Sunday Morning Freak Out

There has been some discussion in Conservative ranks about the intention of the Progressives to entangle the United States in an international treaty that would, by virtue of the Supremacy Clause (Article VI) of the Constitution become the "supreme law of the land", and by such entanglement, invalidate certain of our currently constituted individual rights.

The Second Amendment has been seen to be a target of such machinations by those who believe the intention of Progressives is to sign an international treaty that includes, among other things, the outlawing of private ownership of firearms by citizens.

Logic insists that any treaty, judged the "supreme law of the land", based on the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, but which invalidates another part of the Constitution, renders the Constitution invalid...including that part upon which the supremacy of the treaty is based.

Now that's the sort of circular argument that makes you dizzy. But, in a nutshell: logically you can't invalidate an authority, while using the same authority to validate your actions.

Of course, politicians are quite capable to trying to do it. Especially Progressives for whom rules mean nothing...and the end justifies all means...including profoundly illogical ones.

For me, that was the end of the argument. Until I read the Supremacy Clause again this morning; Article VI, Clause 2:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States, which shall be made n Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

And it was that last bit that made the possibility of an end run around the Constitution a real possibility. It seems to say that any treaty made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land...regardless of any Thing in the Constitution!

I read it several times and could not make any other sense of it. It seemed to validate our worst fears that a Progressive government could simply agree to any treaty it liked, and regardless of how much it invalidated rights guaranteed by the Constitution, it must be upheld as the "supreme law of the land" —according to the Constitution itself!

It seemed to say that, for example, Islam could be instituted as the State Religion if Obama signed a treaty demanding it; that our guns could be outlawed and confiscated if Obama signed a treaty agreeing to it; due process could be done away with, and even our national sovereignty if the current powers that be decided to sign and approve a treaty that surrendered it to the United Nations, or a North American Union or some other devised new Authority.

It didn't make any sense to me that the Founders would put such a thing in the Constitution...a back door which would permit an outlaw President and Senate to invalidate the document that the Founders themselves created with such diligent attention to the protection of individual rights and the complex system of checks and balances and three branches of government to make sure that no such thing could ever happen.

But reading that last sentence, I could think of no other but the most disastrous interpretation, and I feared that the worst was indeed possible...that a treaty signed by the President and approved by the Senate could override the Constitution itself.

In something close to a panic, I grabbed my "Heritage Guide to the Constitution" and found that there is a case called Reid v Covert which was decided in 1956, in which the majority decision reads in part:

"...no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution."

While this was comforting, it went on to quote Article VI, thusly:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States, which shall be made n Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;..."

And proceeded with:

"There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution."

I couldn't help noticing that they'd left out the exact language that does indeed intimate that treaties enacted do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution!

Isn't that precisely what this means:

"...and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

In plain English, doesn't that mean that regardless of what the Constitution says, judges—the courts, and thereby the citizens—shall be bound by the treaties?

I could not imagine how the Court in Reid v Covert could ignore this essential language of the clause, and then say that no language in the clause allows treaties to override the Constitution!

It's nice to have lawyers as friends.

I called my friend, and asked him what the hell was going on here? And he told me that the language indeed was confusing, and that there are eminent personages that do, indeed, believe that this clause allows for the overriding of the Constitution by Treaty Agreements, but that the majority interpretation, in spite of the apparent language of the clause is that they may not.

I argued that while I approved the majority opinion, I could not see how they could honestly arrive at such a conclusion based on the language of the sentence itself. It seemed very clear.

The confusion, it seemed to me was not in the language, but the very fact of it. It wasn't that the language was confusing, the logic was. Everything we understand about the Founders from their writings, their speeches and the careful way in which they constructed the Constitution to be a bulwark against the violation of individual rights and rule by the people, utterly precludes the inclusion of a phrase that would permit, by the stroke of a pen, the invalidation of the entire foundation of the nation they had built so painstakingly.

Then, in our conversation, my friend referred to the wording: "State Judges"...and that triggered a change in my perception...and I read the offending portion again, with new eyes:

"...and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

I realized that the significant points of my misunderstanding were: An unusual capitalization, a missing comma, and context. In my initial reading, I ignored them. (So much for being an English major!)

The capitalization of the word Constitution always implies, in current usage, the United States Constitution, and so I understood it to mean in this instance. The missing comma after "Constitution" attaches it to rather than separates it from "Laws of any State". The context is a list of state institutions...not Federal ones. The phrase begins with state judges and ends with state laws.

Given these three points, the passage can only correctly be read to mean:

"...and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution of any State or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

This makes the majority decision of Reid v Covert, and their deletion of this passage when they quoted the clause perfectly logical. This language was irrelevant to the issue of the supremacy of treaties vs the United States Constitution, so they did not include it.

And this correct reading of the Clause eliminates any Constitutional cover for a treaty that invalidates any Constitutional right, freedom or limitation whatever.

And once again, the language of the Founders and the intention of the Founders have once again, both logically and grammatically, been found not to be in conflict.

We can be assured that no treaty which undermines freedoms and liberties and rights guaranteed by our Constitution will ever Constitutionally become "The Supreme Law of the Land". And any politician or court who tries to make it so shall be in direct violation of the Constitution itself—not following a valid clause within it—no matter how deviously he tries to convince us otherwise.

I'm so glad this issue came up this morning. Ignorance of it could bring consequences I shudder to imagine. Because you can bet your last dollar that the Progressives will try to use this clause to bring to fruition their nefarious plot to overthrow our Constitutional form of government - or what's left of it - that we cherish.

If a Progressive had confronted me yesterday with Clause 2 of Article VI, I would not have had the information necessary to argue with him. I would have found myself on sand...trying without success to make sense of the wording which at first reading does seem to validate the primacy of treaties over the Constitution—as absurd, illogical and self-destruction as that would be.

Here's the Reid v Covert majority decision by Justice Black, at Cornell School of Law for your edification. (Or your review, if you're way ahead of me on this one...)

The Gunslinger