Full text of Article IV, 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.”
Now, putting aside references to republican form of government, invasions, mention of executives (state governors), and replacing the word states with the word people ( Texas v. White, the U.S, Supreme Court held that the guarantees are owed to the people), we are left with this:
On application of the state legislatures, the United States shall protect us against domestic violence. |
|
This key provision in our Constitution requires that the federal government protect us from harms that we inflict upon ourselves, harms that threaten our health and our survival.
In the 20th and the 21st centuries, we have harmed ourselves greatly through massive chemical exposures, causing diseases and behavioral and educational deficits.
The domestic violence clause is the tool that the Founding Fathers gave us to reorder the priorities of the federal government, taking it from ways of waste and war to putting all available resources into regaining health and assuring survival. |
Emblem of America (1804)
|
Should the US Constitution’s Domestic Violence Clause
Be Applied to Environmental Issues?
Discover the Constitutional secret that obligates and empowers Americans to protect each other from violence.
- Overview - We are the first generation in the history of the world to be faced with decisions that will determine whether the Earth our children inherit will be inhabitable.
- Constitutional Origin of the Domestic Violence Clause - In addition to insurrection and rebellion, the framers of the Constitution intended "violence" to include unforeseen harms we would bring upon ourselves.
- A Lifeline from America’s Founders - To counter the new forms of violence that assault us today, the founders would say to us: "Here is the power to protect yourselves. Use it."
- New Forms of Violence - Our bodies and minds are being harmed by chemicals foreign to our genetic and biochemical constitution – self-induced violence that threatens our very humanity.
- Our Constitutional Roadmap to Environmental Security - Only when we stretch ourselves to understand the vast nature of the problem can we get anywhere near to the solution.
- Our Mandate to Protect One Another - The domestic violence clause brings together people of all backgrounds, and unites their efforts to ensure the health and well-being of us all.
- Educational Decline: A Casualty of our Degraded Environment - Microbiologist Rene Dubos tried to warn us in the 1970s that even beyond death and disease, behavioral declines would be the worst legacy of a world made toxic.
- FDR on the Constitutional Power to Protect - "Democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable."
- Why Government is Mistrusted - The domestic violence clause has nothing to do with a federal government that is seen as part of the problem, as bloated, incompetent, or corrupt.
|
“I read the word protect to mean care about, be considerate of, and yes, even to cherish and to love us. That message from spiritual antiquity was always considered quaint and optional. Abiding by that message is now a requirement for survival. We either learn to order our affairs such that we love and protect each other or we do not survive.” – Michael Diamond’s speech given in Atlantic City
Ending Corporate Tyranny: Solutions to the Plague that Afflicts Us All –An essay by Michael Diamond which sets forth specific steps that must be taken to assure sound public health and a habitable planet.
An Interview with Michael Diamond
in the News Junkie Post
• Not a lot of time left. Diamond urges us to action in Taking Charge: A Two Step Process For 2020
• From Holocaust to the High Road: A Call to Witnesses
Email | Facebook
Michael Diamond studied political science and law at Rutgers University and served as an enforcement administrator and chief regulatory officer at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Reviews of his book, If You Can Keep It:
A Constitutional Roadmap to Environmental Security:
Food & Water Journal
Spirit of Change Magazine
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients
|