Strike Three! You're out nullified! Setting Tyranny Free part 6

Looking at the news today, there are a lot of things that need to be covered... but none of it from the news today. Why take the time? Liars & fools doing what liars & fools do: trying to fool all of the people all of the time.

I should waste time my time and yours with that?

Nah. Better to help some of the people to recognize how too many of the people are subverting what all of the people rely upon to live their own lives all of the time.

What we need to better understand in order to actually advance the cause of liberty, is how our best laid plans too often unwittingly aid in "Setting Tyranny Free", as with the first two posts (here and here) looking at John Locke's undiscovered error, and a too relevant case in point is where I left off with on the last post, examining the popular libertarian cure-all that, as it's proposed today, which is far worse than the disease itself,and cannot fail to quicken it: Nullification.

I've gone through modern nullification, beginning here, and replied to the first two of three summary points by its leading modern proponent, Thomas E. Woods, here and here, and I'll deal with the last point, today.

As I mentioned in the last post, Woods' three summary points are essentially the same single point, put three different ways - that there is no singular 'We The People', and that instead we have 'We The States', each of which have their own peoples, which have no binding relation to, or responsibility for, the nation which our Constitution constituted, 226 years ago. Since I've already answered that twice already, I'll keep this post brief (well, for me), so we can move on to a more fundamental problem and then solutions - and yes, there are solutions.

Here is how Woods puts it in his third summary point:

• "3) Since the peoples of the states are the sovereigns, then when the federal government exercises a power of dubious constitutionality on a matter of great importance, it is they themselves who are the proper disputants, as they review whether their agent was intended to hold such a power. No other arrangement makes sense."[emphasis mine]

Actually, lots of other things make sense.

For We The People to have formed a more perfect union, for the purposes of then having individual states singly ignoring, disputing or thwarting any decision (law) made and passed by the whole of that union, because their particular state disagreed with it... that would truly make no sense whatsoever.

But such a claim makes even less sense, when you consider that the Constitution was originally entered into by the original thirteen colonies in order to replace the Articles of Confederation, which actually did refer to the states as fully sovereign and independent powers, capable of thwarting the intentions and laws proposed by all of the rest of the states together. A large part of why they wanted to replace the original Articles of Confederation, was because they enabled each state to behave as an independent, fully sovereign power, thereby preventing any coherent and unified laws being passed between the several states.

And more to the point: their unilateral confederacy did not work!

And since we are not a confederacy of independent states stitched together by a unilateral contract, and since the 'PeopleS' of 'We The States', are not entities which exist under our Constitution, then they obviously cannot be 'the proper disputants' for reviewing 'their agent', and to claim it, makes no sense at all. And BTW, to the obnoxiously repeated 'What, do you really think the states would have signed onto an agreement that limited their sovereignty?', yes, you patronizing putz, I do. The Constitution was clearly, deliberately, and openly designed to delimit the sovereignty of the states within its framework, and far from that being a latter day interpretation on the part of James Madison & everyone else since 1830, that intention was stated right out in the open by he, Hamilton, Jay and the rest in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere while selling the constitution during the process of ratification, as this in Federalist #62 demonstrates:

"In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic."

Language such as 'the portion of sovereignty remaining' and 'residual sovereignty', are not the stealthy sort of language best used to trick the people of the several states into thinking that their states will remain fully sovereign and independent states! The states do retain sovereignty, but only as much as can be retained within the larger government our Constitution defines.

Else, why bother with abandoning the Articles of Confederation? It wasn't just to have change for change' sake, but for a purpose.

The old Articles were replaced because the one dimensional idea of state sovereignty had proved to be a failure, which was why the constitutional convention was called, which was why the Constitution was submitted to We The People instead of We The States, and all of which was debated before the proposed constitution was ratified, and ratified for that purpose, because the idea of single states nullifying the actions of all of the states, was not only found to be not working, it was eventually understood to be downright wrong.

Hamilton in Federalist #22, in speaking against the Articles where each state really was sovereign and able to nullify the laws of the whole, touches upon that principle of separate sovereignty which nullifiers are blindly urging us towards, at our peril, today,

""But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements."

The Founders, the Framers, the Ratifiers, were concerned that such solitary actions continued over time, would obstruct the creation of a uniform set of laws which were understood more and more to be indispensable to upholding the Individual Rights of all Americans.

What they sought, the reason for appealing to We The People, rather than 'We The States', was a union established under the authority of all of the people, so that no subset of them needed to fear the unlawful acts of another; their understanding of history, ancient and recent, taught them that their continued liberty required them to ordain and establish a single unified constitution with which to structure our laws around and under, but through the Constitution they devised a method which was neither confederate, nor national, an important point which nullifiers have the greatest difficulty in grasping: our system is neither entirely federal, nor national, but something new, something different - a blending of the two.

Granted, it's not the easiest system to explain, though Madison gave it a shot here in Federalist #39

"...The mode provided by the plan of the convention is not founded on either of these principles. In requiring more than a majority, and principles. In requiring more than a majority, and particularly in computing the proportion by STATES, not by CITIZENS, it departs from the NATIONAL and advances towards the FEDERAL character; in rendering the concurrence of less than the whole number of States sufficient, it loses again the FEDERAL and partakes of the NATIONAL character.

The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national."

As I pointed out in the last post, the first three words of the Constitution, We The People, as opposed to 'We The States, was the very first issue dealt with, and resolved, during the ratification debates. For some reason nullifiers refuse to see the United States as a union, maybe because that view enables them to see "a rogue federal government" as a discrete foreign unit which they can then claim to have no part in, and no responsibility for; or perhaps in their minds it frees them from feeling any responsibility to their sister states, as was the case that earlier semi-functional and loosely interlocking compact.

Personally I'm not nearly so forgiving of my fellow Americans, nor so willing to push the blame on others, as Nullifiers are want to do.

