HELENA – Montana is trying to trigger a battle over gun control — and perhaps make a larger point about what many folks in this ruggedly independent state regard as a meddlesome federal government.

In a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month, the state is asserting that guns manufactured in Montana and sold in Montana to people who intend to keep their weapons in Montana are exempt from federal gun registration, background check and dealer-licensing rules because no state lines are crossed.

That notion is all but certain to be tested in court.

The immediate effect of the law could be limited, since Montana is home to just a few specialty gun makers, known for high-end hunting rifles and replicas of Old West weapons, and because their out-of-state sales would automatically trigger federal control.

Still, much bigger prey lies in Montana’s sights: a legal showdown over how far the federal government’s regulatory authority extends.

“It’s a gun bill, but it’s another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana,” said Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who signed the bill.

Carrie DiPirro, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, had no comment on the legislation. But the federal government has generally argued that it has authority under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to regulate guns because they can so easily be transported across state lines.

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In true Franklin Roosevelt-fashion, President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus, or what many are calling his own “New Deal,” is being applauded by supporters as bold and progressive. Few liberals have accused the president of dragging the United States “backwards,” because in terms of massive government expansion, most “progressives” consider 1930′s America a good place to be.

The same cannot be said of 1830′s America, when the concept of unlimited federal government was still considered a menace, not a solution. When South Carolina recently joined a number of states in passing a state sovereignty resolution, the bill’s author, Rep. Michael Pitts, said it was a “wake-up call,” and that Americans had ignored federal intrusions for too long — economic, cultural or otherwise. Said Civil War historian W. Scott Poole of the bill, “I was fairly horrified actually … it clearly harkens back to nullification,” referring to U.S. Sen. John C. Calhoun’s famous defiance of federal tariffs in 1832.

So being “backward” or “reactionary” now means questioning the power of government or invoking “horrible” men like Calhoun. And being “progressive” or “forward-thinking” now means fully embracing government and invoking those like Obama and liberal hero FDR.

And yet, I know few liberals who support the War on Drugs, marriage “protection” amendments, or the Patriot Act. In fact, if you talk to the most vocal Leftists about drug criminalization, gay marriage, or the loss of civil liberties, their anti-government rhetoric can sound downright reactionary. “Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers,” Calhoun said. Today, much of the American Left agrees with him.

So how do liberals square their fear of intrusive government with their enthusiasm for Obama? The opposite question could also be asked: how did so many conservatives square their fear of big government with their enthusiasm for President George W. Bush, whose unprecedented spending and increasing of the power of the state set the stage for Obama?

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Under the dome of the Texas capitol, folks typically focus on the Texas constitution, but it’s time to revisit the U.S. Constitution and the protections it guarantees, specifically in the Tenth Amendment. The authors of this amendment, ratified in 1791, remembered what it was like to be under the thumb of a distant, all-powerful government.

Unfortunately, the protections guaranteed by this visionary document have melted away over time. Since the U.S. Constitution was first ratified, the federal government has slowly, steadily and successfully eroded the notion of state’s rights.

The Founding Fathers understood that a one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work, especially in a country the size of America, and it certainly doesn’t work for Texas. Our economic strength, compared to the federal budget mess and other states’ troubles, is evidence that Texans know what’s best for Texas.

The Constitution simply does not empower the federal government to override state laws without restraint.

I agree with Texas’ 7th governor, Sam Houston, who once said, “Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.”

We didn’t like oppression then and we certainly don’t like it now. Unfortunately, pressure is increasing from a federal government that is growing increasingly oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state.

I am calling on Texans to stand up and be heard, because this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. Returning to the letter and the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, and its essential Tenth Amendment, will free our state and, ultimately, strengthen our Union.

Regardless of your party affiliation, that is a goal we can all embrace.

One of the stupidest attacks on advocates of the Tenth Amendment that I’ve recently seen was written by Brian Hicks and published in The (Charleston) Post and Courier on March 20. According to Hicks, South Carolina state legislators who are paying undue attention to the Tenth Amendment are “a bunch of guys obsessed with nineteenth century history” but “haven’t learned much from it.”

