You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in public schools, at first glance it may seem paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
–Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ”Letter from Birmingham Jail” April 16, 1963
In some ways, it is ironic to use Dr. King as an example to promote nullification and interposition. Dr. King, in his letter makes one reference to nullification and interposition, and it is not a flattering one. Many state and local governments refused to comply with federal legislation and court decisions against segregation. It is the one unfortunate blight one can find in the nullification movement throughout American history.
One single abuse of the process of nullification, however, should not serve to invalidate the entire nullification movement, which has resisted the Alien and Sedition Acts, Fugitive Slave Acts (and even the Dred Scott decision itself), the misguided War on Drugs, and a host of other federal abuses. Especially when one considers that the legitimate applications of nullification are rooted in the same beliefs Dr. King expressed, and which have been expressed by people of many different religious beliefs, that an unjust law is no law at all.
Had Dr. King lived at the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts or the Fugitive Slave Laws, I believe he most certainly would have found little to criticize about the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions or the Personal Liberty Acts – the latter of which were an effective tool in the fight against slavery in the 19th Century.
The same Supreme Court that, in 1890, had declared “separate but equal” to be the way in Plessy vs. Ferguson, reversed precedent in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Many southern states, as well as some northern states, refused to follow that decision, effectively nullifying the Supreme Court’s decision. Birmingham was one of the most heavily segregated cities in that time.
Martin Luther King, Jr., while not the first, was one of the better known civil rights leaders to engage in civil disobedience against segregation ordinances through boycotts of buses, sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations, some without a permit. This approach, in theory and in practice, treated the unjust segregation ordinances as being null, void and of no force. Sound familiar? Yes, it is the stuff of which proper nullification is made, a fact which Dr. King himself might not have even actively considered, but a fact nonetheless.
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Dr. King was not a governor, state legislator, county sheriff, mayor or town legislator. He was a minister, one who believed in self purification before direct action, one who quoted the likes of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, one who compared the civil rights struggle with the missions of both Old Testament prophets and New Testament Apostles. He was one who, if he were alive today, might be told to leave religion out of his rhetoric, even by people who agreed with him about the existence of injustice and the goal of desegregation.
Dr. King, as a religious nullifier, risked more than any elected state or local official by refusing to accept injustice. Elected officials who nullify are not the ones targeted for arrest, yet those who refuse to obey an unjust law individually or as part of a group face that risk daily. Despite this risk, long before there was a Tenth Amendment Center, to paraphrase Michael Boldin, he and other religious nullifiers before him didn’t need no stinkin’ permission to exercise their rights.
Through violent responses from his opponents, imprisonment, and even death, he earned the right to sing the spiritual of old, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”
I think one should disobey laws that violate your own pursuit of your own interest. Laws that are compatible with what you want in your own live can never be said to be restraining in any way since they are aligned with you want to do or your own free-will.
@onetenther
Gee, the little lady gets in the way?
O Liberty Boy, just blow her away.
Let slip the Ravening Dog
Who shall lope through Night and Fog:
Let SELF INTEREST reign, for we would fain
Forget ADAM’S fall, and the human stain.
We are men without shadows, become angelic
What we want is always meet and right:
And when in the end we look in God’s Mirror and it makes us sick
We will say forgive us we knew Jackshit because all was Night.
We don’t say much but we say it loud
O honey come see the boiling cloud.
@EdwardNilges Riddle me this riddle me that…
@onetenther
Riddle me this, riddle me thatThe problem, sir, is merely thatTruth is a riddle if it has been diddledBy swine who seek to mislead you
@EdwardNilges I wish I spoke your language. This is an American speaking site.
@onetenther That’s the problem. You no longer understand your own Constitution.
@onetenther ”You talk like a fag and you’re shit’s all fucked up” – Idiocracy
@EdwardNilges Where did you get that from?
Dr. King was not writing about nullification of supposedly unconstitutional federal laws by state governments. His letter had nothing whatsoever to do with the Constitution or constitutional law issues. Rather, Dr. King was writing about the moral duty of the individual to engage in civil disobedience to unjust laws. Dr. King did not appeal to the Constitution, but to God’s law and to moral law. He said that an individual has a duty to disobey morally unjust laws, and that the individual must have a “willingness to accept the penalty.” He advocated submission to authority, not defiance of authority. He was talking about classic civil disobedience. Dr. King did not so much as hint that he believed a state legislature has the power to nullify a federal law based on the state legislature’s belief that the federal law is unconstitutional. In fact, he made it quite clear later in this letter that he opposed nullification and interposition. This column is seriously mistaken in suggesting the Dr. King provides any support for nullification. Quite the contrary.