But pursuing such fantasies and easy excuses will not get us any closer to making any real progress towards re-establishing a nation of Laws, and not the unbridled powers of men. What does it mean if you are willing to see "a rogue federal government", but are equally willing to assert that the laws don't have to be followed by those states who don't want to? Does a state require no other authority than its own, to declare a law that has been otherwise constitutionally passed by the congressional representatives of a majority of the states... to be unconstitutional? Under what authority, mutually recognized by your fellow states, can you claim the power to invalidate a law made by the majority of your fellow states and signed into law by a president who has been elected by an electoral majority of the entire nation?

There can be no 'authority' to do that, such a thing is an exhibition of power, and nothing more. Does it even get any more 'rogue' than that?

If we are truly seeking after solutions, it is that charter which We The People brought into being, as well as the understanding which it developed from, which needs to be consulted, and followed, in addressing the questionability of laws passed in its name, not the petulant objections of those who failed to make their case during those legislative sessions in which all of the people of all of the states were represented, or by elevating pure power over the Law, even bad law.

That's three strikes, nullifiers, you're out... unless you want to get a jump on things and question my call?

But that's highly unlikely, because what I've found in debating nullifiers, is that real understanding and real solutions are not what they are after. I say that, because each time I provide not just an answer to their assertions and objections, but the reasoning for them, and instead of refuting them or responding with a better argument, they simply brush them aside and retort with something such as this:

• "Sometimes I wonder if guys like you really understand just how bad things are."
• "I'd like to know if you plan on handing over your guns if the Senate ratifies the anti-gun U.N. treaty?"
• "If single state nullification is bad, what if 30 states nullified a law?"
• "What if the federal govt passed a law saying your child was a slave?!"
• "What is your limit?! What will it take for you to fight bact?!"
• "If you lived in the 1700s, would you have sided with Sam Adams and Company or with King George?"

In other words, what they are after is not an answer or a solution, but an excuse. They are frustrated with the undeniably unconstitutional laws being passed by our federal government - and with good reason, as am I - they are deeply concerned by the steadily increasing erosion of our Rights - and with good reason, as am I - but rather than working with and building upon the ideas our constitution was constituted upon, what the nullifiers are really after, is a plausible rationalization for retaliating with their own misuse of power, exerted against those many federal laws which are indeed anti-constitutional in spirit and in fact.

I can hardly blame them.

But no single state can choose to disregard the laws which govern it, delimit and restrain its power, without becoming an outlaw and putting their own people in even deeper thrall to unrestrained power. And being joined by 20 or thirty others doesn't change that one whit. No progress will be found through trumped up sovereignities and manufactured peoples, only disunion, even weaker laws and more emboldened and unrestrained abuses of power can follow, and all of our rights and all of our liberties will be sucked down into that whirlpool together - a union, after all.

We have many problems, but only one supreme law of the land, and we require a unified constitutional solution to resolve them, not fragmented rebellions which set out to nullify us all.

If we truly want a solution to our problems, we've got to confront the nature of our problems, which means going to the nature of what Law is, and the Declaration of Independence's charges of 'Pretended Legislation', provides the most fruitful path towards just such an actual solution. I'll turn to that in the next post.

Happy Birthday ya old Constitution! And many un-nullified returns! - Touching on Tyranny pt.5

Happy Birthday ya old Constitution! And many un-nullified returns! - Touching on Tyranny pt.5 
If you, as with some friends of mine, are wondering why I'm bothering with this nullification business, what with all the issues facing us today - Obamacare, budget bust, 2nd Amendment issues, Syria... - it is because very soon now, we are going to have to fight back against the cultural forces arrayed against our Liberty, and in that conflict simply defending our ground is not going to cut it. Our Rights and The Law whose purpose is to support them, must be thrust like daggers in the faces of those seeking to eliminate them, and if we want even a shred of a chance at succeeding, we are going to have to respond in some other way than politics as usual. We are going to have to wage a soundly pro-constitutional assault that will be able to strike our foes on several fronts at once, and if our side continues attempting to advance our position through faulty means, we will fail. In order to be able to effectively focus on the worthwhile measures, we've got to rid ourselves of the false cures that abound out there, distracting and sapping our strength, and the modern urge towards Nullification is one of the worst of them.

In the previous post in this series, I was looking into the first of Tom Woods' three summary points in support of his concept of nullification, interestingly, as you'll see, they are all variations on the theme of a state's unbreached sovereignty... which... was also one of the driving issues behind the creation and ratification of the Constitution, 226 years ago - Happy Birthday Constitution! - more on that in a few inches.

As with most of the modern day nullifiers, Woods asserts that our Constitution constituted what amounts to a confederacy of independent, wholly sovereign states, each populated with their own people, rather than a Union, and that while the Constitution affords these sovereign states the opportunity to share the burden in issues of defense & such, it can be opted out of whenever that alien-entity-which-states-have-no-responsibility-for:The-Federal-Govt, should intrude beyond what any state should decide is kosher. In the last post I pointed out how the first three words of the Constitution, 'We The People', effectively refutes this first assertion, as clearly today as it did 226 years ago (Happy Birthday Constitution!), and you are of course welcome to chime in on that aspect of the issue there.

Oddly enough though, most of the people who disagree with me on this, haven't felt up to stating their case, or challenging mine... but, as it appears they don't really have one, perhaps that's to be expected.

Better luck this time.

Woods' next summary point is that:

• "2) In the American system no government is sovereign. The peoples of the states are the sovereigns. It is they who apportion powers between themselves, their state governments, and the federal government. In doing so they are not impairing their sovereignty in any way. To the contrary, they are exercising it."

The quick answer is: Yes to the first sentence, No to the second, and No to the implications of the third. Yes to the last two... but only after the preceding two have been corrected.

Betcha wish I could leave it at that... not gonna happen ;-)

A Sullied Sovereignty
As you can see, the wonder of sovereignty is appealed to again here, "The peoples of the states are the sovereigns. It is they who apportion powers between themselves, their state governments, and the federal government.", and again it is misrepresented and misapplied, and in more than one sense.

