"You don't have to accept the federalist laws." - Tucson mass shooter Jared Loughner
In this era of polarized politics, it is not surprising that the right is up in arms about the Supreme Court's recent decision on health care. And I do mean -- literally -- up in arms. The Court's ruling, of course, is not the first to be met with calls for nullification and violence. We would do well to remember the unfortunate and deadly consequences of past rhetoric.
Today the issue is health care. In 1954, it was public education when the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Following that landmark decision, which called for the integration of public schools, 101 of 128 congressmen from the states of the former Confederacy signed "The Southern Manifesto," which asserted that states were free to ignore federal laws and directives. Eight Southern states passed nullification resolutions declaring the unconstitutionality of the Brown decision. Several of them borrowed language directly from Civil War era secessionist Senator John C. Calhoun in doing so. This demagoguery about "tyrannical" government was accompanied by violence. African-Americans were lynched. White protestors in the South hurled sticks, rocks, and racial epithets at black students attempting to attend integrated schools. They beat up journalists and white individuals who escorted African American students to class. Churches, synagogues and homes were bombed (the Ku Klux Klan bombed so many homes in Birmingham the city was nicknamed "Bombingham").
I am hearing uncomfortable echoes of the past with the response to the June 28, 2012, Supreme Court decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Immediately after the ruling, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint issued a press release in which he urged states to defy the federal government by refusing to implement the Act. Since the release of DeMint's statement, governors Rick Scott of Florida, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Rick Perry of Texas and Scott Walker of Wisconsin have stated publicly they will not comply with Obama's health care law regardless of the Supreme Court's decision. The Tenth Amendment Center is distributing model legislation to state legislators that would nullify the law. The legislation would make it a crime for any federal or state official, agent or employee to enforce or attempt to enforce the law (they would also be subjected to civil liability). Missouri, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Idaho, New Hampshire, South Dakota and North Dakota are currently considering such bills.
It is also disturbing to see calls for defiance to Obamacare referencing the "Second Amendment remedies" ideology of the modern pro-gun movement. Let me be clear. Violence in response to the Affordable Care Act is already more than theoretical. When the Act was being debated in the U.S. Congress, supporters of the legislation were subjected to threats and vandalism. Representatives Betsy Markey (D-CO), Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA), Vic Snyder (D-AR), Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Steve Kagen (D-WI), David Obey (D-WI), Bruce Braley (D-IA) and Dave Loebsack (D-IA) were among those who received threats of physical violence. Windows were broken at Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's (D-AZ) Tucson office, Rep. Louise Slaughter's (D-NY) district office, and Democratic Party offices in Ohio, western New York and Kansas. Pictures of nooses were faxed to Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI). Protestors showed up at Rep. Russ Carnahan's (D-MO) home with a coffin.
And it was Gabby Giffords, of course, who was targeted for "assassination" by deranged gunman Jared Loughner in the horrific mass shooting in Tucson on January 8, 2011. "You don't have to accept the federalist laws," Loughner wrote in his online political manifesto. "Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws." Loughner's ideology shouldn't be dismissed because he was severely mentally ill. In fact, it is just such a person who is most likely to fall under the spell of a charismatic leader spewing nullification rhetoric. When highly-placed public figures have no regard for the law, what does that say to the average citizen?
It is truly shocking, just a year and a half after the Tucson tragedy, to see continuing calls for violence in response to the Affordable Care Act. Matthew Davis, the former spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, responded to the ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius by sending a blast email in which he wrote:
In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson's election was complete ... If the Supreme Court's decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified? God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired.
Mississippi Tea Party chairman Roy Nicholson issued the following statement:
When a gang of criminals subvert legitimate government offices and seize all power to themselves without the real consent of the governed their every act and edict is of itself illegal and is outside the bounds of the Rule of Law. In such cases submission is treason. Treason against the Constitution and the valid legitimate government of the nation to which we have pledged our allegiance for years. To resist by all means that are right in the eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to invasion. May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge, repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country. And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the criminal invaders from their seats and restore our constitutional republic.
Mike Vanderboegh, the former Alabama militia leader who inspired the vandalism of Democratic offices during Congressional debate over the Affordable Care Act, responded to the Supreme Court's ruling by writing:
You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response ... If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed--unless we kill them first.
And then there was National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent, who was recently visited by the Secret Service after threatening violence against President Obama and Democrats in general. In a July 5, 2012, op-ed in the Washington Times, Nugent decried "Chief Justice Roberts' traitor vote'" in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and wrote, "Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I'm beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War."
Nugent and his fellow insurrectionists are playing a dangerous game. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. It was enacted by duly constituted authority. It was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was signed by President Barack Obama. It was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. There is only one place for frustrated citizens to pass judgment on the wisdom of the law; at the ballot box in November. Calls for nullification, as the Supreme Court noted in Cooper v. Aaron, render our Constitution a "solemn mockery." Such calls also embolden the actions of others who will throw the bricks, sticks, and rocks; issue the threats; and brandish the guns.
