Wow! I can see that the political philosophy of John C. Calhoun is alive and well in America today.
But here’s my point.
Clearly, elected officials in any state have the right to oppose, to question, to seek to amend, or to minimize the impacts of federal regulations/legislation that they deem inappropriate, badly drafted, burdensome, or unlikely to meet the goals that legislation purportedly seeks to achieve.
But states cannot simply brush aside legislation that has been duly enacted by the national government, and exempt themselves from its central provisions. That’s nullification-and that’s a recipe for enduring conflict.
It was instructive to read many of the posts, particularly those from folks whose dislike of the current administration and fear of the consequences of the nearly completed health care legislation is such that they’re apparently willing-even eager-to attempt nullification.
Today’s bitter, unrelieved partisanship is sadly reminiscent of the decades before the Civil War, when regional economic issues pitted the agrarian south against the industrial north, and abolitionists fought slavery.
For those of you who detest the president and his reform agenda, there’s a simple solution: vote for folks who will amend or overturn it. All this prattling about Ayn Rand & godless liberals is just hot air-if you don’t like it, organize! Don’t waste your time huffing and puffing-you need a majority in the House and the Senate.
So get to work, all you right-wing irredentist slackers!
December 31st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Really, you’ve gotta love the far right. For years, they told us to trust the Republican party. They would keep us safe by conquering Iraq and its WMD’s, and by using “unconventional” interrogation methods – and they would do all this without spending any of the citizens’ hard earned money. Now they exhort us to “look at both sides,” or shrug heir shoulders and comment that all politicians, Democratic and Republican, are worthless anyway. Why, why would anyone listen to them? After all, they’ve been revealed to be spendthrift liars, whose only innovative idea turned out to be torture.
But I guess PT Barnum was right. There’s a sucker born every minute..
January 1st, 2010 at 10:50 am
ES, you don’t make any sense at all. Come back only when you are coherent.
January 1st, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Sorry, Dick. I ‘ll try to explain: I believe that the same soullessness that led the far right to support torture, and leads them still to, for instance, promulgate the belief that people who prefer members of the same gender, as partners, are somehow inferior, also leads them to consider such concepts as health care that exists to serve patients, rather than the profit margins of insurance companies, to be godless.
Was that sentence too long for you? Oh well, maybe I read too many books…
January 1st, 2010 at 10:06 pm
The GOP must hate our democratic republic. All they do is whine like children. The Democtrates have 60% of the Congress and a President who was elected by the biggest margin of victory since Reagan. They get to pass laws. If you don’t like our system leave. PLEASE LEAVE.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:34 am
It would be great to hear your thoughts on state nullification on the 2005 Real ID Act and the end run by the states around federal criminalization of marijuana. Both of these federally enacted prohibitions have been gored by more than a few states (over 20+ in the case of Real ID).
States can, have, and will brush aside federal regs they don’t feel are in their best interest. No one says there won’t be consequences as a result, but to dismiss nullification outright is somewhat ignorant of many precedents in case law, constitutional law, and reality.
January 4th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Too many non sequiturs in one sentence for me, ES. Yours is an especially warped view of the world, no? What kind of books do you read?