Thursday, May 21, 2015

"The constitutional case for interposition and nullification."

Madison, in The Federalist No. 46, went further yet. He stated that, in the event of national governmental violation of the rights of states or their citizens, “the State governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger” through the power of “citizens with arms in their hands.”

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, Madison didn't foresee special-interest forces commandeering the voting process in order to place enemies of freedom in State Governments (Think NY, Conn., Cal., etc.). I wonder how history would have turned out if the northern states would have exercised the 10th amendment and told Lincoln to "go screw himself" when he asked for volunteers from their militias

Historian said...

In point of historical fact, special-interest forces were the reason that your scenario did not happen. Northern States were reaping the economic benefits of the Federal trade and tariff policies, which placed most of the Federal tax burden on the Southern States and enhanced Northern industrial production. There was NO way that the Northern States were going to assume the costs of running the Federal government, apart from any moral issue over slavery. If memory serves, the South was paying between 80 and 90 percent of the Federal revenue before the War.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately another situation where the theory may be sound, but the practice leaves something to be desired.

Madison couldn't see that the Feds would become so powerful they they would buy off the state governments and actually co-opt them on the crime by "giving" them Federal monies, i.e. our money in the form of grants, highway funds, Medicare, etc. No self respecting state dictator would ever turn on his Federal masters and risk losing all that "free" Federal money.

So that only leaves the people that are trying fight off both the Federalies AND the state parasites. If you rise up, you can expect BOTH groups to turn on you and apply the full force of government violence to force you back into compliance or just lock you up for a 1,000 years to get you out of the way.

Anonymous said...

'State governments with people on their side'... Is that even close to the situation today. Maybe 'state govs & some of the people' or 'people, but not the state govs', etc.
The IIIpers may be on their own here.

Anonymous said...

Please tell me we're not going to fight the civil war all over again.

The current danger is to both north and south as well as the west. The difference is that most of the north have their minds controlled by the media and politicians, which is exactly what the media and politicians want to cause in the rest of the country.

Did I mention the word Marxists? They are, and they have a plan which you can see unfold nearly every day now. They don't call it that but that's what it is.

Anonymous said...

Historian 9:20 AM - Oh, i'm aware of what your saying. I know the tariffs were the real reason for the war. I was just expressing a hypothetical scenario. The North didn't want the South selling their cotton to England and France who were willing to pay more than the northern States and so erected the tariffs...But thanks for bringing up the historical facts, as some people don't understand the reasons for the war and think slavery was the main (and only) issue. Judge Napolitano tried explaining that on some comedy that passes for TV news show and the hosts of the show tried to laugh him down; playing on their audiences ignorance. - Anon 5:50 AM

Anonymous said...

Nullification is being implemented right now by states that have legalized pot.

If you can do it with pot why not anything else?

Anonymous said...

Slavery: protection of it and expansion of it were the reason for the war. Stop the lost cause BS.