Patriotic Nullification
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The preservation of liberty depends on it.
by Clyde N. Wilson
Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government . . . . and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. . . . that the government created by this compact [the Constitution for the United States] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; . . . . that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; . . . and that the co-States, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorised by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories.
So wrote Thomas Jefferson, vice president of the United States, in a document drafted at the request of members of the Kentucky legislature in 1798. Kentucky passed Jefferson’s paper and broadcast it to the world as the definitive opinion and stand of the sovereign people of the State. The language drafted by James Madison for similar documents adopted by the Virginia legislature in 1799 and 1800 was similarly unequivocal in its constitutional position and forceful in expression.
The people, acting through their natural polities, the States, had created and given authority to the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution conferred powers on a general government to handle certain specified matters that were common to the “general welfare” of all the States. That government was an agent. It could not be the judge of its own powers. To allow it to be so would mean nothing less than a government of unlimited power, a tyranny. The partners to the Constitution, the sovereign peoples of the States, were the final judges of what they had intended the Constitution to mean. When the general government exceeded its power it was the right and duty of the State to interpose its authority and defend its people from federal acts of tyranny – yes, to render a federal law inoperative in the State’s jurisdiction…
The scholars of the rising leftist Establishment who took over American history writing beginning in the 1930s invented a self-flattering fable to render the Kentucky and Virginia documents themselves null and void. Jefferson and Madison, they said, really did not care about States’ rights. They were merely anticipating the great tradition of the American Civil Liberties Union in opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts. Their concern was to defend the freedom of speech of the non-conformist radicals of their time.
This established interpretation is a lie and requires a good deal of either ignorance, self-deception, or deliberate falsehood to peddle. It is true that the Virginia and Kentucky acts were not followed up by active resistance to the feds. They did not have to be, because Jefferson and his friends won the following elections, got rid of the bad laws, and compensated those who had been harmed by them. There is evidence that Virginia and North Carolina were quite willing and able to call out the militia if necessary and that grand juries were standing by to indict any offending feds.
Not interested in State rights? Jefferson reiterated the centrality of State rights to the preservation of liberty and self-government in his inaugural address (and in hundreds of letters for the rest of his life). His party and the succeeding Democratic party proclaimed “The Principles of 1798″ repeatedly as their foundational philosophy, right up to the War to Prevent Southern Independence. It could not be clearer: in the American government system State rights and liberty could not be separated. They were the same thing. They had the same defenders and the same enemies. The Sedition Act was not just an invasion of individual rights, it was an illegal invasion of a sphere that the people had left to their States.
Further, the Sedition Act, punishing criticism of federal officials with jail sentences and fines, had been passed in stark defiance of the recently adopted First and Tenth Amendments which absolutely forbade Congress to pass any law abridging the freedom of speech and press and reserved to the States all powers not specifically conferred on the government. How then could Congress pass such a law as the Sedition Act? Because the Federalists, Hamilton and Adams and their supporters, justified their legislation by invoking the Common Law’s provisions about the punishment of “sedition.” The Common Law existed in each State to the extent that State had found it worthwhile to adopt it, but it had no place in a written document of delegated powers such as the Constitution for the United States. If the feds could ignore specified power limitations by grafting Common Law jurisdiction into the Constitution, then literally everything under the sun could be brought under their power. Not only that, but everything under the sun could be ultimately disposed of by the federal courts, which would become the new sovereign. This had to be stopped.
Interposition by Virginia and Kentucky was intended to halt the Northeastern elite’s relentless agenda to become the economic and moral overseers of all Americans through the federal machine. This has always been the engine for the unconstitutional usurpation of federal power – then, since, and now. When State interposition next came into serious play in the United States, the occasion was the tariff laws, by which the Northeastern elite had perverted a constitutional power to raise a revenue into a means of excluding foreign competition and creating a captive market for their profit.
After their service as presidents, Jefferson and Madison lived by their republican ethics – they were private citizens with no special right to interfere in public affairs. But they expressed opinions on issues of the day privately to those who asked and who they trusted. When, less than a generation after the “Principles of 1798″ had been proclaimed, the possible nullification of the tariff laws by South Carolina drew attention, Jefferson was gone from the scene. Madison, in contradiction of his own plain language and the circumstances of 1798–1800, claimed that state interposition was not what they had had in mind at that time. Historians who want to trash States’ rights and the South Carolina resistance to the tariff during 1828–1833 lean heavily on Madison’s somewhat vague statements. Self-evidently, Madison contradicted himself, as he did quite often throughout his career. Unlike Jefferson, he was a superficial and inconsistent thinker who often swung from one side to the other. (That is why his pretentious speculations in The Federalist, which, by his own admission, have absolutely no constitutional authority whatsoever, are the favourite text of third string “constitutional lawyers” and would-be “political philosophers.”)