@Alex Hamilton Is there a difference between a state civilly disobeying a law because they believe it is unjust and a person do the same thing for the same reason. He didn’t mention the word ‘nullification’ but the idea is the same that people have the right to reject authority when it is unjust or places to much of a burden on us. People will willing obey laws that help them pursue their own interest and wants but will unwillingly obey laws that either goes against their interest or denies it completely. You can see in those two sets of laws that there is a division between laws that protect freedom and laws that deny it.
States formed the compact to help them pursue their own interest abroad such as signing treaties. States individually can’t do that without losing their own cohesion so the states will willingling follows laws conductive to their own interest but they will not when they don’t. This is the basic principle of nullification which is states will reject federal laws that abuse their power and hinder a state’s own interest.
@onetenther Civil disobedience and nullification are different and unrelated. Civil disobedience is not a constitutional doctrine; rather, it’s a moral doctrine. Civil disobedience is not something a state government does as a matter of constitutional interpretation; rather, it’s something an individual does as a matter of conscience. Civil disobedience is not a legal remedy; rather, it’s a moral action with no legal basis. Civil disobedience does not purport to nullify the law; rather, a person engaging in civil disobedience submits to the law and takes the full consequences.
Nullification is a constitutional doctrine in which a state purports to nullify a federal law that it views as unconstitutional. It is an act of defiance, as the state contends that the law does not apply to it or its citizens. Nullification is based on legal and constitutional considerations and it is undertaken by a state government. Civil disobedience is a moral doctrine in which an individual disobeys a morally unjust law. It is an act of protest, not defiance. One who engages in civil disobedience does not challenge the validity of the law, but the morality of the law. He or she does not purport to nullify that law, but submits to the law. It is a completely different concept.
Dr. King condemned nullification. It does injustice to his memory to attempt to claim Dr. King’s support for nullification.
@Alex Hamilton @onetenther
A Daniel, a Daniel come to judgement,
Hamilton says it like it is
Blasting a hole in wicked nullificationment
Honoring his namesake HAMILTON. Cannons shall roar, and Toasts shall FizzFor a Patriot has spoken boldly and with TruthIn words so clear they constitute their own Proof
Does that mean that we all have a moral responsibility to disobey a law stating that others have a claim on a certain portion of the fruits of your labor? Clearly it’s unjust for men to claim ownership of any portion of a man, even if it’s only 35% or so, right?
In Romans 13, Paul tells us we are to obey the government, but he doesn’t stop with that statement. He goes on to describe how a government instituted by God behaves. A government that does not behave that way is not a valid government that must be obeyed, our government for example.
DR. KING IS ONE OF MY HEROS. HE WAS A VERY BRAVE MAN . HE WAS A TRUE CHRISTRIAN AND STOOD FOR THE TRUTH AGAINST A LOT OF CRUEL AND EVEL EVEN IN HIS OWN RACE. THE ONLY WAY EVIL CAN WIN IS FOR GOOD TO SIT AND DO NOTHING TO STOP IT. THERE IS A MASSIVE LOT OF EVIL LOOSE IN WASHINGTON D C . IT IS HELLBENT ON DESTROYING OUR UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. WE USA CAN STOP IT IF WE ALL STAND TOGETHER . WE DO NOT NEED THE FEDS. BUT THE FEDS. CAN NOT EXIST WITH OUT THE STATES. IF THE STATES STOP SENDING THEM TAX MONEY ALL THOSE THIEVES WOULD STARVE TO DEATH. THIS IS OUR NATION, IT DOES NOT BELONG TO A BUNCH OF MUSLIUM COMMUNISTS. OBAMA SAID IT IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION . IF HE WANTS TO LIVE IN A COMMUNIST MUSILUM NATION HE NEEDS TO MOVE TO AFGANISTAN. GOD PLEASE HELP YOUR CHILDREN OVERCOME THE EVIL THAT IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER OUR CHRISTIAN NATION. WE ASK THIS IN JESUS CHRIST NAME AMEN.
Amen.
He’s understanding of economics was poor, but he got a lot right and was a strong leader.
Notice, “unjust,” not “unfair!”
Amen, a Great Man!
To Chris Miller: taxes are not unjust. How else do you propose to keep any form of government running if noone payed any taxes? What is unjust is for a government to demand and confiscate your money and then use the resources they acquire with it against you. I do agree that 35% is too much though. We should do away with the income tax for individuals and replace it with a 10% federal sales tax on all goods sold in or delivered to the U.S. as Ron Paul suggested.