In the American system, 'We The People', note the singular, not plural, People not Peoples, are sovereign, again, singular, not plural, and in ratifying the constitution, in entering into a union of states, and the status, authority and sovereignty which those original thirteen states 'enjoyed' prior to the Constitution being ratified, was radically changed, and changed in part because people went from that of many particular peoples in many states, into one people, which, though retaining their several subdivisions of states, would from then on be one people, We The People.

Be clear on this: the sovereignty of the states as they stood before ratification of the constitution, was indisputably altered, intentionally so, by ratifying the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land. In the previous post I went over the revolutionary nature of those first three words of the Constitution, and the controversy they caused at the time. There are also other clauses as well in the Constitution, where that separate, unalloyed sovereignty, is clearly altered by the text of the Constitution which We The People debated and ratified. It was recognized to be altered by it, and as that alteration was controversial it was debated, and in the end it was ratified all the same, because it was judged to be superior to the state they were in as completely simple, single, solitary, sovereign states.

For those of you who harken to the siren song of unbreached sovereignty, you'd do well to read a letter circulated before the Constitutional Convention, by Madison, "Vices of the Political System of the United States", which makes very clear the dangerous nature of the then sovereign states. No fewer than 11 points,

1. Failure of the States to comply with the Constitutional requisitions
2. Encroachments by the States on the federal authority.
3. Violations of the law of nations and of treaties.
4. Trespasses of the States on the rights of each other.
5. want of concert in matters where common interest requires it.
6. want of guaranty to the States of their Constitutions & laws against internal violence.
7. want of sanction to the laws, and of coercion in the Government of the Confederacy
8. Want of ratification by the people of the articles of Confederation.
9. Multiplicity of laws in the several States.
10. mutability of the laws of the States.
11. Injustice of the laws of States.

Each of which he gives brief examples for, and he even goes on to identify a couple of their causes, which, not surprisingly, aren't very far from the same causes plaguing us today,

"These causes lie 1. in the Representative bodies. 2. in the people themselves."

If you've bought the lines of Woods & Co., that the Founders were singularly attached to the idea of unbreached sovereignty of independent states, and haven't even done so much homework as to look into why it was the Founders left the state of their states, for the state of our states under the Constitution - then look especially to the 2nd cause noted above.

Our Founders lived in states of unbreached sovereignty. They did not find it as appealing as our modern day nullifiers. They didn't however seek to replace that state for a National one, but of a mixture of the two, something wholly new upon the world stage, and it is imperative that you familiarize yourself with it.

One of those means of finding a new ground between confederacy of states and a national state, was one which touches upon #6 above, and it was one of those initial clauses of alarm for those who feared the Constitution was proposing a national government; it wasn't, but these clauses, such as Article IV section 4, needed to be examined and debated (and they were). It says:

"The United States shall guarrantee to every State a Republican form of government."

Take a moment and consider what that statement so clearly portends: it cannot be (honestly) denied that this places the Constitution in a position of authority over the very nature of the states constituted under it. No state could possibly be considered to retain an unalloyed independent sovereignty, when the form of government which that state might have otherwise expected to be able to choose for itself, has been so explicitly withheld and restricted to them, by another body. That is a radical alteration to the nature of sovereignty retained by any state entering into this union, be they of the original thirteen, or any of the thirty-seven states that have joined into the union, since then. And yes, this too was recognized to be an abridgment of their dear sovereignty, at the time.

Because it was seen by many to be alarming, it, as well as the other clauses, was argued over during ratification. One example of that, from the Massachusetts anti-Federalists:

"William Symmes to Capt. Peter Osgood, Jr.

15 Nov. 1787Storing 4.5.2
"The United States shall guarrantee to every State a Republican form of government."

Republics are either aristocratical or democratical: and the United States guarranty one of these forms to every State. But I disapprove of any guarranty in the matter. For though it is improbable, that any State will choose to alter the form of its government; yet it ought to be the privelege of every State to do as it will in this affair. If this regulation be admitted, it will be difficult to effect any important changes in State government. For the other States will have nearly as much to do with our government as we ourselves. And what Congress may see in our present constitution, or any future amendments, not strictly republican in their opinions, who can tell? Besides it is of no importance to any State how the government of any other State is administered, whether by a single magistrate or two, or by a king.

I therefore presume, that, as this clause meddles too much with the independence of the several States, so also it answers no valuable end to any or to the whole."

Fears such as these, and those expressed by Patrick Henry & others which I noted in the previous post, that the states would lose their accustomed sovereignty by ratifying the Constitution, were real fears, but they were fears which thorough discussion and debate ultimately concluded to be either wrongly perceived, or besides the point. It was gradually discovered that the Constitution did not mean only a National government, any more than it meant carrying forward with some form of an improved confederacy of distinctly sovereign ones - it meant something new and something more than either of those.

What ratifying the Constitution meant, was what it said, that the peoples of the several states were agreeing to unite, and that as We The People, would form a more perfect union, one which enabled them to retain their separate states, though in a manner that was reformed through the Constitution, strengthening the liberty and prosperity, of all.

An Ordered Union
It was unavoidable, and desirable, that some of the individual states traditional sovereign powers would be ceded to the union of states. Powers of war and treaty, such as in Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, had to be relinquished. Even the power, as in the just noted Article IV section 4, to define themselves in any form other than a republican nature - had to be relinquished. In order to 'form a more perfect union - they did not do so lightly, and they did not do so without cause, and they did not do so without a great volume of debate. But the Constitution was formed so that a federal government would provide a reasonable means (and alternative to conflict and war) for all of the states to create, adhere, challenge and have recourse to, a common set of laws that could be trusted to be held supreme in all of the states of the union.

One of the many benefits of doing so, was that it enabled each state to share in the common defense and combined commerce, and Rights under law, and to do so while enjoying the support of their fellow states in securing these powers & rights for their citizenry, rather than having to fear the encroachment of those states (more on that later) upon the same.

