by Thomas E. Woods
Even though state nullification was more often employed in the nineteenth century by northern states than by southern, and the movement today is in evidence all over the country รขโฌโ north, south, east and west รขโฌโ youรขโฌโขll never guess the line the smearbund is adopting. Iรขโฌโขm telling you, youรขโฌโขll just never guess.
All right, Iรขโฌโขll tell you. Their reply to all this is: รขโฌลConfederate Confederate Confederate slavery slavery slavery racism racism racism.รขโฌย Good old establishment Left. Always something new and interesting to say.
Lou Dubose, a conventional leftist who takes criticism of the federal government personally, recently wrote a piece called รขโฌลConfederates in the Atticรขโฌย for a subscription-only pro-regime site. I am one of those alleged รขโฌลConfederates,รขโฌย since Lou seems to think my opposition to government makes an exception for the Southern confederacy of 1861รขโฌโ1865.
Lou is worried about my forthcoming book, Nullification. He warns that hundreds of people at CPAC loved my speech on the subject. Itรขโฌโขs all very sinister.
Right now California is on the verge of decriminalizing marijuana, in an act of defiance of the federal government. Lou Dubose looks around the country, sees decentralizing forces like this everywhere, and responds, รขโฌลConfederate Confederate Confederate Confederate Confederate Confederate Confederate.รขโฌย
Lou, weรขโฌโขve duly noted your contribution. Thanks a bunch.
Hereรขโฌโขs the reply I sent to Conventional Lou, the guy who thinks the federal government is super-dangerous when a George W. Bush is running it, but that we should keep it just as powerful as it is now even though it could fall into the hands of another George W. Bush. Actually trying to stop the federal governmentรขโฌโขs anti-social behavior, on the other hand? What are you, a รขโฌลneo-Confederateรขโฌย?
Mr. Dubose:
Someone just forwarded me your article. What a shame. I actually read and enjoyed your book Vice, and Iรขโฌโขve heard you interviewed on Antiwar Radio with my friend Charles Goyette. Murray Polner and I included an article from the Texas Observer, where I understand you were once associated, in our book We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now (Basic Books, 2008).
All of us in the Ron Paul/Campaign for Liberty mold are antiwar (much, much more so than Obama and his followers, to say the least), anti-torture, pro-civil liberties, and anti-drug war. Isnรขโฌโขt that a set of policies that would favor racial minorities? Iรขโฌโขve never understood all the hysteria against us.
Wouldnรขโฌโขt nullification have been nice for California and Washington State to have tried when Japanese-Americans were being rounded up by the progressive U.S. government? I sure would have favored it.
Digging out old articles from the 1990s is silly, as Iรขโฌโขm sure you know. (If youรขโฌโขd like to know how I feel about the abolitionists you could read We Who Dared to Say No to War (2008), which includes several notable ones.) You could also dig out articles showing I used to be pro-war. What would that prove, other than that Iรขโฌโขve moved from neoconservatism to paleoconservatism and (for the past nine years) to libertarianism?
[You can even find, as late as 1999, in a scholarly journal called American Studies, an article I wrote critical of capitalism from a traditionalist perspective. Are you going to trot that out and say my free-market credentials aren’t so clear after all? Probably not, since you’d look ridiculous. I do have a pretty substantial online archive of my recent writing you can read without having to use the Wayback Machine, that might give you a slightly better sense of my worldview.]
California is considering decriminalizing marijuana across the board. Thatรขโฌโขs also nullification. Are they to be condemned? Whatever happened to the tradition of decentralism on the Left, รย la Kirkpatrick Sale? These days the Left hems and haws about the U.S. government (when itรขโฌโขs out of power, of course), but balks at any actual opposition to it, apart from a few pretty speeches.
Some of us are a little more impatient than that.
Finally, what a shame you didnรขโฌโขt bother to mention that in front of a CPAC crowd I criticized both the draft and preemptive war.
Long live decentralization! Nationalism had its day with the statesรขโฌโข-rights-hating Hitler. Letรขโฌโขs return to a humane scale of living.
Reprinted from LewRockwell.com
Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (visit his website; follow him on Facebook; send him mail), holds a bachelorรขโฌโขs degree in history from Harvard and his masterรขโฌโขs, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His nine books include the critically acclaimed study The Church Confronts Modernity (Columbia University Press, 2004) and two New York Times bestsellers: Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. His new book, Nullification, will be released on June 29. Visit his blog.
รยฉ 2010 Tom Woods