This is nonsense. King was ready to accept the consequences of civil disobedience whereas in 1832, South Carolina expected not to pay taxes and get away with it.That is: there is a difference between some slob who fails to pay child support and then, after the fact, claims that he has a moral right to do so, and who evades the consequences of his actions, and a civil rights demonstrator who sits at a lunch counter and takes the consequences like a man, hoping indeed that the harshness of retaliation will be a witness to his cause. ”The rule of law” means in a significant part that we conduct legal affairs in a condign (with dignity) fashion, making decisions at the right place, at the right time, and in the right venue. Otherwise anarchy would result and the war of all against all, for men cannot be expected to magically agree on things and to refrain from deciding that their way is blessed by God (read the Federalist on this). Whereas it is true that absent government we have “natural rights” as seen in Hobbes and Locke. These include the absolute natural right of rebellion whether wholesale as in 1776 or retail in the case of the criminal. We can as a brute matter of fact do as we like, whether or not we decide it’s a moral duty to do so, or, we just want to.But this is a state of nature, and in a state of nature, any man has the exact same right to stop us. The Birmingham sheriff had the legal right in addition to the natural right to arrest Dr King, and King knew it. But King’s purpose was simply to get the codified law changed and enforced, not through passive Nullification but through an activist Supreme Court based on Marbury v Madison which gives the Supreme Court the sole and unappealable right to say what the Constitution means as a matter of legal force.
Tim Campbell cites Romans 13 to justify, not submission to authority, but rebellion, which is pretty strange:Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.The authorities that exist have been established by God.2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
Paul is saying, at the time of Rome, that all authority, including the unjust authority of Rome which in his time crucified Christians, is God’s will. He is NOT calling upon his followers to rise up against Rome. This is what the Zealots did in 70 AD and they got their ass kicked. Whereas St Paul wanted the Christian community to survive and carry the Good News. There was simply no conception, at the time of Epistle to the Romans, that people had any sort of God-given right to defy authority. Spartacus had tried it under the Gracchi and failed. The Athenian experiment in “democracy” strictly for wealthy slave-owners had failed and Socrates had willingly acknowledged the final authority of Athens in Crito, the dialogue in which he refuses to leave Athens and seek shelter elsewhere, since he believed that Athens gave him life and could take it away. Paul is NOT saying that there are two types of authority, one just and the other unjust. He is saying that the most unjust is simply God’s will, probably a Tribulation in punishment for the Christian’s sins.
Christianity never counseled nor supported rebellion until Luther. But Luther, once he had princely sponsorship, turned against the peasants and their rebellion in the 1540s.Between Luther and the 18th century rebellion was ONLY sanctioned on a religious basis, and the rebel, once victorious as was Calvin in Geneva, suppressed further rebellion. The Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay colony were rebels in England but witch-burning tyrants in Massachusetts.Religion per se rebels and then in turn tyrannizes. Whereas the irreligious, but profoundly spiritual, Enlightenment (which fathered Pietism, Quakerdom, the Lubavatcher and other more tightly bound and peaceful communities amongst the workers and middle class, and agnosticism and Deism amongst the elite) avoided Luther’s tragic dialectic and culminated in the Constitution of the United States of America.There is no final revelation. Religions like to say there is which shores up the temporal power of their leaders. But in fact, rather than “return” to the Consttution we need to continue to adapt it to the modern world.
@EdwardNilges The mantel of authority God has given government is not a license to kill, to oppress, or to resist the Gospel and kingship of Christ. The government is ordained for good so that lawlessness and anarchy do not prevail, but when government becomes the source of lawlessness and evil, then the right of self defense may be invoked. Moreover, under the law, when a man owned an ox that was known to gore, if he did not take adequate precaution to restrain it and it gored a man, then it could be murder in the ox’s owner. See Exodus 21:28-32. The government is our servant, and if a government behaves like a wild beast killing and destroying property, it is our duty to restrain it by whatever means we can. There are many examples of men resisting evil government: indeed, that is the principle reason the prophets were martyred! They spoke out! And as to the use of force to resist or overthrow, there are many examples of this in the Old Testament also: Samson, Gideon, Barak, are just a few. Read the book of Judges! It is folly to argue that Nero’s murder and torture of Christians was God’s will. God allowed it to happen; he did not approve or ordain it. Besides, the historical situation facing Christians in the first century is totally different than ours today, where we are a majority. It would be silly to ask 200 million Christians to submit passively to a million or so wicked men in high places. Indeed, it is a reproach upon our faith that we weakly yield power to men who are actively subverting Christianity and causing millions of children to lose their souls by teaching corrupting doctrines like evolution in public schools, prohibiting equal time to Intelligent Design. I believe there is a posititve right of rebellion when once all patience and longsuffering has been exhausted, like the Founders recited in the Declaration of Independence.
