Hmmm… 🤔
“states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
Article 4, Section 4:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
I don’t see a) anything there that defines “invasion” or b) grants the states the power to act if the United States chooses not to.
Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3:
"Section 10: Powers Denied to the States
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."
Again, “invaded”.
It’s pretty clear from section 10, since it’s also speaking of troops, ships of war, and engaging in war that it means MILITARY invasion, not an influx of citizen refugees.
Dictionaries at the time back up that reading:
Well they’ve also redefined the second amendment to mean “We can own whatever weapon we want” so constitutional literacy is clearly not a strong suit.
Regardless of whether it still has a place in modern society, the Second Amendment was absolutely intended that way. You had literal field artillery pieces under private ownership as a conscious decision. Tycoons were arming whole regiments with personally purchased equipment in our early wars, pretty much up to WW1 and the normalization of large, well equipped and standardized standing armies made the older methods unviable.
Constitutional originalism is an idiot’s game for the conservative who wants to return to a past that never existed and the otherwise ignorant. The wealthy slave owners who made up the largest proportion of delegates might have had an occasional worthwile ideal and idea worth keeping but arguments should be made for the present, not the past.
So if Abbott’s argument is that migrants crossing the border is an ”invasion,” then would the act of loading refugees onto busses and sending them into other states be an “attack?”
Asking for a friend.
Oof - that’s an interesting one. If immigrants constitute an “invasion” in the military sense, then Abbott is committing an act of treason as defined by the Constitution by providing them with transportation services, which would count as levying war against the United States as well as giving aid to its enemies.
I like the way you think.
