Thoughts on 22d Amend
🗣️ DISCUSSION 💬
The 22d Amendment (Presidential Term Limits) says that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once..."
I have so many thoughts on this that I can't limit them to this forum, but I see a path!
What are your thoughts?
I'm not so sure about this specific point. I could be wrong, often am, and you could be very right.
My understanding is that the original 13 colonies of England became 13 nation states after winning the Revolutionary War. In essence, each state was its own country with its own constitution. This still holds true today, every state has its own constitution and form of government.
The original government of the United States was formed under the Articles of Confederation. This lasted about 8 years and there were many issues. For instance, each state was printing its own currency. This made interstate trade more difficult. Each state had its own strengths and weaknesses and different economic engines. It was difficult for individual states to create international trade deals because each state was small and trying to do its own thing. There wasn't a certainty that each state would defend another if a foreign country attacked, and even if they did fight, at what troop level would other states provide assistance, etc.
The Founding Father's knew the Articles of Confederation would not work long term and some suspected the system needed to be scrapped altogether. So they decided to call a state convention to amend the Articles of confederation. Some of the founders had already decided it would be best to scrap the Articles and start new with what became known as the United States Constitution.
The essence of the US Constitution is the following. And, this is based off of the Founding Father's greatest fear, "An all powerful centralized government." The founders knew absolute power would lead to absolute tyranny. And this is what the entire revolutionary war was just fought over.
The US Constitution grants specific powers to the federal government. These include items like a military for national defense, interstate commerce regulation, international trade and treaty authority, a unified currency and banking system, and a few more. But these powers are narrowly defined. And these are the only powers the federal government has according to the US Constitution. The founders stated clearly, if the powers are not defined in constitution, then ALL other powers are reserved for The People, or The States.
This is why Roe vs Wade was overturned. There is nothing in the Constitution that says anything about abortions, let alone that it is a federal power granted by the constitution.
This idea that the states have all power, not declared explicitly in the US Constition as a federal power, is what keeps the power of our government closest to We The People as opposed to centralized in D.C.
So when I see the statement, "it was only ever one nation, one country," I just want to reiterate that we are the United STATES of America, we are not necessarily one big land mass that is one big country. There is tremendous power in our States' authority to run this country. The States call the shots, not D.C.
At our nation's Founding, the States were considered individual nations. Only the constitution brought them together as a unified group for the purposes defined in the Constitution, mainly national defense, commerce, and international trade authority with a unified currency.