What States Rights Really Mean

http://www.southerngrace.biz/bonnieblue/14_thomas_e.htm ^ | 1/12/04 | Thomas Woods

[jonestown]

Massive civil disobedience works.

It does, at least in free societies. <.I>

That's my point. Unless we ALL use the principle of nullification, we will lose our freedoms.

That's one real reason for objecting to the secessionists of 1861. They didn't take the peaceful path of non-violent resistance, political organization, or action through the courts, but rushed to build up their own country, state apparatus, and army, at a time when the rights and wrongs of unilateral secession were anything but clear.

You preach to the choir. I agree completely on that point.

I don't doubt that there will be situations when armed revolt is excusable, necessary, and unavoidable. But ideas of unilateral secession tend to make people "politically stupid." They avoid the real political options that they have, and stop working within the system. Would-be seceders tend to see direct, unilateral action as the answer to everything, and pass up the real opportunities for compromise. And since most countries have grown together and developed common institutions and property, it's virtually impossible for one faction or region to make a clean break on its own without involving violence. All the more so as competing parties within each state or province take up arms in order to be on one side of the frontier, rather than on the other.

Yep. But here in the USA we have a Constitution that 'we the people' can enforce. Our governments tend to forget that fact.

--- Nothing in the nullification concept would lead to secession, unless the feds abused their Constitutional powers to enforce laws that were under dispute in the Courts.

That would certainly be nice if it were true.

It is true. Simply because it has never been tested doesn't make the concept un true.

I'm not qualified to judge the matter, but I can't help being skeptical. Something tells me that Calhoun wouldn't have bowed to a federal court decision if it went against South Carolina. His view would be to put the state government above the federal courts.

Using Calhoun to illustrate a point on non violent nullification is futile.

Your view -- up to a point -- is what any state could do now: refuse to execute a law or ruling and until the courts decide, so it's not clear what the concept of nullification adds to such resistance.

?? -- That is the concept, and it is not being used..

But the problem is, what happens when the courts go against you?

You raise another Constitutional point, and insist on another trial. Our whole legal system could be put in gridlock if States used this method to defend individual rights.

If you recall the civil rights battles of the 1950s, the federal government got its way.

Because the States folded. What would the Feds have done if Wallace had closed down the entire state school system, and all the people involved walked off the job? Jail em all? For what?

And that, as many people realized at the time, wasn't an entirely bad thing.

In effect, it gave the feds to much control over our schools. that was a bad thing.

Rightly or wrongly, ideas like nullification or interposition have come to be seen as half-way houses to secession, and have been condemned as such.

Some condemn, some see Constitutional principle.

In the Federalist Papers, Madison noted that in small communities one faction or other often dominates political life and imposes itself on other groups, even to the point of establishing a tyranny.

He supported that outcome? - Hardly.

In a larger "extended republic" local elites have to compromise, and cooperate, and surrender a little of their power. In plenty of countries around the world (in Latin America and Africa, for example) tribes or factions got the kind of veto power that Calhoun wanted for his state and region. The results weren't pretty or always favorable to the cause of liberty. Madison forsaw this, and that may be a big reason why he supported Jackson and the Union against Calhoun and the nullifiers in the 1830s.

Is the choir here again?

Doubtless, we have plenty of problems without nullification, but it's not the answer. At first sight, we might want vigorous, proud, defiant, self-assertive states battling the federal government at every point, but if we look at things more closely it may look like a bigger problem, rather than a solution. There may be troubles at times, but the fact that the states have grown closer together in a federal union isn't entirely bad thing.

States & Feds being joined at the hip in socialism is a good thing? That's "not the answer" either.

[neoconjob]

very nicely put, "x".

You are correct on the chronology of the name "Republican" and most likely correct about the changing of opinion (Jefferson, Madison) as the new nation found its moorings. Just more reason not to mindlessly venerate everything the Founders did at every stage of the nation's development. Mistakes are made, inevitably, when attempting what has never existed before. The Alien and Sedition Act(s?): prime example. Perhaps the Civil War itself is another. We are STILL involved in an ongoing political experiment, with maximal individual freedom and minimal government intrusion as the goal, and mistakes will be made - indeed, MUST be made - in order to define the limits of our ability to manage others. I know it's counter-intuitive to see the various (nefarious) expansions this way, but as they fail (as is inevitable with any wrongly-constructed governmental over-reaching) we learn - and our children learn - a valuable lesson about the scope and power of government.