While Woods and the nullifiers can't seem to grasp the concept of a Union of individual States, it really shouldn't be that difficult to understand. I went into this at some detail in the previous post, but if it's still hazy you might try looking at the same concept though in an entirely different context, such as that which is the basis for "Roberts Rules of Order". Seriously.

Anyone who has ever been part of a body of people which needed to organize themselves for effective discussion and action, has probably used this classic on enabling a body of people to do just that - as did the Framers in framing the Constitution - and as such you should already be familiar with it. If you read any narrative of the Federal Convention, you constantly read of how the convention " resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole", or into smaller Committees of Style, etc. Both the parts, and the whole, come from the union of all of the people involved, who then organize themselves as convenience and efficiency demand. It is possible, and common for many peoples to come together to form a single people, and then, without losing that singular nature, still resolve themselves into numerous distinct bodies, which interact, or return to one whole, as the needs of their purpose demands. It is almost commonplace to do so.

What was uncommon, was that our Founders realized that that same concept could be applied, not just to organizing a meeting, but to the organization of an entire nation, and they did just that,

"...in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...".

Is that really that hard to grasp?

Unhand We...
It is an indisputable fact that prior to ratification, the thirteen original states were independent sovereign states, who had confederated under the Articles of Confederation, to associate with the other states. It is also an indisputable fact, that that confederacy, and the unalloyed sovereignty which made it so dangerously ineffective, was ultimately acknowledged to have failed - hence the Constitution being written and submitted for ratification to We The People.

When Woods speaks of "It is they who apportion powers ", he implies that his imagined several sovereigns have a direct hand in government, but both Madison and Hamilton noted that the distinctive feature of the Constitution, the feature that set it apart from all other ideas of governance in history, was the fact that neither "The People", nor the states, had any direct hand in the Constitution's govt, apportioning power or otherwise. From The Federalist Papers, papers written, it must be remembered, as a means of explaining, promoting and selling the Constitution to We The People during the ratification debates, Federalist #63:

"From these facts, to which many others might be added, it is clear that the principle of representation was neither unknown to the ancients nor wholly overlooked in their political constitutions. The true distinction between these and the American governments, lies IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, from any share in the LATTER, and not in the TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE from the administration of the FORMER. The distinction, however, thus qualified, must be admitted to leave a most advantageous superiority in favor of the United States...."

A central design feature of our Constitution, is that the Sovereign, what in Britain would be the King, and in America was to be We The People, were removed from active involvement in the machinery of power, for the same reason it was thought best to remove a king, as much as possible, from the hands on exercise of power - the lure to use it for your own satisfaction is too tempting. In our constitutional representative republican form of government, the actual sovereign doesn't exercise power, is instead to elect responsible, capable members to govern in their stead, because delegation and representation introduce a degree of separation from power, a buffer against impulse, so that cooler and more (hopefully) reasoned hands would be responsible for the exercise of governmental power, and who would themselves be answerable to a higher authority.

Not to the states, not to the peoples, but to the Sovereign, We The People.

Years later, in Madison's "Notes on Nullification", where he hotly opposed the entire notion of the then new twist on Nullification by the likes of John C. Calhoun, he pointed out a key flaw in the assumptions about Sovereignty which nullification rests upon:

"The main pillar of nullification is the assumption that sovereignty is a unit, at once indivisible and unalienable; that the states therefore individually retain it entire as they originally held it, and, consequently that no portion of it can belong to the U.S ...."

This is an extremely important point, and applies to all of the points made by Woods & Co; they behave as if the states are in exactly the same state, in relation to We The People, as they were before the Constitution. That is simply not the case. Prior to We The People, when a legislator of one state or the other referred to 'The People', they were of course referring to only the people of their state, but after ratification, by means of the ratification of We The People, it referred to all of the people of the nation, whole, and within which, the States resided.

Madison's point continued:

"...But is not the Constn. itself necessarily the offspring of a sovn authy? What but the highest pol: authy. a sovereign authy, could make such a Constn.? a constn. wch. makes a Govt.; a Govt. which makes laws; laws which operate like the laws of all other govts.by a penal & physical force, on the individuals subject to the laws; and finally laws declared to be the Supreme law of the land; anything in the Constn or laws of the individual State notwithstanding.

And where does the sovy. which makes such a Constn reside. It resides not in a single state but in the people of each of the several states, uniting with those of the others in the express & solemn compact which forms the Constn To the extent of that compact or Constitution therefore, the people of the several States must be a sovereign as they are a united people.

In like manner, the constns. of the States, made by the people as separated into States, were made by a sovereign authy by a sovereignty residing in each of the States, to the extent of the objects embraced by their respective constitutions. And if the states be thus sovereign, though shorn of so many of the essential attributes of sovereignty, the U. States by virtue of the sovereign attributes with wch they are endowed, may, to that extent, be sovereign, tho’ destitute of the attributes of which the States are not shorn.

Such is the political system of the U. S. de jure & de facto; and however it may be obscured by the ingenuity and technicalities of controversial commentators, its true character will be sustained by an appeal to the law and the testimony of the fundamental charter."

There is an unsettling implication of this nature of sovereignty in America, which Madison points out, and that is that it is not possible to blame the government, without first looking directly and deeply into the mirror at yourself. I've been coming to the opinion lately that this, more than anything else, illustrates why Nullification has gained such popularity in recent years, it enables us to blame someone else, whether the Federal Govt, or one political party or another, while giving ourselves a pass. But the truth is, that under our form of government, if you, a member of the true sovereign power, are unhappy with the direction of our government, to the extent that you have not yourself done your utmost to awaken, inform and move the opinions of your fellow Americans, then that is a measure of your own responsibility, or guilt, for the state of our union.