“The last time they got uppity and began mouthing off about states’ rights, we got our butts kicked.” Hicks goes on to explain that states’ rights really mean for most of its proponents the “race issue.”

And even before that became the case, according to one history professor at the College of Charleston, the term “has a tragic history in the life of our state. It harks pretty clearly to the nullification controversy. It began with the unsuccessful attempt of South Carolinian to resist the high tariff signed into laws by Andrew Jackson in 1832 and ended in disaster. The controversy dragged on for a couple of years, egged on by John C. Calhoun, until the state finally backed down.” But “resident busybodies didn’t shut up and kept fanning the flames until finally they just decided to secede. And we all know how that turned out.”

Yes, we all know how that turned out. Since the defeat of the secessionist South in 1865, the feds have been in charge of the military means of making any defiant state government compliant with its orders.

Therefore, it was only a matter of time before we reached our current condition, in which the states became only submissive tools for carrying out the will of a centralized federal administration (which in fact has no constitutional standing except as an indeterminate extension of executive power).

This, by the way, has nothing to do with defending the institution of slavery, which we are certainly well rid off. It’s about a growing federal bureaucratic dictatorship, which neither of our two publicly financed national parties is willing to touch.

For Hicks’s information, James Madison, one of the authors of the Constitution, defended the doctrine of nullification, most famously in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. The notion that state governments could “interpose” themselves between an odious federal law, as were the bloated tariffs of 1828 and 1832, and the citizens of their states has a pedigree going back to the late eighteenth century.

The authors of the Tenth Amendment clearly believed in the right of nullification, and if Jackson put down the resistance to it mounted by the residents of the seaport of Charleston, he did so by threatening military force. He was not making a constitutional argument of any kind.

There is one point on which Hicks may be correct, namely that South Carolina Republicans who are unhappy about usurpations of power under Barack Obama did not seem to care when “the last administration was stripping away all our constitutional rights with the Patriot Act.”

But there are two obvious responses to this partly justified charge. One, for many decades all kinds of supposed defenders of states’ rights have invoked this principle quite selectively. If New Deal-Great Society Democrats discovered the Tenth Amendment when they were opposing the racial integration of public and private institutions in Southern states, the putative allies of Mr. Hicks are at least as hypocritical when they scream states’ rights in order to allow gay marriage and the legal use of marijuana.

How can Hicks be so blind to the fact that it is liberal Democrats who are out in front in the hypocritical appeal to states’ rights on behalf of their socially liberal agenda?

Two, it is simply untrue that those who favor a new emphasis on the Tenth Amendment are all fans of the Bush administration and its liberal internationalist foreign policy. Certainly this judgment would not apply to Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin or the millions of followers of these recent presidential candidates.

The Constitution Party, the Campaign for Liberty and other groups that are part of the Tenth Amendment movement are overwhelmingly composed of critics of the Bush administration. While there may be GOP politicians who have climbed on board, most of the Republican supporters I’ve met do not strike me as stand-ins for Karl Rove and John McCain.

Moreover, it is possible that some Republican legislators did vote for the Patriot Act because they were genuinely concerned about national security after 9/11. This vote does not mean these legislators also favored a further extension of the federal administration into such domestic matters as social policy and taxation.

On the other side, however, are the assorted hypocrites in Hicks’ camp, who complain about federal surveillance in dealing with terrorism but who adore federal snooping to uncover “discriminatory” business practices and “gender-discrimination,” or to regulate the flow and direction of tobacco smoke.

Why is having the ATF or another part of the federal government control our smoking or hiring habits any less of a federal interference than the Patriot Act? The answer is of course self-evident. All forms of federal interference that serve the ideological ends of people like Mr. Hicks are perfectly acceptable.

Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient. He is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a contributor to Taki’s Magazine, LewRockwell.com and many other websites.  He is the author of eight books, with his most recent being Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007)

Read the full text of the legislation below:

WHEREAS, the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution states “[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” and the Tenth Amendment states “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE that this body reaffirms the principles of government expressed by Thomas Jefferson in a resolution written for the Kentucky legislature in 1798 stating that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact 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; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress; and

That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory; and

That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people;” and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed. And thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same. And that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”: thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press: insomuch, that whatever violated either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals. That, therefore, all acts of Congress of the United States which do abridge the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, are not law, but are altogether void, and of no force; and

That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,” goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument: that the proceedings of the General Government under color of these articles, will be a fit and necessary subject of revisal and correction; and

That a committee of conference and correspondence be appointed, which shall have as its charge to communicate the preceding resolutions to the Legislatures of the several States; to assure them that this State continues in the same esteem of their friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment at which a common danger first suggested a common union: that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly to those specified in their federal compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness and prosperity of all the States: that faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation: that it does also believe, that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this State is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis), to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them: that nevertheless, this State, from motives of regard and respect for its co-States, has wished to communicate with them on the subject: that with them alone it is proper to communicate, they alone being parties to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not a party, but merely the creature of the compact, and subject as to its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those by whom, and for whose use itself and its powers were all created and modified: that if the acts before specified should stand, these conclusions would flow from them: that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. That this State does therefore call on its co-States for an expression of their sentiments on acts not authorized by the federal compact. And it doubts not that their sense will be so announced as to prove their attachment unaltered to limited government, whether general or particular. And that the rights and liberties of their co-States will be exposed to no dangers by remaining embarked in a common bottom with their own. That they will concur with this State in considering acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States, of all powers whatsoever: that they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government, with a power assumed to bind the States, not merely as the cases made federal, (casus foederis,) but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent: 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 authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories; and

That the said committee be authorized to communicate by writing or personal conferences, at any times or places whatever, with any person or person who may be appointed by any one or more co-States to correspond or confer with them; and that they lay their proceedings before the next session of the General Court.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America. Acts which would cause such a nullification include, but are not limited to:

I. Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the States comprising the United States of America without the consent of the legislature of that State.

II. Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

III. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

IV. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.

V. Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.

VI. Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition; and

That should any such act of Congress become law or Executive Order or Judicial Order be put into force, all powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States shall revert to the several States individually. Any future government of the United States of America shall require ratification of three quarters of the States seeking to form a government of the United States of America and shall not be binding upon any State not seeking to form such a government.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of the Senate is authorized and directed to transmit an appropriate copy of this resolution to the President of the United States, each member of the United States Congress.

Author’s Note: The following text was delivered at a rally in defense of the Tenth Amendment, held at the statehouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on March 16, 2009 and organized by Representative Samuel Rohrer. The rally was well attended and the hundreds of people who crowded the rotunda, and who were shown on TV, carried such signs as “Give Us Back States Rights!” and “Guns and Property.”

Never has this author seen such an exuberant outpouring of what has been described as the “Alternative Right.” These were the members of the true conservative movement, who would never be invited on to FOX news or asked to write for National Review or the New York Times. In short, they are the real Right, which the media have worked energetically to keep out of view. May their number increase!

It might seem to some that our gathering today looks like an exercise in futility. Why should we bother to pay honor to an amendment that our courts, legislatures, and public administrators usually ignore or treat as mere decorative language?

And why bother to remind the states, which now beg for federal grants and which run to conform to federal mandates, that the states under our founding document share with the federal branches a real right to govern? Certainly most of our states, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania included, have no desire to take back those “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited to the States,” because, put most plainly, our states have become cringingly subservient to Washington.

I for one would be delighted if there were a level of government which would be willing to stand in the way of the expansion of federal power. That of course assumes that our states and their people still believed in our original constitutional principles.

As it turns out, however, the Founders did not indicate any level of government except for the states, as a partner in their plan for shared sovereignty. Whether we like it or not, it is the states, as indicated in the Tenth Amendment and in the original articles of the Constitution, with which the federal executive and federal legislative are meant to co-govern.

Therefore, those who of us shudder with horror at today’s centralized public administration need the states as the only constitutionally authorized bulwark against the consolidation of federal control. Even if most voters don’t care about this centralization, those of us who do have a duty to call attention to those limits placed on federal power under our Constitution.

