States Rebellion Pending
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Our Colonial ancestors petitioned and pleaded with King George III to get his
boot off their necks. He ignored their pleas, and in 1776, they rightfully
declared unilateral independence and went to war. Today it's the same story
except Congress is the one usurping the rights of the people and the states,
making King George's actions look mild in comparison. Our constitutional
ignorance -- perhaps contempt, coupled with the fact that we've become a nation
of wimps, sissies and supplicants -- has made us easy prey for Washington's
tyrannical forces. But that might be changing a bit. There are rumblings of a
long overdue re-emergence of Americans' characteristic spirit of rebellion.
Eight state legislatures have introduced resolutions declaring state
sovereignty under the Ninth and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution; they
include Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma
and Washington. There's speculation that they will be joined by Alaska,
Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas,
Nevada, Maine and Pennsylvania.
You might ask, "Isn't the 10th Amendment that no-good states' rights amendment
that Dixie governors, such as George Wallace and Orval Faubus, used to thwart
school desegregation and black civil rights?" That's the kind of constitutional
disrespect and ignorance that big-government proponents, whether they're
liberals or conservatives, want you to have. The reason is that they want
Washington to have total control over our lives. The Founders tried to limit
that power with the 10th Amendment, which reads: "The powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
New Hampshire's 10th Amendment resolution typifies others and, in part, reads:
"That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united
on the principle of unlimited submission to their General (federal) Government;
but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the
United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government
for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers,
reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own
self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated
powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." Put simply, these
10th Amendment resolutions insist that the states and their people are the
masters and that Congress and the White House are the servants. Put yet another
way, Washington is a creature of the states, not the other way around.
Congress and the White House will laugh off these state resolutions. State
legislatures must take measures that put some teeth into their 10th Amendment
resolutions. Congress will simply threaten a state, for example, with a cutoff
of highway construction funds if it doesn't obey a congressional mandate, such
as those that require seat belt laws or that lower the legal blood-alcohol
level to .08 for drivers. States might take a lead explored by Colorado.
In 1994, the Colorado Legislature passed a 10th Amendment resolution and later
introduced a bill titled "State Sovereignty Act." Had the State Sovereignty Act
passed both houses of the legislature, it would have required all people liable
for any federal tax that's a component of the highway users fund, such as a
gasoline tax, to remit those taxes directly to the Colorado Department of
Revenue. The money would have been deposited in an escrow account called the
"Federal Tax Fund" and remitted monthly to the IRS, along with a list of payees
and respective amounts paid. If Congress imposed sanctions on Colorado for
failure to obey an unconstitutional mandate and penalized the state by
withholding funds due, say $5 million for highway construction, the State
Sovereignty Act would have prohibited the state treasurer from remitting any
funds in the escrow account to the IRS. Instead, Colorado would have imposed a
$5 million surcharge on the Federal Tax Fund
account to continue the highway construction.
The eight state legislatures that have enacted 10th Amendment resolutions
deserve our praise, but their next step is to give them teeth.
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