To provide for the common defense, as opposed to merely a state-based defense, the Constitution contains what came to be known as the Compact Clause: "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay" (Article I: 10:3) This established a fundamental difference between the defensive capabilities of state governments and the federal governments. Although state governments may have national guards today, all military activities are fundamentally under the direction of the federal government, and no state can enter into a treaty with a foreign power. According to the Commander in Chief Clause: "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states." (Article II: 2:1). The new nation's federal Army and Navy (and later the Air Force and Marines) were placed under the supreme power of the central executive figure (and Congress was given the power to declare war). The reasons that the Founding Fathers inserted the words "common defense" in the preamble was because many of the states viewed themselves as possessing the rights of small nations, and the Founders knew that a nation in which different states had competing treaties with foreign powers would be impossible to govern. Also, if states had powerful self-governing militias, civil war would be virtually inevitable, given the many regional tensions that were already manifest at the time.
To promote the general welfare the Constitution specifically tries to sow the necessary conditions so that new ideas can be promoted. This exemplifies how the Founding Fathers were truly 'men of the Enlightenment,' and interested in promoting positive intellectual developments, according to Article I (8:8): "The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts,...
The U.S. Constitution as it was originally written by Thomas Jefferson and signed by the Founding Fathers, however, was flawed in this way. Within the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written, for example, blacks are explicitly referred to as unequal. Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution states: "Representatives...shall be apportioned among the several States... according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to
U.S. has not Signed the U.N. Convention Treaty on the Rights of Children This paper presents a detailed examination of the Treaty on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children. The writer explores the treaty and the nations that have signed it. The writer than delves into some of the reasons the United States has not signed it. This paper is written from a legal standpoint therefore there
" Thus, the members of the Convention assumed that, although power was a necessary evil, it was also dangerous, especially when provided to the wrong person who might take advantage of this power for his own gain. In essence, the members attempted to compose a constitution that would insure effective power for the government when needed but that would also place reliable checks and safeguards on the use of that power.
The Taliban have many sympathizers in the tribal areas of Pakistan and it is suspected that bin Laden and his lieutenant, and his lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may well be in Pakistan (Ibid.) it has also been alleged that the powerful ISI (the Pakistan army's intelligence wing) still has links with the Taliban and elements within the agency are sympathizers of Islamic extremists, who may be surreptitiously helping the Taliban.
The fact that arrested criminals are routinely read Miranda rights, informing them of their rights under the Fifth Amendment provides another example of a country concerned about justice. The framers included the phrases "insure domestic tranquility," "provide for the common defense," "promote the general welfare," and "secure the blessings of liberty" to make sure that the Federal government had the power to exercise general police powers and engage in warfare. Therefore,
Success: Susan B. Anthony's Speech The 1870s went down in history as the decade when women's movements stood strongly against oppression, demanding that women be given the same rights as men. In 1873, Susan Anthony was arrested and later released on a $100 dollar fine, all because she had voted in the presidential election the previous year. This, in her mind, amounted to oppression, and was an injustice not only
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