Consider this question: “What is an ideologue?” Now consider
this answer: “An ideologue is a person who doggedly believes in what an earlier
author has pronounced, and seeks to implement its content regardless of the
consequences, even after the content proves to be outdated, inadequate or
detrimental to the principles that the author was defending or promoting.” If
you accept this answer, then you must consider Ted Cruz, who is the Senator
from Texas ,
to be an ideologue of the American Constitution, and that he is hurting the
country by his dogged beliefs and stances.
Cruz has demonstrated that tendency on many occasions while
running for the Senate of the United
State
The case itself and its merit are not at issue in this
discussion. What is considered here is the view that Ted Cruz has of the
Constitution, and the doggedness with which he would follow his own
understanding of it. If it can be shown that the stance he is taking will not
even allow for the possibility of amending the Constitution, the point will
have been made that Cruz has an imperfect understanding of the principles that
the framers of the Constitution were defending or promoting.
This is a case where a dispute between State rights and
Federal rights is made more complicated by the fact that in arguing its point,
the Federal Government is using the provisions of an international treaty to
which America
has previously subscribed. In response to that approach, Ted Cruz says that not
only this opens the door for America
to lose its sovereignty to an international body, but that it also opens the
door for the federal government to sign any treaty it wants, then turn around
and force its provisions on the States, thus rob the states of their
sovereignty. This is a false premise as demonstrated below.
The United
States of America is a federation that is
composed of sovereign states. This means that each state has powers in the
fields that concern it, and the federal government has powers in the fields
that concern the whole federation. The Constitution says two things about that.
First, each state can make the laws that suit its purpose. Second, the state
laws must harmonize with the federal laws which are deemed to be valid. Thus,
there is here the principle of separation of powers, and the possibility of a
dispute arising with regards to the reach of those powers. If and when this
happens, the parties call on a competent tribunal to resolve the matter. In America , that
would be the Supreme Court which has the power to declare unconstitutional a
law passed by the Federal Legislature.
What happens at times is that in presenting their position,
people such as Cruz, have resorted to the extreme view that because the federal
law takes precedent over state law, it means that the federal government is
infringing on the sovereignty of the states each time that a dispute arises. Well,
this is a false argument because the Supreme Court has always tried to be even
handed when it ruled in such cases. It may, at times, bend in favor of one side
or the other depending on its composition, but this does not mean that a state
loses its sovereignty when the Court rules against it in favor of the Federal
Government.
Thus, for a state to harmonize its laws with that of the
Federal Congress does not rob the state of its sovereignty. Likewise, when that
Congress ratifies an international treaty that does not violate the
Constitution, then enacts statutes in harmony with it, neither America
nor the individual states lose sovereignty to an international sort of
tribunal. For people like Cruz to say otherwise is for them to argue that America has the right to enter into
international treaties that will apply in the rest of the world but not in America unless
the world agrees to harmonize with American laws, therefore with the American
Constitution as he interprets it.