The attempt to make something, of nothing
Woods and his supporters, annoyed that an older and wiser James Madison attacked Calhoun's brand of Nullification as stingingly as he did, they attack Madison himself for being older and wiser, casting aspersions upon his age and some such supposed motivations they suspected him to have acquired in the 1830's, as opposed to his 'more legitimate' (in their eyes) opinions as expressed in the 'Kentucky Resolutions' as proposed in 1798. Here's an example:

"Madison’s later protests are feeble and incoherent. As Gutzman put it, “One of Madison’s most notable ‘tactical adjustments was his campaign, as a retired former president, to becloud the events of 1798 by denying they had meant what they plainly had meant.”"

What Woods & Co. do not do, that I have seen, is attempt to find fault with either Madison's logic in opposing the later interpretation of nullification or sovereignty - that of 1830, as opposed to 1798 - or his assessment of the nature of sovereignty, instead they attack his age and up hidden motivations he may have had in the 1830's, as opposed to 1798. But simply calling his later protests 'incoherent', without showing why, without pointing to or demonstrating the flaw in his argument, is nothing but an ad hominem, a logical fallacy, and is itself, incoherent.

Aside from the obvious motivations Madison surely did have, such as wishing to defend the Constitution which he and his fellow framers put such effort into creating and ratifying, the fact is that he does not, in 1830, contradict his positions of 1798... or of 1781 for that matter. Madison never supported the idea of a state countering or obstructing the laws of the union of states under the Constitution. He and Jefferson did feel that there needed to be action taken by the states in order to push back against the federal govt, yes, and so the Kentucky Resolutions were proposed, in hopes of stirring up matching sentiment in their sister states so that like-minded congressional action would follow from Congress!

Take a look at those words: The Kentucky Resolutions were proposed, there is a vital sense, and especially vital to Woods' reading of them, that is not contained in either of those words - Action. No nullifying actions , in the modern sense, meaning state laws passed to directly obstruct and confront federal laws, were taken against the Alien & Sedition laws!

What is even more interesting is that Woods never seems to consider the possibility that the nullification movement of the 1830's might just possibly have been the period which had actually lost the thread of understanding which the earlier period had a better grasp of, the modern nullifiers never seem to consider that it is their later interpretation which has been corrupted away from, the movement of 1798, which Jefferson & Madison led! For Woods & Co., it is simply 'self evident' that what they wish (need?) Jefferson & Madison  to have meant by Nullification, is better expressed by the later pro-slavers, such as Calhoun, of the 1830's, than by Jefferson & Madison themselves, in 1798. But this view can only be made by equivocating between what Madison and Jefferson clearly understood nullification to be, and which they spelled out quite clearly in the resolutions themselves, as having the same meaning and intent as what Woods & Co. cast it as today, which is deceptive at best.

Madison clearly meant what the Kentucky Resolutions said, to 'Protest the Federal Overreach'. What he & Jefferson had hoped to accomplish through the resolutions, was to stir up grassroots opinion throughout their sister states, in hopes that those states representatives would refrain from aiding in the execution of the objectionable federal laws, and to stir up, from the bottom up, a public outcry that would insist upon their representatives in congress effecting change, constitutionally, in congress, to repeal or replace those onerous federal laws.

Unlike the modern form being promoted by Woods & others, the Kentucky Resolutions did not mean, in any way shape or form, to obstruct or to pit state law against federal law. See how the harsher of the two pens, Jefferson's, made it abundantly clear that its purpose was only to protest them,

"... it would consider a silent acquiesecence as highly criminal: That although this commonwealth as a party to the federal compact; will bow to the laws of the Union, yet it does at the same time declare, that it will not now, nor ever hereafter, cease to oppose in a constitutional manner, every attempt from what quarter soever offered, to violate that compact:

AND FINALLY, in order that no pretexts or arguments may be drawn from a supposed acquiescence on the part of this commonwealth in the constitutionality of those laws, and be thereby used as precedents for similar future violations of federal compact; this commonwealth does now enter against them, its SOLEMN PROTEST."[emphasis mine]

Wood's entire rebuttal to this, that I've seen (and while I've read several of his essays, I've not yet finished his book), is saying "What, do you think, that they went through all of that, JUST FOR A NON-BINDING RESOLUTION?!!!", and the answer to that silly question, found entirely in what they did say, and what they did not say, In Their Resolutions, is Yes, Tom, that is exactly what they did mean and intend, and had they intended something more by them, these two, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, Father of the Constitution, revolutionaries, masters of language, philosophy & politics that they were... do you actually think that they settled for a non-binding resolution when they secretly thought it was right to do more? How can you possibly believe that if they had believed more was required of them, that it was right to do more, or that if they had intended more, that they would not have said and stated so?

Do you really think that these two, that they would not have moved political mountains in order to do more, if they truly felt it was their duty to do so? Do you really think that if they thought it was right, proper and wise for individual states to counter, obstruct, and oppose the union... you really think that would not have done just that? Seriously?

Yes, they were alarmed, they were frustrated, and they deeply desired that the rest of We The People saw things as they did... but the fact was, they did not see things as they did, and Jefferson & Madison realized that fact was far more than an error to be brushed aside and nullified, they realized that that judgment, in error though it may have been, was the very basis of representative government, and it was only properly battled through persuasion - first by the Kentucky & Virginia Resolutions, and after those failed, by a political campaign which brought about the Jeffersonian Revolution (why do you suppose Washington, Jefferson & Lincoln... and that other guy... are on Mt. Rushmore?).

To be blunt, what it comes down to, is that Woods & Co. rely upon your ignorance of the Kentucky & Virginia Resolutions, in order to transform Jefferson & Madison's intentions, into legitimizing support for their own purposes. Read the resolutions and read Jefferson's own thoughts on the matter, and judge for yourself.

Signs from the times
What the nullifiers also rarely mention, is that that initial attempt at nullification (which was a resolution of two states, not a single one... a small point, but worth noting nonetheless, as 'single state nullification' is what is commonly being urged today), was itself nullified by the vocal opposition of their sister states who reminded them that a law had been constitutionally passed by the union, and that they felt that no individual state had any business opposing what had already been decided and voted upon by all of the states.

