MaxedOutMama

My hope lies in a transformation of the left to a party that rejects nihilism, distrust of the Constitutional process, post-modernism, intolerance in the name of tolerance, preferring pointless demonstrations while opposing use of force, averting their eyes to fact, ignorance, dogmatic secularism, prejudice toward the faithful, paternalism, isolationism--and, most crucially, anti-Americanism. What's the timeline for all that?

SC&A think Boomr's seeking a middle ground. Boomr does turn down the rhetoric and avoids demonization. But discriminating against the faithful isn't the middle. Nor are his mooted restrictions on speech and political campaigns. (Dutch blogger Steeph has similar, concrete, but hugely overbroad, ideas.)

I argue for a national referendum, which would give democracy back to US, and an immediate vote on all the things that judges, lobbyists, and politicians argue about but never let us weigh in on -- abortion, death penalty, gay marriage, etc. I firmly believe that once the major wedge issues that judicial atrocities like Roe v. Wade have stolen from the voters and given back to us, a new generation of politicians could be elected. As it stands, the major parties have litmus tests for everyone that basically ensures that nobody with a non-ideologically consistent stand on specific issues will ever be nominated and placed in front of the rest of us for a vote. Politicians have to prove their liberal or conservative credentials to the most rabid of the parties' bases before they'll let us vote on them. If we restore democratic rule to the culture war, can you imagine what a huge burden would be lifted from the nation's shoulders? The wedge issues are tearing the country apart, and they won't let us vote on them, which is the only way to peacefully resolve an issue whose middle ground has been stolen by activists and busybodies.

Let us vote.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government.

Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.

On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.