Answer for Monday, April 7, 2014

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Congratulations to Monday’s Winner:

Scott Smith

“Our Constitution Rocks” Book Winner & Raffle Entry Winner!   

Monday’s Question Was:

In her essay on Federalist 31, Constituting America Founder and Co-chair Janine Turner highlights several quotes from Alexander Hamilton. What is the first Hamilton quote Janine cites?

Extra credit: add your thoughts on how this quote is relevant today!

Monday’s Answer Was:

“I repeat here what I have observed in substance in another place, that all observations, founded upon the danger of usurpation, ought to be referred to the composition and structure of the government, not to the nature and extent of its powers. The state governments, by their original constitution, are invested with complete sovereignty.”

And thank you to Scott for his thoughts on how this quote is relevant today:

Clearly, state powers are severely misunderstood even by those in the liberty movement. The framers clearly intended that the states be completely sovereign. The 10th amendment reinforces this idea. In other words, if a state wants universal healthcare, it can implement such a plan as did Massachusetts while Mitt Romney was the Governor; however and at the same time, if a state does not want such a plan, no force on earth can make the state implement one. Because a state is sovereign, it makes its own decisions. It is a party to the United States by election, not by force of conquest. Therefore, a state may, in fact, withdraw from the Union if it deems that course of action to be in its best interests.

Further implications in state sovereignty include the fact that if the 17th amendment had not been ratified, a good number of draconian laws would have been much less likely to have passed; and a number of Federal Bureaucracies never would have been created. Consequently, the 10th amendment was weakened by the ratification of the 17th amendment, and we now have a nightmare of a national government and the nanny state being watched over by Big Brother.

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