We do not have to wonder what Jefferson in his post-presidential years thought about State interposition. It is not in the least a mystery, although it is something of a secret since “scholars” have assiduously avoided exposure of the relevant documents, which are not easy to find. In 1825, the day after his last Christmas in this earthly realm, Jefferson wrote to William Branch Giles, former Senator from Virginia and stalwart Jeffersonian. He shared Giles’s concerns about the state of federal affairs. “I see, as you do, and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of the government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their powers.”
The minority President John Quincy Adams was pushing a large program of federal expenditures and expanded powers. Adams and his Congressional allies, Jefferson said, for an example, had construed the delegated power to establish post roads into a power to cut down mountains and dig canals. The old, evil program of the Northeastern “monarchists” to enrich themselves off the earnings of the agriculturalists was once again in the saddle. Reason and argument were no good in such a situation. “You might as well reason and argue with the marble columns” in the Capitol.
The South might well be forced into a choice between “the dissolution of the Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers. Between these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be no hesitation.” However, not yet. “But in the meanwhile, the States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms, to protest them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments . . . .”
Jefferson mentioned that he had written a letter to Giles on Christmas about important matters, of which Giles “will be free to make use what you please.” I have not found this letter, but it may have something to do with a document Jefferson wrote out on December 24, which he titled “The Solemn Declaration and Protest of the Citizens of Virginia on the Principles of the Constitution of the United States of America and the Violation of Them.” It seems to have been intended for the use of Jefferson’s neighbors in the grand jury of Albemarle County to begin a program for Virginia once more to interpose, against Congress’s usurpation in its “internal improvements” expenditures.
Just three years after Jefferson wrote this, another Vice-President of the United States, at the request of his State, drafted a “South Carolina Exposition,” which described the illegality and injustice of the protective tariff and the proper remedy for it: State interposition upon “The Principles of 1798.” This “Exposition” was approved and broadcast to the world by the legislature of South Carolina, along with a “Protest.” The usual clamor of rent-seekers and petty political operators was raised, claiming, among other things, that Jefferson had not written the Kentucky Resolutions. In 1831 Jefferson’s son-in-law produced the draft in the great man’s own hand.
[There was so much demagoguery broadcast by the opponents of nullification and the shoddy historians who repeat their propaganda, that it is worth saying something about the roles of Jefferson and Calhoun as drafters of the Kentucky Resolutions and the South Carolina Exposition. Jefferson, as we have noted, did not publicly acknowledge his authorship. Calhoun's authorship of the Exposition was characterized as an evil, secretive political operation. This propaganda is designed by and for people who can think only in terms of politicians and parties instead of principles and are ignorant of the ethics of republican virtue that influenced many Americans before Lincoln. Authorship was not acknowledged because it was desired that the statements be understood as the voice of the people of the State, not mischaracterized as merely the position of a national politician.]
In a later generation, another minority president seemingly destroyed forever the constitutional role of the States by declaring the open, democratic, deliberative acts of fourteen States to be only “combinations” of criminals who refused to obey him. Lincoln made that stick by a brutal war of conquest that did not “preserve the Union” but changed the Union into a central state with no limits to its power. Those who hope to revive a constitutional role for the States as counters to the present U.S. Empire, must hope to make the States once more into self-conscious, viable polities who have the political will to enact nullification and stand by it.
Clyde Wilson is editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun and author of Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture. This essay originally appeared at LewRockwell.com.
So much for the American criticism of the European Union, where a member country can leave any time without being bombed and destroyed. Unfortunately our states have lost the backbone that they once may have had. And remember that there’s no such thing as a “state” as sentient, consciuos being. There’s only the people who call themselves “the state” who now voluntarily trade their freedom for an illusion of security.
only in the current USA does “state” actually mean county or canton or some similar division of The One State. I’m so glad to see this pinned on Lincoln! where it belongs!
My questions: what to do about the current situation and what about the “patriot” act and other Federal consolidations under war power.
Lincoln was not the father of the death of our republic, had he lived to see his will done in the repatriation of African slaves he would have been its savior. Bearing in mind the indisputable truth that no polity, indeed no civilization, has ever survived the destruction of its founding people, we can trace the beginning of the end – if indeed it be the end – of our people and civilization to the Second World War. Say what you will about the relative merits of the various combatants, but it cannot be proclaimed with truth that principles which put the very continued being of our people first won out. And with that defeat, even the very mention of the merits of the continued existence of our beloved people to exist at all is pathologized as penultimate evil. Indeed, our mouths are gagged in many instances in saying that our people are facing oblivion, though it be ever the truth. The truth being no defense. There can be no justice in it, and if a man goes too long without the former, he is justified in taking it for himself.
Roberto: “So much for the American criticism of the European Union, where a member country can leave any time without being bombed and destroyed”.
True for the moment, but this was probably also true for the constituent nations of the early US, for the first few decades.
As I never tire of pointing out to advocates of the EU, a Virginian who, as a child, joined in the cheering at the creation of his nation’s voluntary union with other nations, might well have lived to see his grandchildren butchered by soldiers of that same union.
