Dogman
20th November 2010, 11:40 AM
New relevance!
By Jeff McAlister | 0 comments
Mention “nullification” in many a public setting today, and it is likely you will draw a blank stare, derision or indignation. The standard high school textbook, if it is mentioned at all, associates it with a strategy pursued by John C. Calhoun, a pro-slavery politician, in the 1830s. Nullification is therefore dismissed as something retrograde and perhaps even odious.
This is a pity, because not only is there a lot more to the story, but nullification, properly understood, may well have increasing relevance to Americans today, in the age of Obamacare and other usurpations.
Thomas E. Woods Jr., a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, has stepped up to the plate with a new book, “Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny In the 21st Century.” Woods, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a master’s and doctorate degrees from Columbia, is well-equipped to provide us a full explanation behind this neglected and much-misunderstood subject.
The term “nullification” was introduced into the American political lexicon by none other than Thomas Jefferson in his draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, though the concept had developed earlier.
The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 were responses to the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress and signed into law by President John Adams.
These acts were passed in reaction to the quasi-war with revolutionary France, whose government had been seizing American ships trading with Britain. This led only to some minor naval clashes, but the hysteria which ensued led Federalists, who dominated Congress, to pass a series of acts of dubious constitutionality.
The most notorious was the Sedition Act, a source of grave concern to Republicans (or Democratic-Republicans), among whom were Jefferson and James Madison. That law prohibited “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings aimed at the president or Congress. It soon became clear that this law violated both the First and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.
The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions took a principled stand against this abuse of power.
The Kentucky Resolution, while acknowledging regarding other states disagreed over the constitutionality of the acts, declared all the states had united and “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.” The general (federal) government had been created by compact among the several states; the states preceded, and were thus not created by, the federal government. Thus the Sedition Act was declared null and void, and soon disappeared, thanks to the vigilance of Kentucky and Virginia.
Woods carries the reader through the further history of nullification, examining the controversy over the Embargo Act of 1808 and the War of 1812 (in which New Englanders ironically protested Presidents Jefferson and Madison, respectively, employing the Principles of ’98); John C. Calhoun’s protest against the tariff policy of his former boss, President Andrew Jackson, in 1833; and also the 1859 declaration by the Wisconsin Legislature opposing the national Fugitive Slave Act as unconstitutional and void.
Along the way, Woods explodes many myths concerning nullification, and ponders its potential usefulness in countering the ongoing disregard of the Constitution as written, which has become especially brazen in the last few years.
Nullification is not a panacea, and Woods concedes great care must be taken in the process of fighting to restore limited constitutional government.
Nonetheless, his book is an excellent primer, helping to restore America’s identity as a free republic, whose representatives are, in the words of the Sage of Monticello, “(bound) down with the chains of the Constitution.”
— Jeff McAlister of Longview is an occasional contributor to Saturday Forum.
http://www.news-journal.com/opinion/saturday_forum/article_c7dad365-b371-5e03-b634-ae705106577d.html
By Jeff McAlister | 0 comments
Mention “nullification” in many a public setting today, and it is likely you will draw a blank stare, derision or indignation. The standard high school textbook, if it is mentioned at all, associates it with a strategy pursued by John C. Calhoun, a pro-slavery politician, in the 1830s. Nullification is therefore dismissed as something retrograde and perhaps even odious.
This is a pity, because not only is there a lot more to the story, but nullification, properly understood, may well have increasing relevance to Americans today, in the age of Obamacare and other usurpations.
Thomas E. Woods Jr., a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, has stepped up to the plate with a new book, “Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny In the 21st Century.” Woods, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a master’s and doctorate degrees from Columbia, is well-equipped to provide us a full explanation behind this neglected and much-misunderstood subject.
The term “nullification” was introduced into the American political lexicon by none other than Thomas Jefferson in his draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, though the concept had developed earlier.
The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 were responses to the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress and signed into law by President John Adams.
These acts were passed in reaction to the quasi-war with revolutionary France, whose government had been seizing American ships trading with Britain. This led only to some minor naval clashes, but the hysteria which ensued led Federalists, who dominated Congress, to pass a series of acts of dubious constitutionality.
The most notorious was the Sedition Act, a source of grave concern to Republicans (or Democratic-Republicans), among whom were Jefferson and James Madison. That law prohibited “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings aimed at the president or Congress. It soon became clear that this law violated both the First and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.
The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions took a principled stand against this abuse of power.
The Kentucky Resolution, while acknowledging regarding other states disagreed over the constitutionality of the acts, declared all the states had united and “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.” The general (federal) government had been created by compact among the several states; the states preceded, and were thus not created by, the federal government. Thus the Sedition Act was declared null and void, and soon disappeared, thanks to the vigilance of Kentucky and Virginia.
Woods carries the reader through the further history of nullification, examining the controversy over the Embargo Act of 1808 and the War of 1812 (in which New Englanders ironically protested Presidents Jefferson and Madison, respectively, employing the Principles of ’98); John C. Calhoun’s protest against the tariff policy of his former boss, President Andrew Jackson, in 1833; and also the 1859 declaration by the Wisconsin Legislature opposing the national Fugitive Slave Act as unconstitutional and void.
Along the way, Woods explodes many myths concerning nullification, and ponders its potential usefulness in countering the ongoing disregard of the Constitution as written, which has become especially brazen in the last few years.
Nullification is not a panacea, and Woods concedes great care must be taken in the process of fighting to restore limited constitutional government.
Nonetheless, his book is an excellent primer, helping to restore America’s identity as a free republic, whose representatives are, in the words of the Sage of Monticello, “(bound) down with the chains of the Constitution.”
— Jeff McAlister of Longview is an occasional contributor to Saturday Forum.
http://www.news-journal.com/opinion/saturday_forum/article_c7dad365-b371-5e03-b634-ae705106577d.html