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By Kahrin Deines, Associated Press

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. Continue Reading

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by Jack Hunter

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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by Texas Gov. Rick Perry

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.

by Paul Gottfried

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)

On April 1, 2009, the Georgia State Senate passed Resolution 632 (SR632) “Affirming states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.”  The vote was a resounding 43-1, with 12 not voting or excused.  Here’s the tally.  (h/t Vinny Patel)

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by Paul Gottfried

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!

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