From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 04:56:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: 10th
Message-ID: <26d40a394a05ef3de0c1fa2e4a33e550@anon.efga.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Professor George P. Fletcher of the Columbia
       Law School notes 
            "Not only is [McVeigh's philosophy] in line with
       the conceptions held by many of the nation's
       founders," Mr. Fletcher writes in The New Republic,
       "but it lives on today in the works of an influential
       minority of legal scholars and advocates."

Mr. Fletcher thinks the problem is that we have
       abandoned "the original Constitution" and adopted "a
       new Constitution" without facing the historical
       discontinuity this involves. In his words, "we do not
       teach this historical rupture -- not in our grade schools,
       not in our law schools. We are all good lawyers and
       therefore, like Lincoln, we pretend that the second
       Constitution is simply the natural continuation of the
       founding document."

 The first Constitution
       limited the federal government to external relations
       between the states, leaving alone such internal matters
       as slavery. The second Constitution, instituted by the
       Civil War, gave the federal government new powers to
       intervene within the states through the 13th, 14th and
       15th Amendments

The 10th Amendment, reserving to the states
       and the people all powers not "delegated" to the federal
       government, was not repealed or even modified. So
       Congress' exercise of any power not granted is still a
       usurpation, even under the "new" Constitution.