And that’s a union of states with (broadly speaking) a common language and common elite culture to bind them. How many more issues between Germans and Brits, say, that might provide tomorrow’s equivalent pretext to slavery in the case of the US suppression of the inherent right of secession?
“The Constitution conferred powers on a general government to handle certain specified matters that were common to the “general welfare” of all the States.”
Forcing states to abandon slavery was necessary for all states’ general welfare. It is incomprehensible to me that states rights could be superior to basic human rights. Calling those that are different from us something other than human to justify taking away rights from them is just plain wrong. We must equally fear both federal and state governments that would violate our basic “natural rights.” Freedom must be given to individuals, not to states or any other organization, or we are no more than savages.
“Jefferson reiterated the centrality of State rights to the preservation of liberty and self-government in his inaugural address (and in hundreds of letters for the rest of his life). His party and the succeeding Democratic party proclaimed ‘The Principles of 1798′ repeatedly as their foundational philosophy, right up to the War to Prevent Southern Independence.It could not be clearer: in the American government system State rights and liberty could not be separated. They were the same thing. They had the same defenders and the same enemies.”
Given the history of slavery and Jim Crow, both of which were defended within the rubric of States rights, the above statement is BS, pure and simple.
As one who believes in Federalism, I think it behooves all of us who fear the Federal leviathon, and who do wish to see State authority restored in most spheres of government, to own up to that unpleasant reality. “States rights” WAS the rallying cry used by those who would deny basic liberty to African Americans for a hundred years or more. We have to overcome that legacy. Not pretend it never happened. Or to try to justify it with ridiculous neologism like “the War to Prevent Southern Independence.”
Of course, and what we should be stressing, is that “States rights” can be, and was, and could be again, a way of protecting individual liberty. The Alien and Sedition Acts and the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions are an excellent place to start. Still, I don’t know why we need cheap shots at the ACLU or claims that the aim was NOT to protect “radicals.” Actually, radical newspapermen are exactly the persons Jefferson and Madison were trying to protect, along, of course, with trying to rein in the Fed as well. The two aims went hand in hand.
Another good example (much bettrer than the Nullification crises,which involved a power actually enumerated in the Constitution as belonging to Congress–the power to tax imports) would be the Personal Liberty laws enacted by States in the 1850’s. Under the Compromise of 1850, and the Fugitive Slave Act, it was the Federal government which was the denier of liberty. It made it a crime to harbor or help a fugitive slave. Federal law called for enforced, involuntary deputization of State officials and even private citizens to assist slave owners,and their hired slave catchers, track down runaway slaves and take them back to bondage. State personal liberty laws attempted to confer free status on African Americans entering Free States, and to immunize State officials and citizens from the outrageous demands of Federal law. In Concord, MA the enraged citizenry sent a Federal marshal packing when he tried to enforce these laws.
And, in our time, States have tried to reclaim authority over matters as diverse as from setting speed limits to legalizing marijuana for medical use, in most cases seeking to broaden the scope of freedom of individuals as well as wrest power from a Fed which has long since burst its banks. And,in almost every case, being overriden by the Federal govt and the Federal courts.
Political power at any level (local, county, State, Federal, international) can be used unwisely and unjustly. States are not immune in this regard. And there is no reason to pretend that isn’t true, or that the use of State power to defend slavery and Jim Crow didn’t happen,or was somehow a good thing. But now we have the Reconstruction Amendments. The Federal courts and the Congress have more than sufficient tools, in these three amendments, plus the anti poll tax amendment, to prevent any reoccurence of freedom denying racism entrenched at the State level. That is all the more reason why we should let the States excercize the general, police powers they were always intended to have, and to restrict the Fed to its limited, enumerated powers.
A State is a smaller entity than the Nation. For that reason alone it is less to be feared. And it is only one 50. If one doesn’t like the way one’s State is governed, one need only move. From the very geographical center of any State, however large (excluding only Alaska and Hawaii), a person with an automobile can leave that State behind him in less than a day of driving, and has a Consitutional right to do so. But emigrating from the USA is much more difficult both practically and legally.
And, besides that, as mentioned above, there are now considerable,enforceable Constitutional restraints on State violations of liberty and other human and civil rights. Let us embrace, not deny or minimize, the history that made that possible, and still declare that the States should be the primary level of government. That most things that matter to most people (family law, property law, criminal law, economic and social policy,and so on, everything but those areas enumerated as belonging to the Fed) should be determined either by the States,or by their instrumentalities (local and county governments).
“Forcing states to abandon slavery was necessary for all states’ general welfare. It is incomprehensible to me that states rights could be superior to basic human rights. Calling those that are different from us something other than human to justify taking away rights from them is just plain wrong. We must equally fear both federal and state governments that would violate our basic “natural rights.” Freedom must be given to individuals, not to states or any other organization, or we are no more than savages.”
If individuals’ rights are really fundamental, with governments’ powers and status deriving from them, then the right of secession follows directly (as the American founders recognised when they seceded from the British state).
