Regardless of how right they may have been at the time, that train has long since pulled out of the station and the facts have changed.

This, actually, is an excellent case in point. Some states thought they could secede. Depending on which Founding Father you like they were either right or wrong. The Federal government contested their decision on the battlefield and prevailed. The view that they can secede today is a fringe view with no legal scholarship or cases underpinning it.

WE the Delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will: that therefore no right of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified, by the Congress, by the Senate or House of Representatives acting in any capacity, by the President or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes: and that among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified by any authority of the United States.

Seems there were a great many people that reserved this view, the Representatives of Virginia and Lincoln himself that you should give some pause to pronouncing the Constitution dead and subservient to the Federal Government.

I remain a free man – at the grant of God, not some “case law”

When I cite Lincolns affirmation of that (even though you chose to base your entire argument on Lincoln’s winning of the Civil war, you strangely ignore those same words. Hmmm. Again, you devolve into non-civil discourse. Your behavior is more akin to those of a troll.

As to what the 10h Amendment says – what language do your speak? The written version is clear enough to me. I am assuming you are a lawyer who only wishes to argue over any meaning not your own interpretation.

You are free to believe whatever you wish and I am free to laugh at you for believing it.

You want to cast the role of Positive law as superior to that of Natural Law or the God of Natures law. So clearly, you do not believe in the Constitution nor any of its foundational basis enumerated by the Jefferson, Madison et. al. So you are basing your argument on the superiority of the Federal Government over the Constitution on the basis of the positive law that only finds legitimacy under the Constitution. You also ignore the history of man prior to the writing of the Constitution. Do you subscribe that the “superiority of the Federal Government” over the States now ends history, the world will now forever live in stasis?

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

So if you like Dred Scott, then you are on the right track. If you don’t like it and don’t like Jim Crow then you are advocating a belief system that supported both slavery and segregation.

2. My logic says that we have 140 years of case law since the Civil War, law that exists despite the fact that you don’t like it, that says federal laws and the federal constitution trump state sovereignty. To argue otherwise marks oneself as a flipping idiot..

3. I have said nothing about th 10th Amendment other than observe that it doesn’t mean what you say it means and it hasn’t since the Reconstruction.

They are as human as all of the rest of us. Your argument is best refuted by the election of Obama. Today he would not receive even 44 percent of the vote. I will again point to the word of Lincoln regarding the right of peoples to seced. If he has not the experience to pronounce on the subject, no one in this government can claim it. I will also cite this:

“no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation.” (Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,1789)

The only perpetuity of a federation of states or individuals is the perpetuity of the day. Once the faith of the governed is lost, I assure you the “all powerful” Federal Government of your fantasy becomes impotent.

Your logic lays on the foundation that because the Federal Government fought the Civil War and won, that now, the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution is now made irrelevant. Are you saying now that the Constitution is irrelevent and made subservient to a supposedly “all powerful” Federal Government.

You will see the folly of that revealed in the coming years when the “all powerful” Federal Government you have so much faith in is so broke it can no longer pay it soldiers and, according to some factions plans and wishes runs to the arms of the United Nations to cast itself into obeiscence. I for one will not follow it at that moment. I think a majority in this country will not. I hope that is true.

I don’t think you’re an idiot but you are certainly acting like one by pretending that any significant number of people believe states are autonomous entities. They aren’t. You know it. I know it. So stop making stupid arguments that really reflect poorly on you.

So what you mean is that in the act of defeating the notion that owning slaves was an issue to be determined by the States, that the Tenth Amendment was rendered irrelevant thus making us all slaves to the Federal Government? WTF?

I can assure you that I am positive that there are more than 165 million people in this country that would not subscribe to that view. Additionally, a great many of them are in the Military and a HUGE majority of them own multiple guns.

BTW, you are right about not caring what think, but reconsider things before diving in.