Jefferson & Madison's proposals were roundly condemned by their fellow 'sovereign' states, The Virginia & Kentucky resolutions being held up as successful examples of nullification, were not seen as being all that noble or successful by the other supposedly sovereign states of the union. The other states' responses were not too sympathetic at the thought of one or two 'sovereigns' attempting to impose their judgment over the issue decided by all of the other 'sovereign' states together, such as this from Massachusetts:

"That the people in that solemn compact, which is declared to be the supreme law of the land, have not constituted the state legislatures the judges of the acts or measures of the Federal Government, but have confided to them the power of proposing such amendments of the Constitution, as shall appear to them necessary to the interests, or conformable to the wishes of the people whom they represent."

One synopsis points out:

"The state responses to the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions disappointed the Republicans. For example, Delaware considered the Resolves an "unjustifiable interference with the General Government." Rhode Island declared the Alien and Sedition Acts to be constitutional insofar as they promoted the general welfare of the United States. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire asserted that the Supreme Court was the ultimate authority for deciding the constitutionality of acts of Congress. Massachusetts proclaimed that liberty of the press was not interfered with, because true freedom of the press forbade only prior restraints. To their chagrin, Madison and Jefferson received not one favorable answer from the seven states that responded. The legislatures of the Republican-dominated southern states did not answer at all. According to Jefferson scholar Dumas Malone, the replies from the North and lack of responses from the South were not accurate gauges of public opinion. In any event, Kentucky reaffirmed its resolution, and Madison delivered his report of 1800, which considered the responses of the states at length and remains one of the clearest expositions of the Constitution."

Jefferson & Madison's Resolutions, however well intended, were not very well received. George Washington was so furious over them, that in a letter to Patrick Henry, he described their efforts as:

"... systematically and pertinaciously pursued, which must eventually dissolve the Union or produce coercion..."

I'm of course not supporting the Alien & Sedition Acts, but I am pointing out that while the 'nullification' which was directed towards the law, a law which was debated, passed and signed into law, had a total of only two states supporting it, Kentucky & Virginia, which were roundly condemned by their sister states for having done so. After participating in lawful debate, these two states were seen as attempting to impose a legislative do-over, after the legislative process they participated in didn't turn out as they wished.

Whether or not Jefferson & Madison intended it that way, the takeaway is that they were perceived as attempting to act outside of the law (I don't think their actions were, but that's not the point here), and that was understood to be the greatest of threats to all of the states and to the Sovereign.

The Resolutions were not only not a great success, they weren't a success at all, at least not if successfully nullifying a federal law was what success is meant to mean. In Virginia itself, James Thomson Callender was tried, convicted, sentenced and fined under the Alien & Sedition acts which the nullifies claim that Jefferson & Madison nullified.

Hellooo... clue!

With the lack of support, and outright condemnation of the resolutions by their sister states, Jefferson & Madison dropped the idea of particular states attempting to rouse their fellow states into re-acting against the legislation of the union of states, and instead re-directed their actions towards the opinions of We The People. That particular approach was a much greater success, as the Alien & Sedition acts provided fuel for the next national election, which Jefferson won, providing him the opportunity to advance beyond fragmented protest, an onto a unified assault with a legislative meat-axe upon what he saw as Federalist Courts, see the Repeal Act, and The Judiciary Act of 1802, and that is a precedent which, IMHO, I'd like to see a whole lot more of (and which we may have just seen an echo of in Colorado)!

Again, I have no problem whatsoever with States making clear their protest of federal laws which they view as unconstitutional, as long as they are made in a constitutional manner. Examples of that can be found in several states recent measures that legalize marijuana, and withdraw state support for federal bans, or the California County Sheriff, John D’Agostini, who stripped agents of the U.S. Forest Service of their law-enforcement powers in his county. State agencies make up a significant portion of the Federal Govt's ability to act, and if those state agencies abstain from participating in objectionable federal programs, that is a protest which cannot help but have real results, and which would draw serious attention to, and be a legitimate and lawful exercise of state powers, in order to counter perceived federal overreach, without pitting the State's powers, against the Federal Govt's powers.

But that is not what the modern nullifiers have in mind when they promote 'Nullification', they, as in Missouri's bill (vetoed, and thankfully sustained (though that 'success' is nearly as disturbing as if it had been overridden - more later)), that would have had local police and federal agents pulling guns on each other to defend 'their' law, as if it were nothing more than a turf war between rival gangs.

Yes, bad laws must be dealt with, but we they must be dealt with lawfully, or the law itself is lost. We'd do well to learn from our history, as Madison did, and leave the attempt to pit power against power outside the structure of law, far, far, behind us.

And with that, I'll call 'Strike two!' against the nullifiers 2nd summary point (care to dispute my call? Comments are open), and if I want this post out on Constitution Day, I'm afraid the third point, and strike, will have to wait till the next post.

Setting Tyranny Free

In case you haven't noticed, tyranny is all around us today, unfortunately too many of us mistake the tyrannical actions in the headlines for the actual source of tyranny which is rarely, if ever, noted in those same headlines. That truer tyranny is far more prevalent than even our recent headlines would suggest, such as the 'hot five' I pointed out in the last post ("Touching on Tyranny - A Declaration of whose Independence?"), or the bumper crop of NSA, IRS & State dept.. scandals that have leaked since my tornado two-step & they are coming to light seemingly daily from a slew of government agencies - but by mistaking the actions for the actor, and with our attention directed towards the minions and away from the actual tyrant, the guilty one continually gets away, free to tyrannize us another day.

And no, I still don't mean Obama. The confusion comes in part from the fact that Tyranny in a Republic wears a strikingly different mask, in the early stages anyway, than it does in the more familiar despotic governments of the banana, tin horn or royal crown variety, and when you focus so hard on finding someone to pin it on - you're not only going to miss it, but risk being overpowered by a tyranny that even the most power mad dictator can only yearn for. I gave one example in the last post which, to my mind, comes much closer to identifying the real tyranny in our midst, closer even than that of the IRS's harassment of (conservative) 501(c)(4)applicants, or the NSA snooping, and that was the recent case of Eric Holder's DOJ going out of their way to reverse the political asylum that had already been granted to the Romelke family. Haven't heard of the Romelkes? How odd.