There has never been a government that does not violate some rights of some of its people (it is perhaps another interesting debate whether this is necessarily so or it is merely a fact of human history to date). If a supranational government chooses to change the status of a particular violation that existed at the time of the union, then clearly the citizens of the constituent nations have the inherent right of secession if they are not willing to accept this fundamental change to the terms of the union.
As an aside, the US has always been, and remains, a gross violater of the rights of those within its grasp, from the disappropriation and genocide of the American Indians and the theft of their continent, through slavery and murderous colonial expansion, down to Prohibition in the 20th and 21st centuries and continuing today. Its only defence (and an inadequate one at that) is that some countries have been far worse.
“Given the history of slavery and Jim Crow, both of which were defended within the rubric of States rights, the above statement is BS, pure and simple.”
And before abstract moralizing and political theory comes life’s imperative of its own continuity. Because, and this should be elementary, if life has not that quality, then on what basis does one say that their preferred moralism has value? So then, the first value, the first consideration, must be that which sustains life. I submit that life for Whites forced into proximity with Blacks is unbearable for Whites. Consistent with the above, the first duty of Whites is to secure their own existence and prosperity, to do less is nihilism.
It seems to me that a distinction can be drawn between the fundamental right of an individual to personal freedom and the secondary, contingent right of unit in a poliity to seccede. The first strkes me as “natural,” and unalienable (as in the DofI: “certain unalienable rights. . . life, liberty, and property”). The second as somethng that depends on the manner in which the smaller unit was joined to the larger. I do not know for sure, but I doubt the people of the Saybrook colony reserved the right of secession when they joined the Connecticut colony in 1644. To me, this is a legal and political question, not a question of fundamental rights. All of the above is not to say that there was no right of State secession in 1861, only that it was not on a par with the right to individual freedom.
“And before abstract moralizing and political theory comes life’s imperative of its own continuity. Because, and this should be elementary, if life has not that quality, then on what basis does one say that their preferred moralism has value? So then, the first value, the first consideration, must be that which sustains life. I submit that life for Whites forced into proximity with Blacks is unbearable for Whites. Consistent with the above, the first duty of Whites is to secure their own existence and prosperity, to do less is nihilism.”
I submit that you are wrong. That Whites can and do live in proximity with Blacks, without life being “unberable” for Whites. White people in this country do live close to Black people, and yet White people continue to exist and prosper. Slavery cannont be justified on the basis of this kind of spurious “self defense.” But, even if it could, the solution was for Whites NOT to bring Blacks to the USA. That way, under your theory, they would have been safe from the proximity of Blacks and would have been able to exist and prosper.
Beyond that, It is just ths kind of thinking, of racism, racialism, and apartheid, that the States’ rights movement needs to learn to do without.
“It seems to me that a distinction can be drawn between the fundamental right of an individual to personal freedom and the secondary, contingent right of unit in a poliity to seccede.”
Any distinction can be drawn, all insanity contra life can be rationalized. But when contrasted with life’s real exigencies it is exposed as nihilism. Just what “right” does a man have – avoiding nihilism I remind you – to abandon his family. Nay, it is his ineradicable duty to be their provider and protector. He is an “individual” and they are “unit”. The principle of duty to race is merely the principle to family extended. The continued existence and interests of an entire people are more important than any one man. Otherwise, why is it just to execute traitors and deserters in times of war?
“That Whites can and do live in proximity with Blacks, without life being “unberable” for Whites.”
Sure, after a certain tipping-point of Black encroachment into formerly White neighborhoods Whites NEVER move out. Never happens. What planet are you living on?
“White people in this country do live close to Black people, and yet White people continue to exist and prosper.”
Why don’t you move to inner-city Detroit and see how that works out for you? Go on, do it! Talk, and moralizing, is cheap. Half of the children born in America are at present non-White, our submersion in the Third World is now inevitable unless racial separation or massive repatriation is achieved. Anyone who tells you that ‘we can make it work’, or that somehow, magically, it will ‘work out’ is either deluded or lying to you.
“Beyond that, It is just ths kind of thinking, of racism, racialism, and apartheid, that the States’ rights movement needs to learn to do without.”
You still don’t get it, abstract values must serve life otherwise they are useless. There is no historical debt, no cosmic moral burden that justly prevents us from doing what we must to secure the existence of our people – none. You only think as you do now because the full horror of what is to come if we do not act does not weigh upon you, but that will change.
“It seems to me that a distinction can be drawn between the fundamental right of an individual to personal freedom and the secondary, contingent right of unit in a poliity to seccede. The first strkes me as “natural,” and unalienable (as in the DofI: “certain unalienable rights. . . life, liberty, and property”). The second as somethng that depends on the manner in which the smaller unit was joined to the larger. I do not know for sure, but I doubt the people of the Saybrook colony reserved the right of secession when they joined the Connecticut colony in 1644. To me, this is a legal and political question, not a question of fundamental rights. All of the above is not to say that there was no right of State secession in 1861, only that it was not on a par with the right to individual freedom.”
