[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“What is the role, if any, of the Federal Government in enforcing individual Civil Rights?”
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One of the arguments early on the creation of the US was whether or not rights/liberty are inherent, or natural (God given if you like). With that in mind, there was a debate about whether or not the Constitution should enumerate rights of the individual, or if it could be a document, and we could have a government, that from the start assumed all rights, and limited a few: in other words, is the Constitution a limiting document (defining the limits on our rights) or is it a positive document defining our rights. Well, the former group won the argument, and the constitution sans the amendments, was written to describe the limits of our rights, and the limits of government… natural rights are assumed.
But it took about no time for people (like Adams) to start passing things like the Alien and Sedition Acts… and those realities moved people back to the position that we needed a positive document like the Bill of Rights to ensure and enumerate specific rights… Does that now mean if it’s not enumerated, it’s not a right?
It sure gets treated like that a lot now…
But I think we can for the most part agree that the US government was setup with the individual, not the group, as the unit, and the post Civil War amendments I think make it very clear that the Federal Government has the duty to step into protect the rights of the individual from the abuses of other individuals or groups.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Did it overstep it’s bounds in the past? (e.g. Ike sending in Paratroopers to enforce Federal Law).
Is this a “local” issue?
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One issue is that when the Constitution was written, and really until post-reconstruction we were THESE UNITED STATES of America not The United States. The country really was a Federation of individual States more than a single nation. So when we think about what the federal government might do now, or in recent history, like send in national troops, while that probably wouldn’t have occurred to the founders (our national Army and Navy were disbanded right after the treaty of Paris), I think they would have found it reasonable and expected that the “National Will” would have been projected into States violating such rights by a coalition of State Armies or militias.
I don’t think the Federal Government can overstep its bounds in protecting the individual’s rights from the tyrany of the group.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Do you think that the Constitution would have eventually “taken care of” the basic rights that were being denied to women and minorities?
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It did, so to speak. Are you thinking about the amendments as not the “Constitution taking care of” these things? Because those are now part of the Constitution…
…but there never was a Civil Rights Amendment. That’s where the interpretative power of the Judiciary comes in. If we could go back in time, and but a 21st Century Supreme Court in Power in 1800, the same case that was made in the last century, that everything that White Men got in the Constitution actually applies to all, could have pretty easily been applied. The argument didn’t use new facts.
That is part of what happens when you have a document that uses such broad language however, and was originally crafted by the people who believed in Natural Rights, and a document that limited government, rather than visa versa.