1) We considered the history of amendments about the vote itself, yesterday. From the most important 1st amendment through those that followed and specifically protected the right: #15, 19, 24 & 26.
2) It’s interesting that the vote is not mentioned in 1A, and then that the format of the following four is built on the phrase: The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied…
3) 15A protects citizens’ right to vote notwithstanding race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Obviously, the result of the Civil War. 19A protects the vote regardless of gender. 24A prohibits a poll tax. And 26A allows a low limit of age 18 and no other age limit.
4) Each of these 4 amendments completely assumes the existence of the right. As had I until this very morning. A simple search led me to the 14th Amendment, which I completely missed, yesterday. Reading it just now was amazing.
5) The historical forces never quite gelled for me before, either. What is it that makes a slave a slave? He has no right to vote. Think about it. If you empower a slave with the vote, his very enslavement is broken, almost instantly.
6) This is, in fact, the very pivot point on which our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution veered course. In the Declaration, it’s ALL men enjoy these unalienable rights. Not so in the Constitution until the 14th Amendment in 1868.
7) Maybe it’s completely obvious to you, but the necessity to enshrine the rights that the 14th Amendment finally covers in 1868, means that from 1789 until then there truly was question about those rights and that very question was the basis of the institution of slavery.
8) We must pause on the process of study for a moment. This is the website where I read the 14A just now for the first time: law.cornell.edu/constitution/a…. Its format is absolutely important. You have to check it out!
9) The site gives us the text, but in a simple manner it also gives us the main court cases that hinged upon one or the other aspects of this amendment. You have to try to feel it. Law is a chaotic and utterly imperfect process. Yet there is a discernible path, nevertheless.
10) Please spend some time there. Bop around and simply work to capture the essence. We'll turn to voting as a protected right within the 1A context of free speech in a moment. First meditate on the law and its history with me, from a layman's perspective.
11) We all know that failure to know the law is NEVER an excuse for failure to comply with the law. But office, I didn't know that the speed limit here was 35. It doesn't work, right? That simple logic needs to extend far more deeply into our lives as citizens.
12) It wasn't our choice. We had nothing to do with the fact of a stolen landslide election. But here it is. It is therefore on us, with no desire or choice of our own, that we must come fully to terms with this new, horrible reality. In order to do so, we must know our history.
13) Here's the mistake we've made to date. We have allowed our representatives to be "the experts" in the law. They're not. The law must be written upon our minds and hearts as a people. It is OUR law. Now, they have broken it. Not just as a crime but broken the law itself.
14) And the place they've broken the spine of the law is over the vote. I have heard many state emphatically that conservatives will never win an election again. I've heard such statements many times. But never with as much chilling possibility of truth.
15) We can't get sidetracked here, but there is a question of federalism to contemplate briefly. In our republic there is a legal relationship between national, state, and local governance and citizens' rights and obligations at each level.
16) To my knowledge, although I'm certain that elections have previously been stolen by voter fraud, it's never been so egregious and obvious as 2020's stolen election. We were always able to not look or see too clearly. Not so this time. That makes this our problem.
17) That's the heart of the matter. If I'm right that the election was viciously stolen, how is this national crime to be addressed? We blunder into two related problems. 1) The big lie. 2) The vast difficulty of We The People to unite and organize in the face of such a crime.
18) We've discussed the big lie many times. Here, there enters another element. The grand conspiracy. If this election was stolen, there was a conspiracy amongst governors, state AGs, legislatures - state and national - and courts up and down the land.
19) To all appearances, Trump has deemed this an unwinnable fight. Perhaps he fears a 2nd Civil War and deems that a worse outcome than allowing the evil actors their successful theft. If so, who am I to disagree? Even still, I do. Disagree that is.
20) And I think free speech is the specific element of the law under which We The People must unite. The question has been put to law. Is voting covered by the right of free speech? The answer is in. It is. Consider this story:
ylpr.yale.edu/voting-speech
ylpr.yale.edu/voting-speech
21) Allow me to summarize. SCOTUS has extended the 1A protection to broad swaths of American case law. But it is never doctrinally acknowledged the right of the vote as being 1A protected. The story is compelling. Do read it in full!
22) In coming weeks and months, I plan to do much reading, study, and writing on this topic. In fact, it will be my primary - if not one and only - focus for analysis. It has to be more than that though. There must be action. I plan to find that action and engage.
23) We must know our history. We must know our law. We must know its strengths and weaknesses in practice. Our courts are corrupt. What will we do about that? But under and over all this there is the question of a stolen election, a silenced voice of the people.
24) I am told I must adhere to the political process, hoping to win House and Senate in 2022. That may be correct. And also hoping to regain the White House in 2024. I'm not persuaded. A silenced people cannot be expected to win a rigged vote. We have no free speech.
25) Einstein taught us: You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. We The People must transform our level of thinking, and acting. We must claim the right of free speech, and free and fair election as our most basic right. And correct from there.
Thread ends at #25.
Please do sign up for and follow me at CloutHub, same name as here, due to the HIGH risk that Twitter will suspend my account for precisely such analysis as above.
Please do sign up for and follow me at CloutHub, same name as here, due to the HIGH risk that Twitter will suspend my account for precisely such analysis as above.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
