Statists struggle with states' rights
Posted: May 22, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009
States across the country are rediscovering and reasserting the 10th Amendment
to the Constitution:
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.
Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and
enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8): 17 to be precise. Most everything it
does these days is extra-constitutional.
Forced to accept piles of paper from the federales, for "federally mandated
increases in spending on Medicaid and education," some states have realized
that the price is too steep. Not only would the states have to obey the
occupying force, but they could expect to splinter under the statist burden of
a panoply of programs prescribed by the Healer-in-Chief, who would play them
like hooked fish.
So, governors and state representatives are invoking that which ought to have
been the law of the land: the ingenious 10th Amendment.
In short order, at least 28 states resolved to reclaim the people's
"unalienable rights" by beating back the federal occupier and voiding
unconstitutional federal laws.
Sights set on sovereignty, Montana's Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer has
signed a bill rejecting any federal meddling with arms and ammunition that are
made in Montana and stay in the Big Sky State.
They may not call it interposition and nullification, but legislators in the
Texas and Utah state legislatures are planning to practice the doctrine Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison perfected in the Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions of 1798.
Writes historian Thomas E. Woods Jr.: "The Virginia Resolutions spoke of the
states' rights to 'interpose' between the federal government and the people of
the states; the Kentucky Resolutions used the term nullification – the states,
they said, could nullify federal laws that they believed to be
unconstitutional."
When did government officials start ignoring our national charter – and why
does it continue? Find out in Thomas E. Woods' "Who Killed the Constitution?"
Jefferson, explains Woods, "Considered states' rights a much more important and
effective safeguard of people's liberties than the 'checks and balances' among
the three branches of the federal government."
And for good reason. Judicial review was intended to curb Congress and restrain
the executive. But the unholy federal trinity – the judicial, legislative and
executive – has simply colluded in an alliance that has helped to abolish the
10th Amendment.
But what happens if you are of the ossified opposition – a neoconservative, or
the kind of Republican for whom the manner in which Abraham Lincoln sundered
the federal structure was both constitutional and moral?
Why, then, you're in a bit of a pickle ─ all the more so since many
neoconservatives, these days, are celebrating signs of local self-government,
not for love of liberty, but because they mistake the awakening for a revolt
against the ruling rat pack (Democrats).
To his credit, Harvard graduate Ben Shapiro is a bright neoconservative, who's
well aware of the contradiction inherent in his sudden support for the states
in their lunge for liberty:
The federal response to the slavery question was quick and right – President
Abraham Lincoln's Civil War restored for all time the founding promises of the
Declaration of Independence. Despite the Civil War, however, the legacy of Jim
Crow further eroded the moral authority of states' rights. And the federal
government, wielding the ethical imperative of racial equality, stepped in.
States' rights advocates were forever branded as bigoted Orval Faubus types,
standing in the doorways of segregated schoolhouses.
Now states are surprised to find that their ability to resist federal
directives has been all but extinguished. They are surprised that they are no
longer able to set their own standards regarding social, economic or criminal
policy. They are surprised that through a combination of moral blindness
and drooling greed, they surrendered their role in the constitutional system.
Surrendered? Not quite. "Honest Abe" was victorious in the War Between the
States because, to vanquish the South, he invalidated the Constitution and
violated the compact and comity between the sovereign states. Lincoln created a
reality on the ground by brute force, not by constitutional warrant. This
savagery owed little to the Constitution.
Neoliberal Chris Matthews of MSNBC had a similar reaction when Gov. Rick Perry
made it plain he would be asserting Texas' rights. "That's the kind of talk we
heard in 1861. That's what killed 600,000 Americans," hollered the "Hardball"
host.
By this faulty logic, secession or state sovereignty is proscribed because last
it was invoked, a bully launched a war. Or, as Kirkpatrick Sale, director of
the pro-secession Middlebury Institute, countered: "The victory by a superior
military might is not the same thing as the creation of a superior
constitutional right."
Sovereignty, of course, can be resuscitated, and the lost Constitution
restored.
The pathology caused by an overweening federal government is fuelling the fever
of freedom among the states and their people ─ it is the fever a healthy
organism develops to fight off an invading pathogen.
Ilana Mercer is a columnist at Taki's Magazine and a contributor at VDARE.COM,
which is devoted to the analysis of immigration policy. Ilana is also a fellow
at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an independent, nonprofit,
economic policy think tank. To learn more about her work, visit
IlanaMercer.com. To comment on this column, go to Ilana's blog.
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"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to
take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic
purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and
sacrifice for that freedom." - John F. Kennedy
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of
justice is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater
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