“The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy” Charles de Montesquieu quotes (French Politician and Philosopher, 1689-1755)

The Romelkes' are the German family who moved to America, legally and properly, in order to escape their government's threat to take their children from them for the crime of wanting to provide them with an education outside the control of the state. They were awarded asylum, largely because and deporting them back to Germany would clearly have meant that their children would swiftly be taken away from them - the threat of that is what caused them to emigrate to America.

Atty. General Holder's DOJ fought to reverse that judgment of asylum, because they don't feel that any 'human rights' were being violated by a government taking a parents children away from them, simply because of differences in educational policy.

What's that got to do with tyranny in America? Their judgment was not that the German government had a right to take a parents children away from them because of a dispute over educational policy, but that government as such, ours most definitely included, has the power and duty to take a parents children away from them, in cases of disputes over educational policy, for their own good.

Let that one sink in a bit.

Surprisingly, Atty. General Eric Holder is being honest in this case, believe it or not, and that should be a tip-off to you that 'human rights' have little to nothing to do with 'Individual Rights', and more often than not are in direct opposition to them (details of that will have to wait for a later post).

This is an Individual Rights issue, and not incidentally, Holder's DOJ is using the cover of Education as the means of carrying out a deliberate strike upon the nature, meaning and application of Individual Rights, asserting a power disturbingly similar to that which our own Common Core Curriculum Standards implies as well, though, at the moment, less visibly.

If you are not seeing the relation between government having the power to take a parents children from them for what it considers to be their own good, and the security of your individual rights... well... it's worth noting how the justification for one action tends to lead to more of the same. For instance, prior to our nation ratifying the 16th, 17th & 18th amendments on the federal level (which, respectively, put the govt 1st in line to your paycheck, destroyed the structure of federalism and outlawed alcohol 'for your own good'), nearly every state had, and most of them only shortly before, established local laws that made state approved schooling of our children mandatory. By law. That perhaps not so obvious (!) repudiation of property rights (which our Founders saw as the basis for all of our Individual Rights), were instrumental in ushering in the ProRegressive era, whose hallmark was opposition to individual rights in general, and property rights in particular, in favor of expanding the powers of the administrative state, in order to take an active hand in promoting "the greater good".

I know, I can hear some of you, 'Slippery Slope' fallacy, right? 'Before you know it! Cats & Dogs living together! Anarchy!', right? Correlation is not equal to Causation? True, true, all very true.

In other cases. But not this one.

This is not a case of a slippery slope, it is simply a recognition of the natural affects of intellectual gravity in drawing our actions acceptability down to the lowest conceptual level that can tolerably be reached. This is not simply causation, but the recognition of the fact that when restraints are removed, what they had once restrained is no longer being held back, and what they had once protected, will then be exposed to potential abuse - and how long is that 'potential' to remain unrealized? If you can't guess, you aren't looking at the matter properly, for just as leaving food uncovered doesn't cause ants and flies to descend upon it, that does not alter the fact that the removal of a restraining barrier is an implicit invitation to an infestation of pests.

Maintaining and upholding your Rights protects your property, life and lifestyle from the pests of power who hunger for them because they hold powerful influence over your life - your Rights are not just an impediment to their power, consuming them is itself an exercise, a savoring even, of Power. What your Rights protect, are the natural food and fuel of power. Failure to recognize that, similarly leads to Tyranny - not through causation, but through an unprotected, negligent, exposure of that which tyranny thrives upon - that which is important to your ability to live your life. Those who wield power are drawn to those ethical delicacies, and if you don't cover them you can rest assured that you will soon suffer an infestation of ever more powerful pests.

When We The People had acknowledged that the state could intrude upon our rights at the most fundamental level of the parent-child relationship, for 'the greater good', then, as water 'seeks' its lowest level, so does the political protection of our Rights seek the lowest allowable level so as to utilize and distribute the surplus, for the greater good, enabling the ProRegressive Era which followed from that normative settling.

Keep in mind that Eric Holder's DOJ has not exactly defined itself as having an interest in deporting aliens, nevertheless it has shown itself, in this case to be very interested in removing any official judgments from the record that might give the precedent for parents having more of a say in their children's education than the government does. That is something which the Obama administration's signature Common Core Curriculum Standards is heavily reliant upon, to say nothing of what that says of the idea of parents having a Right to their own children.

IOW - while We The People were all busy watching the glad hand of govt as it doles out goodies such as our 'free public education', the unseen and far more calloused hand was busily taking away our most fundamental rights, clapping and back slapping as it went.

Which brings us back to a quotation I included in the previous post from, John Locke, and from which I had removed one sentence - now's the time to look closer at that statement and the sentence I removed.

Lockeing in on Tyranny
Here's the quotation as I gave it then, first without the sentence in question, from John Locke's description of what tyranny, from his The Two Treatises of Civil Government (Hollis ed.) > CHAP. XVIII. Of TYRANNY.

" AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. [this sentence removed to be addressed below]. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion."

So well put, tyranny is "...the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to..."; such a pity that the next phrase undermines it so thoroughly.

And here is the following phrase,

"...And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage ..."[emphasis mine]

Do you see the implication? The idea that using power " for the good of those who are under it", as long as it's not for your own benefit, invites and encourages not only self deception, but a never before imagined total tyranny over the lives of others... for their own good. This get out of conscience free card, claims that as long as you are doing whatever it is you are doing is for the good of others, then you are absolved from cares over exercising power beyond right and over your fellow man. This should be terrifying because it is corrosive of all legal and ethical barriers and Rights as such. "For their own good" was not only the justification for ObamaCare itself today, but for state mandated public schooling, income tax withholding and it was the justification for the 18th amendment banning alcohol, not to mention for that venerable Legal icon of the left and right, Judge Oliver Wendel Holmes, in ruling that govt had the right to sterilize a woman (Buck vs Bell), for her, and our, own good - because HE thought it would be best for Her.

