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To: TheOldLady; Bokababe
Yes, that opinion of "Nullification" is certainly popular at 6% of the reviews.

Any "review-it-yourself" site is bound to be clogged with people who automatically give five stars to even the shoddiest work, but I thought Jeremy made good arguments.

In my opinion, Woods doesn't really think things through. He's one of those people who see some particular problem and come up with an answer for it, but don't ask, "What next? What if my proposal goes through? How will things work then?"

He's sort of like somebody who looks at the problems in education and wants to abolish the public schools. Maybe that would work, maybe it wouldn't, but a lot more thinking about what happens next and how things would be better or worse is required before I'd accept that as an answer. It's likely such a "solution" would simply exchange one problem for another.

One of the attractions of nullification is that it would so gum up the works of government that nothing would get done. If states could simply invalidate federal laws they didn't like, it would make federalism impossible. There may be major disadvantages to that, especially in times of crisis, but Woods doesn't care about that.

I guess his argument would be that things can't get worse than they are now, but that's very naive thinking. You've only got to look around the world to see that.

30 posted on 10/24/2010 12:23:09 PM PDT by x
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To: x
"In my opinion, Woods doesn't really think things through. He's one of those people who see some particular problem and come up with an answer for it, but don't ask, "What next? What if my proposal goes through? How will things work then?"

While I have no personal attachment to Woods, I tend to think of ideas like this in terms of their cumulative value. Woods writes a book on Nullification, which spurs others to refine their ideas on nullification, countering some arguments and expanding on others (as you have), and then they write their own books. Usually when ideas like this are explored, it's always the first guy out of the gate who gets all the abuse from both sides, then there others who'll say, "Yes, but..." and pretty soon, the arguments on the subject are mainstreamed and discussed rationally.

I give Woods credit for being the first one out of the gate to take the heat -- because he not only has to deal with people who have legitimate arguments about his work -- but he also has to deal with the others who are just repeating the propaganda that they learned in high school against him -- in short, "the zombies". I can imagine getting hit on all sides like that would probably make one very defensive, in fact overly defensive, even if they aren't a narcissist by nature.

31 posted on 10/24/2010 12:41:17 PM PDT by Bokababe (Save Christian Kosovo! http://www.savekosovo.org)
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