Dan Casey of the Roanoke Times recently embarrassed himself with a juvenile, ad hominem attack on the Tenth Amendment movement titled “The Whole Tenth Amendment Business is Dumb and Crazy.”
While it’s unclear whether Casey actually expected his “arguments” to be taken seriously, it is clear that he cannot make his point through the use of logic or fact. Therefore, Casey’s piece is chock full of historical inaccuracies, mis-characterizations and outright falsehoods regarding the original intent and meaning of the Constitution.
So many, actually, that I cannot list them all here. However, I did respond point by point in a piece of my own to be published soon.
Here is a sample:
“Like so many others before him, Casey leads his attack with a flaccid attempt to discredit the “Tenthers” (as he pejoratively calls them) by linking constitutionalism with support for slavery.
Of course, this completely obscures actions by Tenthers of an earlier era, who used the 10th Amendment as the prime justification for the “States Rights” argument that itself was a smokescreen for the real cause of the Civil War — the South’s insistence on preserving slavery.
Behold straw man number one: The Tenth Amendment is code for racism. Casey is either ignorant of the fact that many Northern states used the Tenth Amendment as a justification for undermining slavery long before 1861, through their refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts, or he has chosen to ignore that inconvenient part of history.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. Historical accuracy is not Casey’s goal. He merely intends to color his readers’ perception of Tenthers by linking them, however spuriously, with Southern slaveholders. To acknowledge the truth about the history of states’ rights in the North might disrupt his narrative of unquestioning obsequiousness to centralized power.”