There almost all gone. And, if anybody has something like that to say nowadays they had better keep their head down.

Here Here!!

Think about how far we have sunk from the likes of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams now to the pot smoking, Marxist president we have. No wonder were are in trouble.

What Adams advocated in his day, in no way corresponds to the big government persons of today. He would be astounded and embarrassed by today's shenanigans. While Jefferson advocated the smallest government possible, he didn't think such an entity could be sustained He gave it 25 years or so. He would be amazed that it took 200 years to get this bad.

The key was "Common ground" and not compromise. Both were principled in the manners of discussions.
The common goal to solve a problem.

Originally the purchase was called a purchase. then the name was changed to fit the words of the constitution. Where in the constitution does it say the federal government may buy land like this purchase? This was common knowledge at the time and then, as now, the politiciains decided to find a way around the clear provisions of the constitution. My original point, keep in mind, was that the good quotations of Jefferson were before he became president and thereafter he, like all the others, became power hungary.

You know I think that is right. For some reason I was thinking Congress ratified it, and then it was signed. Thanks, a long time incorrect understanding of mine, so Jefferson did it right.

Read the debates at the time. Also read my post below regarding the Treaty Between the United States of America and the French Republic was signed in Paris, on the 30th of April 1803. I, too, was suckered into the belief all was well by my education at government schools. It was not until I did research for a book that I learned I was deceived.

I was not referring to "today's laws" but to the law existing at the time.

The president always signs treaties before the Senate votes on them. That's how the process works. When the Senate ratifies it, then the treaty takes effect.

I personally think we have two of them running for president right now. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. They are both less so because of the world we live in, but they are here. It is very difficult for them to do much because unlike the culture of the time of the founders, culture is there enemy.

Interesting side note of the times.

Just over half of the signers of the declaration of independence had ancestor that had gone through the experience of "Communal living" in James Town. Two years of group think that killed more than 10,000 people followed by the first year of property rights which produced food for everyone, and kept the deaths down under 30 during that third winter.

I think the stories from ancestors of that experience likely influenced the colonies, the love of individual and self governance and the culture that permeated the colonies of a study of government.

100 years of preparation for the culture needed to have the government that came about, come about. :)

James Town

Prophetic indeed. One would have to be asleep to not see this is happening now. We need to get back to our Constitutional Representative Republic.

Well now there is a good question. Where are they?
IMHO they simply do not exist in America, or if they do they are swept aside by the entire corrupt system in DC.

"These men also had an innate understanding of what was right: how people should be able to run their own lives." A right that Washington and Jefferson did not extend to their slaves.

Only thing that was unconstitutional about it was that it was singed before congress voted on it. The president does not have the ability to sign a treaty without the senate approval. Jefferson did put it to a vote, but after it was all ready signed.

A treaty is a contract between nations. Anything a contract can do, a treaty can do. The notion that the Purchase was unconstitutional makes no sense.

Their careers occurred well before an array of corporate legal personhood rulings from Trustees of Dartmouth College v Woodward (1819) through to Citizens United v FEC "money as free speech" (2010).

Now, all but the most unconventional of politicians are jointly owned by n separate corporations. Hillary Monsanto Clinton, to name just one example.

Combined with today's era of growing mass apathy and fatigue, it has never been so straightforward for corporations to buy elections. Democracy these days is just a pantomime to lull the muppet voters into thinking they have some kind of choice.

They are just out there trying to live their lives without being crushed by government. Its mob rule now, and the mob is filled with entitled people who want goodies to be paid for by someone else who has less political power.

So your objection is that because the purchase of foreign land was not an enumerated power that the Federal Government had no power to engage in that action? Even when it was declared a treaty? I can see the angle you are taking, I'm just not sold yet.

Interesting insight. Thanks.

Of course one has to recognize that today's laws don't necessarily apply to those times. Laws had no international basis of enforcement except a declaration of war or trade embargo. That France violated its agreement may be held to be true. In the end, however, a law or legal agreement is only as good as its enforcement when broken.

That's one of the problems even with current international law: the enforcement mechanism is usually through combined trade sanctions (Iran, Libya, Cuba, North Korea) and only rarely through military action (Gulf War). What is the real penalty in these cases? Loss of monetary wealth and trade opportunities. But as we've seen with the US, its pretty hard to use trade sanctions against a more powerful nation. One is essentially relying on the integrity of that other nation to hold to its word.

The issue is not funding or popularity, as I mention above. The issue is to follow the law.

ONLY by changing the name from what it was, a purchase, to naming it a treaty.

The Treaty Between the United States of America and the French Republic was signed in Paris, on the 30th of April 1803. The truth is it was for the purchase and sale of Louisiana, not a treaty. The document itself reads more as what it was, a land sale contract, than the treaty it is touted to be — to the lasting shame of both nations.

From that moment, the Union was no longer a federated government of delegated powers. True, Jefferson held the majority support of his party. But the nation was a republic, not a democracy. A nation intended to be run under law not aristocratic power.

The Constitution of the United States of America does not provide for the government to purchase territories from other sovereign nations.

His Catholic Majesty of France did not have the legal power to sell for two reasons. First, the sale was not approved by the Chamber of Deputies. Second, France acquired the territory from Spain and held the territory subject to a covenant not to transfer it. In the event France transferred the land, ownership returned automatically to Spain. Three weeks after the transfer to France, France sold it to the US.

Spain objected at the time, but had no power to enforce its objection. Take a look at the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso between France and Spain, verifying my words.

The people like the Founding Fathers in our generation are in Galt's Gulch.