Raphael
Posts: 263
Joined: 5/10/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Faramir To the best of my understanding, the 14th Amendment makes this explicit - but surely you dont think that the Constitution is soley Federal. Of course it was. quote:
Do you mean to say that the 1st Amendment only applies to the Federal government because it says "Congress shall pass no law abridging..." - the the Federal government has an establishment clause and and abridgement clause that applies to it, but the states individually are free to establish religions and abridge free speech? That's nonsensicle. No, it's not. In point of fact that's exactly how it was understood at the time it was written, at the time it was ratified, and for many years thereafter. At the time that was adopted, in fact, at least one of the States DID have a state religion, and no one saw any contradiction there because there wasn't one. It was Congress that was forbidden from making any law on the subject. Go ahead, read something on the subject. Read the federalist papers. Read the bill of rights itself, for that matter. Read the ninth amendment. Only after the 14th amendment was ratified were the constitutional prohibitions of the federal government extended to the States, and even with it there is some question just how far it goes. Now in many cases State constitutions had much the same guarantees in them, of course, and THOSE were binding.
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