This was the intro to the most recent Guns & Patriots newsletter:
“Hey Gunners,
Does our power to control the federal government rest in our ability to control individual states? Yes.
How?
Through a process called nullification. Let’s assume that the federal government does not have a monopoly on what is considered Constitutional. The states have an obligation to ignore a law if the federal law is considered unconstitutional by the state.
This isn’t my idea. I’m reading NULLIFICATION: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. I just started the book and was fortunate enough to get an article for Guns & Patriots from the author, Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Can we band together to put enough pressure on our states to ignore this tyrannical federal nightmare? Yes.
How?
Read the article on nullification and let’s continue the discussion on Facebook. You are welcome to link to it, pass it around or send it to your friends.”
I would like to know, exactly what the “Tyrannical deferral nightmare” is, and if it existed between 2000 and 2008.
In any case, It all gets better once we get to the actual article from Mr. Thomas Woods Jr. He begins thus:
“Every couple of years the same drearily predictable charade repeats itself. This time we’re really going to limit government! Or so they tell us. We on the Right then dutifully compose our letters to the editor, attend rallies, and vote for candidates without whom, we are breathlessly assured, we shall all revert instantly to barbarism. And no matter who wins, the federal government grows and grows. The Right gets a bunch of pretty speeches, and the Left gets the victories.”
What a persecutory complex these people have! It hardly needs to be pointed out that it was only two years ago that Conservatives made a bunch of noise and that the left won a major election victory. Since then, it has really seemed like Obama has been making pretty speeches while conservatives win public relations victory after public relations victory simply by refusing to legislate at all. Much like Evangelical Christians, the right seems to work only so long as they perceive themselves as a small minority beset on all sides by liberal, homosexual, ammunition banning zombies. It doesn’t really matter if they’re in power or not. Remember, prior to 2008, it was the left that had eight years of noise making while the Bush administration racked up victory after victory. A lot of those victories, I might add, were acts that made a joke of the Constitution that Woods and other conservatives claim to love so dearly. Suspension of Habeaus Corpus, attempts to establish national religious preferences, violations of treaties that have the same force of law as the Constitution, where were Woods and the Conservative underground while all that was going on? Oh yes, dancing like pagan pigmy warriors around the fire that immolated our nation’s founding documents.
Actually, it’s a bit unfair to crap only on the heads of conservative wingnuts when it comes to selective reading of the Constitution. It really is a bipartisan disease. Conservatives tend to see the Constitution as consisting only of the 2nd amendment, and liberals everything but the 2nd amendment. It would be refreshing, just for once, to see some blowhard yacking poetic about the Constitution who actually believed in all the rights enumerated therein. Conservatives, that means absolute freedom of speech, freedom of (and by extension, from, religion), and no seeking clever ways to cheat those you don’t like out of their supposedly “inalienable” rights. Liberals, citizens get to own guns. Deal with it. Learn to love it. Here is a rather cogent argument to that end over at the daily Kos. It’s entitled, Why Liberals Should Love the Second Amendment. Read it now.
In any case, it’s not exactly clear what Woods thinks the states should nullify…the new health care law? How exactly are you going to make a Constitutional argument against the new health care law, but not against Medicare? Raising taxes on the most wealthy Americans back to the levels they paid in the Reagan years? Obama’s Presidency itself? Ahhhh, there we go. You see Conservatives, your utter distaste for this president is so plain to see that it’s obvious even when you keep your mouths shut about. I’m sorry there’s a black liberal in office right now, but you know what? He won. Legitimately. You want to get rid of him? Float a decent candidate in 2012. That’s how democracy works.
A parting thought: Will Woods and his band of nullifying conservatives have a hissy fit when California, Oregon, New Mexico and a few others band together to nullify Federal Marijuana laws? Or is it only fair when it’s used to protect guns?