Friday, March 9, 2018

Jeff Sessions is Wrong: Nothing is "Settled"

 sessions.jpg

Can political arrangements be dissolved peacefully? Legally? At the ballot box? By referendum? Or by any other mechanism short of outright violence and civil war?

According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the answer to these questions is no. Speaking in California yesterday on the subject of immigration and sanctuary cities, he issued this remarkable statement that manages to upend the entire concept of federalism in just a few short sentences:   
There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land. I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, or to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. This matter has been settled.
In Sessions’s mind, polities are forever. They're set in stone. The US Constitution established a permanent and supreme federal state — a view totally at odds with that much better document, the Declaration of Independence. The 50 states exist as nothing more than glorified federal counties, able to exert jurisdiction only in those areas not preempted by superior federal law.

More @ Mises

8 comments:

  1. If there is no secession, we still belong to England.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Constitution limits Federal powers to only the things stated openly. No more. That is different than later practice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The federals are showing every symptom of being deeply afraid of there citizens. They seem more afraid of us than we are of them. Their unholy terror at the very whisper of "secession". Their push to confiscate all weapons of military utility. The FORCED acceptance of every form of destructive pervert. The endless propaganda from both the traditional news and internet. The vast "secret police" network. All add up with the "Ten thousand things" to tell me that the Government sees it's own citizens as its most dangerous enemy. This is why I believe that violent suppression of civil liberty is eminent. Our government would rather kill us all than see us free of their control. As the Emperor Nero said: "Kill a few thousand of them. and the rest will fall down and worship me" --Ray

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Our government would rather kill us all than see us free of their control.

      For sure.

      Delete
  4. Replies
    1. Thanks.https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-morrill-tariff.html

      Delete
  5. Well, they are settled until they are unsettled...and we seem to have slipped into another "unsettling" period. Nullification...in a court room you have to prove I nullified your BS and on the street you have to stand over me 24 hours a day to keep me from ignoring your BS. Good luck with that BS to all the lawyers, prosecutors and judges in this country that piss on the Constitution on a daily basis.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lawyers, prosecutors and judges in this country that piss on the Constitution on a daily basis.

      Sad.

      Delete