It is clear that the “right to individual freedom” is in practice regarded in US political culture as subordinate to state convenience, regardless of how the contrary might be disingenuously claimed when it suits particular lobbies to do so, as in the case of slavery. The case of prohibition of alcohol and other recreational drugs is incontrovertible evidence for this. Slavery was wrong. Prohibition is wrong. They differ only in degree. Admittedly, the difference is massive – the fact is, though, that while the wrongs of slavery are easily recognised and heavily promoted by the state and media establishment in the US, the innumerable deaths, imprisonments and destructions of life and liberty caused directly by prohibition are routinely denied, covered up, minimised or rationalised away.
As for secession, it follows directly from the (supposed) fundamental constitutional principle of the US – that the powers and legitimacy of government derive only from the consent of the governed. Americans, particularly those of an authoritarian disposition, commonly refuse to face up to the logical consequences of this principle. But what is certain is that the right of secession is not a mere legalistic point dependent upon some quasi-contractual element in the terms of any union. The American founders who seceded from the British state had no such explicit contractual basis for their departure. A state can no more commit its citizens to a perpetual union or contractually limit their descendants’ right of secession, than a man can sell himself and his descendants into slavery.
My original point, though, was simply that the northern states can in no way coherently claim to have been justified in suppressing by military force the clear will of the people of the southern states to secede, by referring to some sudden moral imperative to stamp out slavery which somehow over-rode the inherent right of secession that was at the heart and at the roots of the very origins of the American states as independent political entities. That this cannot be coherently asserted does not, of course, prevent it being an article of faith for a majority of Americans, mind you.
The legitimacy of the powers of government, its authority, do flow from the consent of the governed. Still, the question remains: at which level of political organization is that consent to be ascertained, and how. In the absence of a contractual or other explicit, legal basis for seccession, the question becomes a political, rather than a legal one. The States did not explicitly reserve the right to seccede when they formed the Union in the late 1780’s.And States like Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama never had independent existence at all, and were formed out of Federal territory by Acts of the Federal Congress. And, even as to the original States, while the Constiution was ratified State by State, it was ratified by special conventions, specifically designed to represent the people, as opposed to the States. And while our theory of government is predicated on dual sovereignty, with the States and the Fed both sovereign (and no other unit–so that counties and municipalities have no right to seccede from either State or Fed, regardless of what the majority in any of them might desire), it hardly follows from that the sovereignty of the Fed is disposable at will, as a matter of right.
All of that being the case, it seems to me that there is no “funamental” right to secession, not in the same way there is a fundamental, “natural” right to personal freedom. The one does depend on either legal niceties or on the political will to achieve it. The other adheres to human beings simply by their existence. And the political will was not mustered in the case of the Confederacy, as it was in the cas of the 13 colonies. Might doesn’t make right. But might decides when right is not clearly on either side.
As for prohibition, a Constitutional amendment authorized it at the Federal level, so it’s legality is really not open to question. At the State level, it clearly falls within the general police powers. And, as for its failings, at least in the case of alcohol, these are well known and oft recited. And our current prohibition of other drugs, at least at the State level, is likewise constitutional. And, at that, it has its critics, numerous and vocal ones too, who are free to raise the very points you do, and who are raising them more and more (as in the varous State level attempts to decriminalize or legalize marijuana). Regulation of psycho tropic substances is something that most, if not all, polities engage in. A legal regime authorizing slavery is not, and was no longer the norm even as early as 1861. And substance abuse regulation is subject to democratic control, in which all adult humans have a say. Slavery, obviously, was not. There really is no comparison at all betwen the two, unless you are going to say that any law is on some kind of a par with slavery because it restricts the “right to indivdudal freedom” in some way.
Slavey was hardly “a sudden moral imperative” in the 1860’s.The question of slavery had pre occupied US politics for decades at that point. And, of course, no one consulted the slaves in the Southern States as to their opinion of seccession. Why don’t they figure in what constituted “the clear will of the people” of the South?
All in all, it seems more than a little strange to employ an argument about fundamental rights in order to defend a would be polity based on, and formed with the specific purpose of defending, human slavery.
And, to repeat, I think the States’ right argument will continue to fall on deaf ears if it is the refuge of Confederate or Jim Crow apologists. How much better would it be to stress the situation of the 1850’s, as I did above, in which the “Slave Power” was in the saddle in all three branches of the Federal government, and was bullying the Free States into using its insitututions and even its citizenry to protect slavery. To emphasize the fact that Federal authority is a two edged sword, and was not alway working against slavery. And, at its worst,you had the Federal courts even beginning to question the right of the Free States to ban slavery within their own borders. That is the real fear that the Dred Scott case created. And that is what Lincoln capitolized on. The Democratic party was controlled by Southernors, and it controlled Congress, the Presidency (even when a northern Democrat like Buchanon was in office) and the Federal courts, especially the Supreme Court.