@Patrick Henry Lives Your problem is that I’m not a Christian yet have your rights under the First Amendment to practice my religion which is no religion at all. You have to stay out of public schools with your silly Creationism according to the Constitution. And if you destroy my Constitution I will fight you. The United States is not a Christian country it is a multi confessional Constitutional Republic of which the historical Jesus would approve. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, who didn’t mention God in the Gettysburg Address, it must not perish from the earth.If you turn it into a Vandal republic of warriors who use their Christianity to oppress women and blacks, Houston, you have a problem because I support the Second Amendment.
@EdwardNilges WRONG! The Constitution reserves to the People and States the right to decide local issues of religion and establishment. The States have ALWAYS been competent to establish churches, fund them with taxes, pay for printing of Bibles, make belief in the Trinity or Christianity a condition of holding elective office, etc. Just read your history and you will find that the states all had laws of the sort described. The prohibitions of the 1st Amendment only apply to Congress: “Congress shall make no law.” Not one word restricts the States and People from deciding local issues of religion and morality for themselves. Indeed, the Tenth Amendment guarantees them that right! It is only by turning the prohibitions of the Bill of Rights back against the State via the 14th amendment and the phony judge created doctrine of “substantive due process” that the States have been robbed of the right to decide local issues for themselves.
@EdwardNilges @Patrick Henry Lives Most socialist have to pretend to be something more favorable in order to push their ideas through. They abandoned the label yet still spout the same ideas.
How can you say the United States isn’t a christian country when the dominant and most practiced religion is christianity. It is pretty obvious that the law does not favor one religion over the other nor does it prevent someone from practicing any religion that they choose. It seems like a great many individual either choose to practice christianity in this country.
@onetenther So? This doesn’t give them any Constitutional rights.
@onetenther @Patrick Henry Lives Do you know any socialists personally?
@EdwardNilges The Bible teaches rules of conduct and is not concerned to spell out all the exceptions to the rules. Paul said be subject to rulers, but the same language is said of wives to husbands, children to parents, slaves to masters. But who would argue there is no limit upon the superior’s authority, or that one can not resist unlawful assaults of a master, a parent, or husband? Is a daughter to submit to incest and rape by her faither? Is a wife to submit to the violence of a drunken husband and never defend herself. Hardly! The rule is to be submissive and obey those in authority, but every rule has its exceptions as every man knows. Most certainly we can resist evil in high places and indeed it is among the highest expressions of our faith to hazard our life, liberty, and property doing so.
@Patrick Henry Lives Actually, in the time of the early Christians, Christians did submit to such treatment and worse because they took Christ’s admonition literally to “turn the other cheek”. Christ had told them that even if they were slaves and sex toys they had souls and this was revolutionary. He knew that in the context of the times and what had happened to Spartacus, resistance would be suicide.Whereas we have no direct Biblical guidance on what to do today other than to know your ass from a hole in the ground so you don’t get people killed or set up a murdering theocracy.
@EdwardNilges If the right to rebel is determined by the “context of the times” prohibited only because “resistance would be suicide”, then when the context of the times counsels otherwise, or where not to resist would be suicide, then by your definition we are free to follow our conscience and resist or rebel. Thanks for making my case for me!
@EdwardNilges @Patrick Henry Lives Do you or do you not agree that a daughter should willing participate in incest? You seem to avoid the entire question completely by babling about things that have no real point to them at all. THe point that pat was making that authority has limits and those limits are exactly when that authority no longer benefits that person.
@Patrick Henry Lives Yes, we are free in the sense we can as Spartacus; this is Hobbes and Locke’s doctrine of “natural rights in the state of nature” which the Founders knew of. We always have the right to resist authority as Christ did when he refused to cooperate with Pilate and make a pro-forma statement that “Hadrian is a God”.Unfortunately, a Sovereign can always disobey the Constitution and stick it to us, whether in retaliation or because the Sovereign feels like it.But Tenthers want more: they want the rights of Nullification and Secesh to be affirmed as a law, and this is bullshit because no law can say “if you don’t like this law do not obey it”.They grew up with white privilege and feel unmanned by a new world and want reaffirmation by means of Nullification.Yes you have the right at all times to rebel whether nonviolently like Christ or violently as did the Founders. But “to live outside the law you must be honest” (Dylan). Insofar as you’re Secesh, you Nullify, you resist you must accept as a matter of fact as did King that the Sovereign will nail your ass in retaliation.The problem with Tea Bags and Nullifiers is that as lower middle class authoritarians they basically, unlike Occupy, have too much respect for Authority to fight the power and INSTEAD they have a nasty tendency to kick people down the black and the brown. Which is why using Dr King is nauseating. Big man OPPOSED Nullification which was used by RACISTS.