Needless to say, if those limits were fully abolished, most of my fellow-academics would be rejoicing in the streets, providing that those like themselves were running the show. A constitution that allows progressive intellectuals to socialize the rest of us from a single center of power is one that they would surely welcome.

But this development would occur against everything the founders believed would result from their project in self-government. They assumed that the influence of the state governments would remain stronger than that of the central regime.

Since the existence of the national government originally depended on state legislatures, to elect presidents and senators, and since “the powers of the national government are few and defined,” as explained in Federalist 45, the Constitution’s authors believed that Americans would look first to the states in order to protect the “lives, liberty, and property of the people.”

Clearly these constitutional architects did not foresee a time when states would become the mere creatures of federal power. Nor did they imagine that it would someday be necessary to push state governments into requesting the return of their original right to self-government. Least of all, could they have dreamt that American citizens would be gathering at some future time to insist that the states act like independent agents in relation to a federal bureaucracy that has no constitutional standing whatever.

It is doubtful that our being here today will get things back to where they should be. But it can serve as a reminder that we’ve noticed how badly our constitution has strayed. This has occurred with the tacit approval of a shamefully passive or indifferent public. It has further involved a political class that, with some exceptions, such as those who invited me here to speak, is all too eager to take charge of our lives and liberty. It is also the class that continues to help themselves to our property, the very institution that, according to the founders, American citizens would look to the states to protect.

Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient. He is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a contributor to Taki’s Magazine, LewRockwell.com and many other websites.  He is the author of eight books, with his most recent being Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007)

When a number of states passed state sovereignty resolutions recently, though these measures came from right-wing resistance to Obama’s statism, the Left would do well to take note.

The doctrine of nullification, i.e., the idea that states have the right to unilaterally render void an act of the federal government that they perceive to be contrary to the Constitution, finds its origins in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, most notably his 1798 Kentucky Resolutions, written to protest the Federalist Congress’s passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions claim that the U. S. Constitution was a compact among the several states-whereby the states delegated certain limited powers to the U.S. government; any undelegated power exercised by the U. S. government is thus void.

Furthermore, the general government is not the final and authoritative judge of its own powers, since that would make the government’s discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of those powers-but rather the parties to the contract, the states, have each an equal right to judge for themselves whether the Constitution has been violated as well as “the mode and measure of redress”-since there is no common judge of such matters among them.

Thus, every state can of its own authority nullify within its territory “all assumptions of power by others”-i.e., all perceived violations of the Constitution by the federal government.

The Kentucky Resolution uses the Tenth Amendment to justify a strict construction of the general government’s powers; any powers not expressly delegated to the U. S. government remain the province of the states or the people, and any exercise of those powers by the general government is void and can be struck down by the states on that basis.

Furthermore, Jefferson warns against construing the “necessary and proper” clause so broadly as to justify the assumption of undelegated powers by the general government; the intent of the clause was to only enable the execution of limited powers, not to indefinitely extend the general government’s scope. Otherwise, this part of the Constitution would be used “to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.”

Jefferson counsels the states to be vigilant against violations of the Constitutions and not hesitant to strike down unconstitutional measures by Congress or the President; he writes that “free government is founded in jealously and not in confidence” and therefore urges that “no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

In other words, the states should not trust federal officials with non-constitutional powers simply because those particular federal officials might be trusted to use those powers benevolently; this kind of “confidence of man” leads to the destruction of free government.

Gennady Stolyarov II is an independent philosophical essayist, composer, amateur mathematician, contributor to Mises.org, editor-in-chief of The Rational Argumentator and The Progress of Liberty, and a high-ranking content producer on Associated Content.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama – who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana – will end raids on pot dispensaries in California.

Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about Drug Enforcement Administration raids in California since Obama took office last month, Holder said the administration has changed its policy.

“What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing here in law enforcement,” he said. “What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”

Bill Piper, national affairs director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a marijuana advocacy group, said the statement is encouraging.

“I think it definitely signals that Obama is moving in a new direction, that it means what he said on the campaign trail that marijuana should be treated as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue,” he said.

Piper said Obama has also indicated he will drop the federal government’s long-standing opposition to health officials’ needle-exchange programs for drug users.

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