When Governors Get Upset With The Federal Government
SEARCH BLOG: GOVERNMENT
Occasionally, I like to post in its entirety something that someone else has posted. Sometimes because it is exceptional; sometimes because I think it is exceptionally stupid. I believe this to be the former.
You may be a "redneck" if....Things Break Apart
Posted on April 15th, 2009 by ScipioFrom the governor of Texas Rick Perry comes this shot across the bow.
"The federal government has become oppressive. I believe it’s become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state. Millions of Texans just like yourselves that are tired of Washington, DC, trying to come down here and tell us how to run Texas. We think it’s time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas. There is a point in time where you stand up and say, “Enough is enough,” and I think Americans and Texans especially have reached that point…
They’re sending Washington the message. I mean, we’re still part of the union down here in Texas, and our folks would like to keep it that way, but we see some things going on that are peculiar."
Please read that last line with due care.
We have received oceans of abuse here for reporting on the signs of the times, for using words and phrases like ‘civil war’ and ‘secession’ and ‘tyranny’ and ‘rebellion,’ and how these things threaten to visit this nation again. Now a governor has said the same thing. May I predict that he will not be the last to do so?
And as if to point a moral and adorn a tale, along comes a Homeland Security Assessment from Obama’s Department of Homeland Security. It defines something called ‘right wing extremism,’ a term it uses more than 40 times in the document. You are a possible ‘right wing extremist’ if: you like guns, if you are a veteran, if you are pro-life, if you believe in federalism, if you are conservative, if you are opposed to illegal immigration and so on. By the calculation of the Obama regime, Texas is a terrorist state and Governor Perry is a terrorist chieftain. I imagine that Perry will don a bathrobe, wear a keffiyeh and head to some mountain redoubt in Texas and issue recordings of “Death to America!”
Obama cozies up to North Korea and Iran—the real terror threats to this nation—but bares his fangs at American citizens. What that document really does is make a criminal and possible terrorist out of anyone who disagrees with Obama on anything under the sun. Nothing new here. All tyrants have done this.
It is scarcely possible to reason with this regime. All opposition is smeared, investigated, threatened. It matters not whether you are a private citizen or the head of a corporation. This government knows neither decency nor bounds. It plans to subsume unto itself every aspect of the American economy and political system. The Constitution has proved unable to stop this assault on liberty.
We have produced men in the past who knew how to deal with home grown tyrants. Jefferson and Madison in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and Southern Senator John C. Calhoun, believed that powers of the federal government would tend toward tyranny if left unchecked. They all supported states’ rights as laid out in the Constitution.
"The resolutions declared that the Constitution was a “compact.” That is, it was an agreement among the states. The resolutions claimed the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it (and thus they advocated Strict Constructionism); should the federal government assume such powers, its acts under them would be void. Thus it was the right of the states to decide as to the constitutionality of such laws passed by Congress."
One of the rights of states is nullification.
"Nullification is a legal theory that a U.S. State has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional. The theory is based on a view that the sovereign States formed the Union, and as creators of the compact hold final authority regarding the limits of the power of the central government. Under this, the compact theory, the States and not the Federal Bench are the ultimate interpreters of the extent of the national Government’s power. A more extreme assertion of state sovereignty than nullification is the related action of secession, by which a state terminates its political affiliation with the Union."
Jefferson, Madison and Calhoun all asserted this prerogative of the states. Thus they have become, like Governor Perry, more of the Obama regime’s ‘right wing extremists.’
Our nation is lurching toward a Constitutional crisis that will either be resolved peacefully or not. If not, there will be civil war, secession or military intervention—or all three. This regime will not simply return to the Constitution and neither will a majority of Americans surrender their liberty to a rapacious and lawless state.
Something must break. Maybe many things.
Also see:
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Is New Hampshire Seceding?
From 
