Constitution

How a Student's C-Paper Led to the Ratification of the Bill of Rights 27th Amendment After 200 Years
Current Events and History

How a Student’s C-Graded Paper Led to the Ratification of the Bill of Rights 27th Amendment After Two Hundred Years

08/24/2024 Bruce Strom 0

This original Bill of Rights amendment was mostly forgotten until nineteen-year-old Gregory Watson submitted a paper in a government class at the University of Texas suggesting that this amendment could still be successfully ratified. Although subsequent amendments usually included a deadline for ratification, the original Bill of Rights amendments had no deadline. The teacher’s assistant grading his paper ridiculed his research, saying that ratification would be totally implausible, giving the paper a C grade. He appealed the grade to the course instructor, Sharon Waite, who sided with the hapless teacher’s assistant. […]

States' Rights v Federal Power From the Nation's Founding to Civil War, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights

States’ Rights v Federal Power From the Nation’s Founding to Civil War, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights Movement

08/23/2024 Bruce Strom 1

The Constitution was drafted to correct the many weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. Congressmen now swear allegiance to the United States rather than to their native states, as was done under the Articles. The Constitution grants the Federal government not only the power to levy taxes, but also to collect them, as well as sole control over trade and commerce. The Constitution establishes a Federal court system that can override state court decisions if there is a conflict. The US Congress, unlike the Confederation Congress, can pass routine legislation with a simple majority vote. […]

Hannah Arendt Questions Whether School Desegregation Was Wise: Little Rock and Civil Rights
Civil Rights

Hannah Arendt: Was School Desegregation Was Wise? Little Rock & Civil Rights v States’ Rights

08/14/2024 Bruce Strom 0

In 1957 the NAACP registered nine black students to attend a previously all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. At first Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to “preserve the peace” by preventing these black students from attending. This civil resistance offended President Eisenhower. As a prior general, he viewed this as insubordination, so he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard, instead instructing them to protect the African American students. This did not stop the bullying and taunting, one of the black students had acid thrown in her face. There was a protracted struggle, the public schools were closed for a year, and after reopening black students had to face both white mobs and bullying for several years. […]

How Did the Speeches of Daniel Webster Inspire the North to Fight To Preserve the Union?
Civil War and Reconstruction

How Did the Speeches of Daniel Webster Inspire the North to Fight To Preserve the Union?

03/09/2024 Bruce Strom 1

Webster knew that “the question of paramount importance in our affairs is likely to be, for some time to come, the Preservation of the Union, or its Dissolution; and now power can decide this question, but that of the People themselves.”
South Carolina not only set bad precedent, but she had also enacted a state law that stated that state militia could resist federal forces sent in to enforce the laws passed by Congress under the Constitution. Thus, you could argue that the Civil War did not start in 1864, that it really started in the 1830’s. […]