“Sure, after a certain tipping-point of Black encroachment into formerly White neighborhoods Whites NEVER move out. Never happens. What planet are you living on?”
Non sequitor much? Yes, White flight is a reality. Therfore, it has been established that White and Black people simply can’t and don’t, ever, live in proximity? QED?
On my planet, in my country, in my State, in my city, in my neighborhood, and in my building, Whites and Blacks do live in proxmity to each other. And we all seem to be survivng. Some of us even prospering.
“Why don’t you move to inner-city Detroit and see how that works out for you? Go on, do it! Talk, and moralizing, is cheap.”
Why do I have to move to Detroit? As I said, I already live in proximity to African Americans, and I am alive and prospering. And why is inner city Detroit the paradign? Is that where most Black people live? Or even in places like it? Or does it,as a worst case scenario, simply fit your bombastic scenario best?
“Half of the children born in America are at present non-White, our submersion in the Third World is now inevitable unless racial separation or massive repatriation is achieved.”
And, how, exactly, consistent with conservative principles (you do realize this is a conservative website, don’t you?) do you propose to achive that? I am all in favor of preserving our culture. I am in favor of strict immigration laws, and their enforcement, including the deporting of all illegal aliens. But “racial seperation?” Or “massive repatriation?” Of American citizens? Is that what you want? Some national programme of aparthied/racial “cleansing?” I find that to be abhorrant.
”You still don’t get it, abstract values must serve life otherwise they are useless. There is no historical debt, no cosmic moral burden that justly prevents us from doing what we must to secure the existence of our people – none. You only think as you do now because the full horror of what is to come if we do not act does not weigh upon you, but that will change.”
Oh, the horror, the horror! I’m pretty sure we can survive as a people without resorting to the solutions you propose. But, even if we couldn’t, I’d rather our society and culture went under rather than follow your advice.
ruddyturnstone:
You switch between different categories of justification – morality, legalism, normalism – with insufficient care.
Consent to government is the only moral basis for its legitimacy, yet for convenience you reduce this to legalistic or political ideas of quasi-contract or majority rule. Prohibition is justified because it is legally imposed and commonplace, but slavery (which has been commonplace, legal and perfectly socially acceptable in most societies throughout most of human history until the 18th century) cannot be justified in this way, essentially because you dislike the implications of the alternatives in each case.
It’s arguably acceptable to move from moral principles to compromises of said principles in order to confront the practical difficulties of real world governance – most conservatives would accept that as a necessity, and it’s certainly what the US founders did. What you can’t then do is switch back to moral imperative when it suits you to enforce particular aspects of that compromise and claim to be justified in killing people for disagreeing with your version of said compromise.
These theoretical issues can be discussed at length, but to limit it to the most incontrovertible case: if you accept the ideas of political expression of the popular will that explicitly underpin your own case for the legitimacy of the US states and federal government, then you cannot coherently deny that it was the express will of the people of Virginia through their elected political representatives that they should secede from the Union, albeit necessarily imperfectly arrived at just as is always the case for any political decision. That will was suppressed by military force. Hiding behind legalist or political technicalities, as you do, is to contradict the moral position that the US began with. The moral principle of liberty (from which are derived the right of secession, the illegitimacy of slavery and the illegitimacy of prohibition laws) precedes and over-rides both the legal and the political. Either oppose all infringements upon liberty, or admit that you are just using the moral argument when it is convenient for you to do so.
I oppose both slavery and prohibition as evil infringements of personal liberty, but I also recognise that two wrongs don’t make a right and the military suppression of the people of Virginia’s freedom was profoundly and murderously wrong in itself, just as it would be wrong to wage war on the US to force it to desist from its evil “war on drugs” even though personal violent resistance against the imposition of prohibition laws is clearly morally justified (if usually impracticable).
The slavery issue was, in my view, merely a pretext – a cover for other economic and power political motivations, though questions of motivation in collective actions are admittedly always tricky, as shown in the recent case of the US attack on Iraq. But that is a side issue in any event.
“Slavey was hardly “a sudden moral imperative” in the 1860’s.”
I refer to it as “sudden” because it was not such a concern at the time of the union, when slaves were far less numerous, but was nevertheless generally accepted as being within the bounds of civilised behaviour, if controversial in some quarters.
“And substance abuse regulation is subject to democratic control, in which all adult humans have a say. Slavery, obviously, was not. There really is no comparison at all betwen the two, unless you are going to say that any law is on some kind of a par with slavery because it restricts the “right to individual freedom” in some way.”
Further up, you yourself stated: “there is a fundamental, “natural” right to personal freedom”. I agree, and any law that restricts that freedom can only be justified by the need to prevent infringements upon another’s life, liberty and property. “Democratic” decision-making cannot be called upon to justify laws that infringe liberty. Laws enacting slavery that were “subject to democratic control” where the slaves were an outvoted minority would not be legitimate – surely you must see that?
“And the political will was not mustered in the case of the Confederacy, as it was in the case of the 13 colonies. Might doesn’t make right. But might decides when right is not clearly on either side.”