@Patrick Henry Lives ”My kingdom is not of this world”. If man is fallen, revolution will have bad effects in the form of new oppression as in the case of BOTH Communism, and Franco, who wanted to “return” Spain to a Catholic country and ended up slaughtering the workers.
As the former Polish Marxist Leszek Kolakowski knew, the ideals of socialism are always destroyed by violent revolution and the expropriation of the capitalists for that produces Terror when the expropriated capitalists take up arms.
The situation is the SAME when Christians rebel against the secular authority in the name of Christianity and Christ knew this.
@Patrick Henry Lives The United States Constitution is an almost mathematical demonstration by the “liberal elite” of 1789, amended by the “liberal elite” of 1865 that we can get along no matter what our religion or color. It is as such a magnificent document. Don’t mess with it. Reread the Second Amendment.
A gentleman on the 10th Amendment Center blog stated quite accurately the difference between nullification & civil disobedience. A person calling himself Alex Hamilton said:
Civil disobedience and nullification are different and unrelated. Civil disobedience is not a constitutional doctrine; rather, it’s a moral doctrine. Civil disobedience is not something a state government does as a matter of constitutional interpretation; rather, it’s something an individual does as a matter of conscience. Civil disobedience is not a legal remedy; rather, it’s a moral action with no legal basis. Civil disobedience does not purport to nullify the law; rather, a person engaging in civil disobedience submits to the law and takes the full consequences.
Nullification is a constitutional doctrine in which a state purports to nullify a federal law that it views as unconstitutional. It is an act of defiance, as the state contends that the law does not apply to it or its citizens. Nullification is based on legal and constitutional considerations and it is undertaken by a state government. Civil disobedience is a moral doctrine in which an individual disobeys a morally unjust law. It is an act of protest, not defiance. One who engages in civil disobedience does not challenge the validity of the law, but the morality of the law. He or she does not purport to nullify that law, but submits to the law. It is a completely different concept.
Unfortunately, Dr. King used the moral tactic of civil disobedience to advance the cause of federal supremacy over state & local government. The communist riddled so called “civil rights” movement ended what little federalism remained. Known communist Hunter Pitts O’Dell & many other “activists” , including “seamstress” Rosa Parks were trained at the left wing communist training school called the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. Dr. King, who advocated for the defeat of our troops in South Vietnam by the Viet Cong, believed in and advocated raw political power by federal authorities (with guns) to accomplish his purposes at state owned universities & schools. He lacked the moral authority to lead a “moral cause” as well as an understanding of the Constitution or the 10th amendment. He plagiarized his doctoral thesis, his sexual mores were somewhere between Ted Kennedy & an alley cat & he deliberately goaded legitimate authorities into overreacting & advancing his cause.
No, MLK & his anarchistic, Leninist movement is no hero to tenthers, in fact no hero at all!
Carl Edwards – Pennsylvania
@ht_cce Don’t worry pard, they just use Dr King to get Useful Idiots and Fellow Travelers to what’s basically a RACIST movement.
A RACIST movement whose leaders lie about what’s in the Constitution to fools who no longer have the university level reading comprehension to understand the Constitution, and who when they say “buht h’it h’ain’t inn thuh Konstitooshun” speak a sort of truth or they lack the ability to find “h’it”.
@ht_cce This, as the Bastard says in Shakespeare’s King Lear, the excellent foppery of the world.
Teabags and hags are Sixties children who followed the yellow brick road and now there ain’t no more sugar tit and they is hopping mad. They now blame everybody, such as “liberals” but themselves.
I hate it when people hold King out as some sort of moral champion. King was an immoral hypocrite. He called himself “Reverend” and held himself out as a minister of the gospel, but he was a serial adulterer and womanizer and made homosexual advances to Leon Abernathy. King is not the sort of man I can look as a role model of any kind. I am sorry so many people are duped into holding him up as a sort of moral hero to emulate. In an age that needs true moral heroes, King certainly is not one of them.