re: #94 ernie1241

Your “assertion” is the predicate which you ask us to believe and that unproven predicate is then used to shape the discussion. It is not “crazy” to intuit the obvious meaning, logic, and pattern of your thoughts.

If you do not require that we accept your “assertion” — then what are we arguing about? I note, for the record, that you don’t preface your comments with something like “in my opinion”, or “based upon what I know” etc. etc. Instead, you make bold declarations and use innuendo to suggest that persons with different understandings are somehow suspect.

Again — for example: It is entirely reasonable for someone to ask questions such as:

1. WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF FEDERAL POWER?
2. WHAT DOES OUR CONSTITUTION PERMIT AND FORBID?
3. HOW DOES #1 and #2 IMPACT PROPOSED CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION?

Then, after those questions are answered, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that a particular public policy proposal VIOLATES the principles and values inherent in our Constitution — EVEN IF the proposal is otherwise a commendable good-faith effort to focus our attention on some problem which everyone agrees needs to be addressed.

However, it is NOT reasonable or fair-minded to state (as you have done) that certain public policy ideas or philosophical positions regarding federal-state relations should be considered illegitimate simply because they call for a recognition of limits to federal power.

Put another way: in a free society, we explicitly recognize that there are always legitimate, honorable, competing, alternative ideas for addressing our public policy controversies. We do not subscribe to authoritarian or totalitarian mindsets which declare that there is always ONLY ONE correct interpretation of whatever problem we confront and always ONLY ONE correct policy option to choose. Furthermore, we do not subscribe to the idea that critics and opponents are, by definition, dishonorable or motivated by malice — simply because they have a different understanding of our Constitution, our laws, or our history.

You may think this not a “rational” distinction to make. So be it.

National Review has run two good articles on the points I bolded, and those found that the Civil Rights acts were with the Constitution’s limits. Given the grip that segregation had on the South, only laws that uprooted it entirely could even begin to right its wrongs.

As for the paragraph I italicized ; Obdicut did not say any such thing and to say he did is prevarication.