In 1958, after the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple was bombed by several men associated with the National States' Rights Party, a white separatist group, then-Atlanta Journal editor Ralph McGill was furious and took pen to paper. "It is not possible to preach lawlessness and restrict it," he warned in an editorial that earned him a Pulitzer Prize. "Let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take the law into their hands." I have little hope that the new crop of nullifiers will heed this lesson, but for leaders of both parties who still love the Constitution and deplore violence, McGill's sage advice is an invitation to condemn those taking us to the precipice of disaster.
Follow Josh Horwitz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CSGV
Mr. Obama, if you want my tax: Come and Take It.
because Jared Loughner was a NATIONALIST. Your boy Loughner didnt like us federalists =)
I guess nullification is a bad thing then. She should have respected the law of the land.
Nullification was used by northern states to nullify unconstitutional federal laws which required northern states to return escaped slaves back to the southern states.
By the way, when I punch you in the face and you press assault charges against me, my brother being a judge in my case would be a conflict of interest.
Just like the federal supreme court is when deciding whether the federal government has violated it's own contract.
The states did not sign a contract that handed over unlimited authority to a federal government, sorry folks.
I'm aware that people have used state's rights for 'evil' purposes of which anti-freedom people like to pull out of their butts from time to time but federal rights were also used for some pretty evil things to. This article points to one of them such as the fugitive slave act. A federal law basically said any black guy can be picked up and taken into slavery. I would call the pretty evil. Where is the outcry? There won't be any because modern fascist have figured out a way to use the moral argument at every turn to destroy liberty.
December 1834
"But it follows, from no view of the subject, that a nullification of a law of the U. S. can as is now contended, belong rightfully to a single State, as one of the parties to the Constitution; the State not ceasing to avow its adherence to the Constitution.
A plainer contradiction in terms, or a more fatal inlet to anarchy, cannot be imagined."
Really? If that really is the case, then why is it that most liberals are so in favor of gun bans? Why is it that most liberals want to take my guns away if they have that live and let live attitude? Why is it, if they really have that live and let live attitude that most liberals are trying to tell me how to live, where to live, and with what restrictions I should live with? If these liberals really have that live and let live attitude why are they trying to jam that health carfe bill down everyones throat, even those who do not want it?
If these liberals really have that live and let live attitude, then stay out of my gun rights. Stay out of my way of life. Stay out of my personal beliefs. And stay out of my health care.
Americans do NOT learn from history. We learn the hard way; we repeat history. This is the way once again - we are primed to live through violence and chaos.
The billionaires have written our laws for several decades, laws that support immunity from responsibility. These "aristocrats" pave the way to anarchy that the gun cult is itchin' for; of course the guys' action-packed fantasies are used against them.
Americans have voted against their own interests for a long time. Americans will need to see once again the videos on TV of terrible, ugly violence in our streets -- Only then will they believe that they have been lied to, and that they have been sorely used. There will be "collateral" damage, as the gun cult likes to reference; but this time it will be themselves, along with many others innocent of stupid, irresponsible, fantastical visions.
From the article: In 1958 ... Ralph McGill ... It is not possible to preach lawlessness and restrict it ... Let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take the law into their hands.
Josh Horwitz: I have little hope that the new crop of nullifiers will heed this lesson, but for leaders of both parties who still love the Constitution and deplore violence, McGill's sage advice is an invitation to condemn those taking us to the precipice of disaster.
Oh, wait. That kind of "nullification" is good, right?
Each time a state approves the decriminalization of marijuana it is a nullification of Federal law.
Each time a state approves same sex marriage it is a nullification of Federal law.
Apparently Liberal nullification is completely different in some minds from Conservative nullification.
When Republicans do it, it is bad...
Just like all the hate groups who talk big, they are really cowards who do their evil behind masks and at night. They try to hide their actions.
Government is not benevolent. It is far too blunt an instrument to be used in that fashion. This forgetting isn't new. It dates back to the New Deal:
"the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor." ( http://ricochet.com/main-feed/American-Catholicism-s-Pact-With-the-Devil ).
When we tried to use government as a charity, all we actually succeeded in doing was destroying - the black family, the inner cities, almost the nation itself as we stare bankruptcy in the face. All of the errors we've made will be undone by the reality of bankruptcy if we don't fix it any other way.
Sometimes democracies and mobs of people ask for tyranny or are scared into tyranny...But we were built as a republic, and if a constitution is to change - that's why you have the Amendment process. That is what he meant by "alter their constitutions." For people to pass laws which take away the rights of most for the benefit of few - this has no place in our countries traditions nor is it healthy for our citizens - as proven by the results.
So, back to the ballot box! There'll be a lot of that before Ladd's worries even start to look real.
Semper fi