberty has become so shallow & pale as to be a mere shadow of what it ought to be.
Because citizens in a constitutionally limited Republic are the sovereigns, they have the ultimate power of whether to consent or not.
(Don't mistake this last statement to refer to the 'sovereign citizen movement'; those nutters aren't what I referring to.)
...well.....the Constitution also sets forth the institutions of government and how the people who serve in them are selected, so such a law, while using the process set forth in the Constitution, would be substantively unconstitutional (the Constitution and the laws made in conformance therewith shall be the supreme law of the law...). Of course, the Constitution also set up a system to put checks on what the legislature including the executive (veto) and the courts (declaring laws unconstitutional). Passing a law, use the process in the Constitution, that is ultimately found to be unconstitutional does not make one a "enemy of the constitution" as there are different philosophies about what the Constitution means.
And I don't know about the OP- no clue- but when topics like this come up, I just can't help feeling like some people are just looking for someone to tell them that they can start "voting from the rooftops".....not that they would, mind you, but III%er t-shirt sales will rise nonetheless...seeing as how you don't really have to prove anything to make the claim.
You seem to forget that it is inherently unlawful to alter our FORM of government even if they conform to the usual conventions of passing legislation. To amend the statutes (US Code) using Article 1 is not the same thing as passing an Amendment using Article 5. An article 1 bill cannot amend the Constitution and any bill that pretends to do so is unlawful. Even altering our form of government itself from a constitutional Republic is treason and a violation of the Oaths that these officials take.
I normally dont post here, tbh, because so much of what I've seen posted here in the past shows a glaring and fundamental lack of understanding of the Constitution, how its processes are supposed to work, and what is lawful under it.
This nation is sunk if more people don't get a crash course in the Constitution and get a proper grasp. If people don't do that, then how can they effectively resist the depredations upon the Constitution by our domestic enemies? And just so I am clear: every politician that knowingly violates their Oath of office to subvert the Constitution are traitors. EACH AND EVERY ONE.
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Well.....they talk about hating it...
ROFL!! YEAH!! TALK, TALK, TALK!! (I should know, I once had a passing dalliance with libertarianism but I moved on)