As I noted a few years ago:

"... a women considered to be feeble minded, should not be allowed to burden society with her off spring... that means that in his opinion, and that of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, he thought is sensible to force her having her tubes tied because she was, in the unstated opinion of the court 'poor white trash', or stated in the politicaly correct way of the day, 'feeble minded'. Holmes stated,

"It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

(BTW, she was subsequently found to not be 'feeble minded'. Sorry. You can read a bit more about these well intentioned proregressives in American history here.)..."

What the meaning of Locke's errant sentence invites, is what has proven to be the worst kind of tyranny over mankind, the kind where a person can feel good about being tyrannical, without a hint of guilt, because their tyrannical acts are excused as being done for your own good. Incidentally, I do forgive Locke for not having thought of that, since in his day, the modern sort of men who'd tyrannize you for your own good, had yet to make much of a splash in history. The tyrants of his age were more of the old school head-chopping-off sort, which he was intimately aware of. What is so dangerously seductive about that sentence, is that it enables people who believe they have your best interests in mind - and I do believe that most of the people behind the most tyrannical actions believe and tell themselves this - to put what they want for you, in place of whatever you might want for your own life, for your own good and happiness. You can just imagine the thinking of the DOJ, and others, running along the lines of this, can't you?:

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Thomas Jefferson: First Inagural Adddress, 1801

'Sure the Romelke family means well for their children, but what they don't realize, due to their narrow (and intolerant) beliefs, is that we know what is best, dut to our more scientific understanding, what is best for them, look, here's our statistics proving it. And not just for them, but for all our people, and if we allow them to do what they want, then people will get it into their minds that they can just do whatever they think is right too, despite what we can clearly see is best for them and for the greater good... and if that is allowed, then... people will do whatever they want... cats & dogs living together... anarchy!'

Locke's phrase was a 'common sense' observation which Locke failed to pursue the implications of. To his credit though, he did not fail to identify the keystone, which if withdrawn, brings gravity's free fall fully into effect, from John Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government (Hollis ed.) > CHAP. XVIII. Of TYRANNY.

" It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper only to monarchies; other forms of government are liable to it, as well as that: for wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was nothing better."

All of the ProRegressives plans for your own good, would be and should be (are: See the clauses under Article 1, Section 8) ) pre-empted by the constitutional restraints upon government, keeping it within its proper bounds of upholding and defending the rights of its citizens to live their own lives, rather than allowing govt to enlarge its powers to see that our lives reflect the life that government sees as being for their and the greater good.

Natural Law, and its barriers for keeping your property, which ultimately means, because it is derived from, the property which you have in your own life, safe and secure from those who'd seize it for their own purposes. From James Madison's essay on Property,

"...In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own..."

That is what Liberty is and what it represents, and it is only from an understanding of the full meaning and import of Natural Law, and the implications of violating it, that our Rights, and the Constitution itself, can be defended.

Tyranny Today
Power, freed from our understanding of Rights, is free to keep you unfree. As I said back in January, the actions so apparent under this administration, weren't assaults upon religion, free speech, the 2nd Amdt, freedom of association, or any other particular right, rather they have been a blatant attack upon Individual Rights as such, and especially their political root, Property Rights. And because they weren't called upon it then, we are seeing such a wide scale of abuse as the news brings to us afresh every day.

Tyranny results, just as water wets and fire burns, from not restraining power from that which it naturally seeks to extend itself over - whether it is for your personal benefit or theirs is immaterial. Marx wanted to abolish Private Property, he identified that as the basis for his entire 'philosophy', but he lacked the imagination to explain how, and amateurs like Lenin & Stalin, were to clumsy to conceive of any way other than brute force and murder, to carry it off.

Pro(re)gressives, on the other hand, saw how to pull it off, and that is what the administrative state accomplishes, it is the bureaucratic means of abolishing private property by removing the power of choice from the possession of material objects or lives. While you might nominally retain possession, and believing the fairy tale that 'possession is 9/10's of the law', they retain power over your right to use it as you see fit - what right of possession do you possibly retain, if you do not have the right to use it when and how you choose? Ironically, the Progressives saw what the original liberals (referred to as Classical Liberals today) only glimpsed, that Intellectual Property is the root of Property, and without the identification and defense of that - no property, and no Rights, can ever be secure, and no laws can consistently defend them.

The regulatory state is a violation of your rights by its very nature, and by its existence alone, and its purpose is to interpose the governments will over your ability to choose what to do with what is yours. If we do not abolish the IRS, the EPA, the Dept of Ed, etc., our government will use the mechanism of The Law, which was designed to protect our Rights, to wither them away.

And it was with that in mind, and in reply to those who attempted a defense of rights and property without fully understanding either, that Madison said:

"There cannot be different laws in different states on subjects within the compact without subverting its fundamental principles, and rendering it as abortive in practice as it would be incongruous in theory."

In a Republic, tyranny arises either through laws that have been written without respect for their true purpose - preserving the rights and property of their citizens - and their unlawful powers outlive the lives and times of those who write them, accreting and permeating every aspect of our lives, through the EPA, Dept of Ed, IRS, FDA, DHS, which impose their choices over yours, for your own, and for the greater good, over everything from the legal size of Big Gulps, how a Doctor shall be allowed to prescribe care - or not - for their patients. They are the means of nationalizing a nation.

The other track tyranny can take in a Republic, which the first track will eventually lead to, is that through too many laws of unlimited scope and ill defined powers, the law itself soon loses the respect of, and so its authority over, the people. In either case, power is unleashed to run wherever the ever more restless will of the people can be led, and in that anarchy of mega law chaos, a leader, a single ruler, is very likely to be sought out. Both approaches though, entail and .... the discrediting and unprincipled use of the law.

Which brings us around to those misguided few who are seeking to defend the constitution by destroying it, through the nullity of nullification - in the next post.