This strikes me as both inconsistent and naive. In the real world, might triumphs regardless of right or wrong, though usually the mighty then get to write the history that explains how they had right on their side all along. We rely upon the hereafter for the hope of setting things right in the long run.
Too bad Texas just voted Jefferson out of the textbooks for millions of children.
“You switch between different categories of justification – morality, legalism, normalism – with insufficient care.”
OK, part of that is to prevent these posts from going on forever, to use a kind of shorthand. But I will try to do better.
“Consent to government is the only moral basis for its legitimacy, yet for convenience you reduce this to legalistic or political ideas of quasi-contract or majority rule.”
Consent of the governed is the moral basis. But it is not merely for “convenience” that I try to place this concept into the real world. It still remains to be determined at what level
the desire for seccession removes that consent. Unless you are going to say that every unit, down to the individual, has the right to “seccede” from the next larger unit, this determination is a necessity, not a mere convenience.
The clearest example of a right of seccession would be in a case that you dismiss as legalistic. If you and I form a partnership, but it says right in the partnership agreement that either one of us has the right to withdraw from the partnership, it would not be mere “legalism” to see this as the best case for seccession. Typically, law and justice go hand in hand (not always, but that is the general idea, and it applies here). It would only be fair to allow you to withdraw because that is what is just, as we both agreed to it, The fact that a court would endorse your right, that your right is “legal,” doesn’t change that.
In the absence of an agreement,other considerations must apply. Again, unless you are going to take the anarchist view that the consent of each and every person must be obtained, there has to be some other way to determine the consent of the governed. And, majority rule, at the appropriate level of government, would seem to be both the practical and the philsophically correct answer.
After that, it becomes necessary to determine what is the right level. I submit it must be at the level of a sovereign unit, as anything smaller than that defies the theory in which it was formed. A State sets out a certain portion of its land as a county, but the residents of tha county are still part of the State as a whole. The State could abolish the county, or all counties, or add to them or subtract from them. So, they are not the appropriate units. Only sovereign ones are. Thus, the sovereign nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland could, if it wanted to, “seccede” from the European Union, the UN, NATO, etc. Those supernational, international organizations are NOT sovereign. But the UK is.
But, then what about in cases of dual sovereignty? To me, this is an unclear case, from the moral, practical and legal points of view. A person in Virginia in 1776 or in 1861, may have felt that his loyalty was not only to VA, but to the overall, larger, sovereign polity too (the British Empire or the USA), and that that shouldn’t be “up for a vote,” with his neighbors having the authority to outvote him. And a “majority” of members of the British Empire and the USA may NOT have wanted VA to secceede, even if a majority of Virginians did.
So, without a clear legal or moral basis, without a contractually reserved right or a situation in which sovereignty was never placed in the larger unit (as with the EU, etc).and without any real way to determine at which level the question should be resolved, the issue becomes a political one. Politically (including militarily) the 13 colonies were successful. Politically (including militarily) the CSA was not. It isn’t that any of the actors (the British Empire, the 13 colonies, the USA, or the CSA) was “right” or “wrong,” or acted legally or illegally, it is that, in one case, those favoring seccession were stronger than those opposing it, and the opposite was true in the other case.
“Prohibition is justified because it is legally imposed and commonplace, but slavery (which has been commonplace, legal and perfectly socially acceptable in most societies throughout most of human history until the 18th century) cannot be justified in this way, essentially because you dislike the implications of the alternatives in each case.”
As I said, you can semantically equate any law with the law of slavery, if you want to, under the notion that both are restrictions on liberty. To me, that is reductive. The law against murder is a restriction too. So is the law regarding speed limits. And so on. Every law is a restriction. But does that mean that every law is somehow on a par with the law of slavery? I don’t think so. And I particularly don’t think so with respect to natural rights theory or notions of fundamental rights. No one has a natural or fundamental right to sell whiskey, but everyone has such a right to basic freedom.
What you really are saying that no government of any kind (except perhaps, of a libertarian kind) is legitimate. That’s fine. But then you should come right out with it.And, under that theory, Virginia, with its laws in 1861, was just as much an affront as the USA.. Virginia had laws. And it is hardly the case that all of them could be justified under a strict libertarian viewpoint. Far from it.
“It’s arguably acceptable to move from moral principles to compromises of said principles in order to confront the practical difficulties of real world governance – most conservatives would accept that as a necessity, and it’s certainly what the US founders did. What you can’t then do is switch back to moral imperative when it suits you to enforce particular aspects of that compromise and claim to be justified in killing people for disagreeing with your version of said compromise.”
Not sure what you mean by this. “People” were “killed” for rebellion, not for “disagreement.”
“These theoretical issues can be discussed at length, but to limit it to the most incontrovertible case: if you accept the ideas of political expression of the popular will that explicitly underpin your own case for the legitimacy of the US states and federal government, then you cannot coherently deny that it was the express will of the people of Virginia through their elected political representatives that they should secede from the Union, albeit necessarily imperfectly arrived at just as is always the case for any political decision.That will was suppressed by military force.”
