so many students have been raised on the religion of democracy that they cannot even conceive of how a state or community might be oppressed by the untrammeled "democracy" of the remainder
What makes the STATE the repository of the right of nullification? The ratification process did not include the apparatus of state governments, but conventions of citizenry. Therefore final power must rest, in the view of any believer in nullification, in the individual.
Would make for an interesting society, don't you think?
There is always an either/or about sovereignty, and indeed, about government itself. Someone always has the final say. Nullification changes who has that say -- it doesn't resolve or do away with the basic problem.
Premodern monarchies of the sort that Hoppe celebrates -- and it has to be recognized that many despotisms didn't fit this pattern -- were distinguished by the fact that government didn't have control over large areas of public life. Unfortunately, it's not likely that state's rights movements would really do anything to restore this condition.
State's rights activists did not renounce far-reaching powers for state governments. State's rights was largely about protecting large-scale state exercises in social control and engineering. State sovereignty, nullification and secession wouldn't get government out of our lives, they'd simply shift the locus of power to different units.
Properly understood and applied, federalism doesn't include reckless ideas of unilateral nullification and secession, but it does apportion powers between the larger and smaller political units and balance power against power. Federalism draws disputants into the political sphere and brings them towards resolution there. It makes compromise more possible because the different units may follow different policies on important questions. Woods condemns political life entirely and promotes radical expedients that do more harm than good, leading not towards compromise but towards revolt, separation and, eventually, war.
Much of the current interest in secession and nullification can be traced back to Murray Rothbard,. Some samples:
"…there is another important reason for hailing the principle of secession per se: if one part of a country is allowed to secede, and this principle is established, then a sub-part of that must be allowed to secede, and a sub-part of that, breaking the government into ever smaller and less powerful fragments…until at last the principle is established that the individual may secede—and then we will have true freedom at last." -- "The Principle of Secession Defined" (1967)
"Secession is a crucial part of the libertarian philosophy: that every state be allowed to secede from the nation, every sub-state from the state, every neighborhood from the city, and, logically, every individual or group from the neighborhood." -- "Mailer for Mayor" (1969)
Rothbard reads like a logical lunatic. How exactly is the secession of the individual from the rest of society to happen? What will it lead to? How would society function?
Anarchism was the idea behind Rothbard's enthusiasm. It was not an ideal of the nullifiers and secessionists, though it is what unionists saw behind such concepts. And anarchism is a notoriously unworkable and destructive idea.
Moreover Rothbard's answer isn't likely to remove government and politics from our lives. Breakaway movements demanding their sovereignty and rights are more likely to bring politics, government, violence and war to the forefront than to promote free and peaceful development.
Identity politics and moral collectivism are more likely to be the result of secessionist ideas as liberty. Sandefur is aware of this. Rothbard and Woods are not.
The states didn't make the Union. The people did.
Walt
That's why this blithering idiot thinks he can write this crap and get away with it.
Walt
Nullification is the idea, pioneered by Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun, that an American state has the right to "nullify" federal legislation that it believes violates the Constitution. As Virginian political thinker Abel Upshur put it, since no common umpire exists between the federal government and the states to render judgments on breaches of the Constitution, each state – as a constituent part and co-creator of the Union – has to make such determinations for itself.
Why stop at the federation? Apply the same to counties and states: since there is no common arbitration (allegedly) between the two, each county has to have the nullification power.
Don't stop at counties either: continue on to the cities and townships, individual school boards --- until you finally reached the individual. Since there is no common arbiter between you and the state, YOU should be able to nullify whatever state has decided --- whenever YOU deem something unconstitutional.
The problem arises, of course, because of the false premise, that the Supreme Court will not act on behalf of a state.
And in which life was nasty, brutish and short.
Walt
On the other hand, the argument in favor of withdrawal by any state from the Union has ample support in the history of the nation, history of the Constitution, and writings of the Framers. That is the theoretically correct view of the relationship of the states to the federal government.
Unfortunately, losing a war is the ultimate way of losing a debate. The secessionists lost the "War between the States;" so theory be hanged, that argument is lost for all time.
If federalism is to be saved, largely as intended, we will have to accomplish that within the framework of the existing United States. The same applies to reestablishing individual rights, as once intended.
Congressman Billybob
That's the really sad part.