Dear Editor, Some people are dissatisfied with the action of Congress, the President, and the government in general. So what is the problem? Unconstitutional legislation from Congress, and or Executive Orders from the President! So how do we solve these problems that probably seven out of ten citizens are oblivious to?
It is wisest when you have a tough problem to solve to start with the basics. In this case go back to the constitution and those who wrote it as we look for legal methods available to us to stop economic servitude and the federal government's intrusions into every corner and crevice of our lives. With very little research one concept jumps out, "Nullification".
As author J. Wolverton II explains, "Simply stated, nullification is a concept of legal statutory construction that endows each state with the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that the state deems unconstitutional. Nullification is founded on the assertion that the sovereign states formed the union, and as creators of the compact, they hold ultimate authority as to the limits of the power of the central government to enact laws that are applicable to the states and the citizens thereof."
Since the sovereign states, each, only 'loaned' their authority or power to govern to the Federal Government, the states still have the final say, with the 10th Amendment, as to whether a law is to be valid within the borders of that state.
In the years of 1798 and 1799, due to the passing of the Allen and Sedition Acts, the question of Nullification came to the forefront with the Kentucky Resolutions written by Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Resolution written by James Madison. In these Resolutions, it's obvious that they use the same arguments that were in the Federalist Papers and were well settled tenets of constitutional doctrine.
Historian Thomas E. Woods wrote, "Jefferson was merely building upon an existing line of political thought dating back to Virginia's ratifying convention and even into the colonial period. Consequently, an idea that may strike us as radical today was well within the mainstream of Virginian political thought when Jefferson introduced it".
The Kentucky Resolution #1 states, "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 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-governments; and that when-soever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force ..."
A growing number of state legislators are awakening to this lesson out of history. Make sure yours is one of them. Many candidates are available and wanting to talk and listen. Get this into their hands and make sure they understand nullification!
Thanks ... Glenn H. Rider ghdr-benz@sbcglobal.net from Porterville, CA.