I don’t have to “deny” it, and yes it was suppressed by military force. Fine, VA made its decision (and we can leave the will of the slaves out of it, although, again, that seems like an odd thing for someone who cares about fundamental rights to do). So? Where was it given this authority? We can go through it all over again. There was no explicit reserved legal right to seccede. At best, the document is ambiguous, and, at worst, it was not even “Virginia” and the other States that adopted it, but “the People” of the United States. Nor was the United States conceived of as a non sovereign entity, a mere organization of sovereign states (like the UN). So, the question of whether that expression of VA’s will was going to stand, or not, became a political question. Just as the issue in 1776 was,ulitmately, a political one. Not one that law or abstract philosophy can give one the “right” answe to.
“Hiding behind legalist or political technicalities, as you do, is to contradict the moral position that the US began with. The moral principle of liberty (from which are derived the right of secession, the illegitimacy of slavery and the illegitimacy of prohibition laws) precedes and over-rides both the legal and the political.”
No, it isn’t. Because I don’t believe the US “began with” your simplistic notion of an abstract “moral principle”. Yes, morality requires that a goverment have the consent of the governed. But, as explained above, “consent of the governed” is not a self defining term. Particularly the part about “the governed.” Who are “the governed?” The people of the British Empire, the 13 colonies, the USA, Virginia, some smaller unit? Defining that term is a political, not a moral question.
The rest of what you say here is just a repetition of your reductive notion of “freedom.”
“Either oppose all infringements upon liberty, or admit that you are just using the moral argument when it is convenient for you to do so.”
Why am I not allowed a more subtle and discriminating approach? Because you equate all, or almost laws, as “infringements upon liberty,” I am required to do so?
“I thnk I have shown that that is not what I am doing.”
But your emphasis is inconsistent. You should be railing against every government on Earth that has ever existed, as they all “infringe upon liberty.”
“The slavery issue was, in my view, merely a pretext – a cover for other economic and power political motivations. . .”
Slavery is what drove the whole sectional conflict in the ante bellum era. It was hardly a “pretext.” It prompted a raging moral, political, and legal crises that lasted for decades. Bloody Kansas, John Brown, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Dred Scott, the Fugitive Slave Act, the various “Compromises,” etc, etc.
“Slavey was hardly “a sudden moral imperative” in the 1860’s.”
“I refer to it as “sudden” because it was not such a concern at the time of the union, when slaves were far less numerous, but was nevertheless generally accepted as being within the bounds of civilised behaviour, if controversial in some quarters.”
How is something that had been an issue for decades “suddenly” an issue? It was not as big an issue in the 18th century, true (mostly because it was seen as a dying institution). But what does that prove? Marijuana was not an issue in 1889’s, does that mean it wasn’t an issue in the 1970’s, or that it had only “suddenly” become one?
“Further up, you yourself stated: ‘there is a fundamental,’“natural’ right to personal freedom”. I agree, and any law that restricts that freedom can only be justified by the need to prevent infringements upon another’s life, liberty and property. ‘Democratic’decision-making cannot be called upon to justify laws that infringe liberty. Laws enacting slavery that were ’subject to democratic control’ where the slaves were an outvoted minority would not be legitimate – surely you must see that?”
In other words, libertarianism. But libertarianism put in the service of defending a polity formed to defend slavery as an institution. It boggles the mind! Why aren’t those VA law allowing slavery, which the slaves didn’t even have a right to vote on, your primary concern? If infringements upon liberty are the main evil, surely the violence, the degradation, the destruction of family life, the cultural imperialism, the savagery, the brutality, and so on of a slave regime would be the thing that most makes your blood boil, when it comes to looking at history. Why does the violence and force of the Civil War prompt you to write post after post, but the violence and force of a slave regime prompts you only to compare it to prohibition? And, at that, only when you are confronted with it point blank?
I am for States Rights. I am NOT a libertarian, although I agree with libertarianism to some extent. And, to repeat, to “rehabilitate” States rights I think we need to own up to itd historical use to justify the unjustifiable. Not engage in an endless process of trying to justify the unjustifiable ourselves. And certainly not to use some kind of Orwellian notion of “liberty” to jusifty slavery.
“And the political will was not mustered in the case of the Confederacy, as it was in the case of the 13 colonies. Might doesn’t make right. But might decides when right is not clearly on either side.”
“This strikes me as both inconsistent and naive. In the real world, might triumphs regardless of right or wrong, though usually the mighty then get to write the history that explains how they had right on their side all along. We rely upon the hereafter for the hope of setting things right in the long run.”
Nothing naive or inconsistent about it. Might doesn’t make right. Might may very well triumph,but that doesn’t make it right. And, usually, the history, in the long run, gets written by people with no dog in the fight, and so, no, the evil and mighty don’t win there. Or in the hereafter.