Category Archives: Federalism

UPDATED: Independence And The Declaration of Secession

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, libertarianism, Natural Law, Taxation

“Independence And The Declaration of Secession” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Tea party,” “patriot,” “Constitution,” and “Bill of Rights”: these keywords are the very stuff of the American Revolution, which took place during the last half of the 18th century. They are also some of the words that cued the “Infernal Revenue Service” (IRS) to target the philosophical descendants of the Revolutionaries, in 21st century America.

Had they been aware that in 2012 not all Americans are created equal, the targeted not-for-profit organizations, aiming to fly beneath the IRS radar, would have also avoided any references to “The Declaration of Independence,” whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate as Independence Day.

Ordinary Americans of a certain age are already in compliance with the anti-American program carried out by their government, Democratic or Republican. Having been conditioned by our country’s many Orwellian Ministries of Truth, they celebrate July 4th firecrackers, fire-sale prices and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. As this column once remarked, contemporary Americans are less likely to read The Declaration of Independence now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. As historian David Hackett Fischer recounted in “Liberty and Freedom,” printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet.” And John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, urged that the “people be universally informed.”

And so the people were.

“From the beginning,” wrote James McClellan, “American Constitution-makers had the general support of their countrymen. The principles of government they espoused during the Revolution and implemented after the British surrender at Yorktown were widely shared in every town and village. It was on the basis of this remarkable consensus, this serene moment of creation, this fertile ground of American political experience, that the new Constitution was established.” (Page 59) …

The complete column is “Independence And The Declaration of Secession.” Read it on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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Happy Independence Day.

UPDATE (7/5): LETTERS I LIKE.

The great historian of the South, Dr. Clyde Wilson:

From: Clyde Wilson
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 4:37 AM
To: Ilana Mercer
Subject:

Dear Lady, in re your Declaration of Independence column. In my last years of teaching I found that students not only had never read the Declaration (or the Constitution) but that they could not begin to understand them. They could only give canned responses. Sad but true.
Best wishes, Clyde Wilson

WND reader Steve Tanton:

• 5 hours ago @ WND Comments:

“Other than the short the article on July 1 in the Washington Times by Allen West, this is the most significant article on the true meaning of Independence Day that I have come across this year.”

UPDATED: Where Are Tenth-Amendment Advocates On Senate Amnesty Bill?

Conservatism, Constitution, Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Republicans, States' Rights

In “Democracy And The Immigration Political Steamroller,” I inquired after the Tenth-Amendment Center. Why was it AWOL in the current amnesty fiasco?

To its credit, The Heritage Foundation has not gone along with the open-border crowd, and has made some sharp points about the top-down federal approach that characterizes the Senate’s “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act”:

8. Disregard for Federalism

The Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution clearly articulates that powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government are thereby reserved to the states.[46] The Founders understood that in order to know what is truly necessary and prudent for the protection of citizens’ rights and liberties, one must be in constant interaction with the people. For this reason, the Founders felt that states fostered the best-equipped individuals to represent the interests of public safety on behalf of their own citizens.

States also have a unique familiarity with their communities that enables them to better navigate the difficult issues of detection, detention, and deportation of illegal aliens. Following this same rationale, many legal experts believe that state and local governments retain inherent authority to enforce federal civil law. Opponents to this practice, however, feel the federal government should be the controlling voice when determining immigration policies and border security, with little to no guidance from the states themselves. As was the case with Arizona’s S. B. 1070 immigration law, when the state attempted to implement requirements it felt necessary to determine the immigration status of an individual, the federal government saw the state as an obstacle rather than an ally.[47]

Yet, with fewer than 6,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, failing to use the one million state and local law enforcement personnel to supplement federal personnel makes little sense. State and local law enforcement would, in fact, be a powerful force multiplier for immigration law enforcement. Yet, S. 744 continues to promote a top-down federal approach to addressing immigration while leaving minimum room for real collaboration.[48]

The bill does include a select few instances where some form of collaboration presents itself between the state, local, and federal governments. For example, four of 10 appointed members to the Southern Border Security Commission are to be representatives of the four states along the southern border. One representative is to come from each of the states and be either the governor or someone appointed by the governor.[49] Also, with approval from the Secretary of Defense, a governor may order personnel of the National Guard of his or her own state to perform operations and missions in the southwest border region for the purposes of assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection.[50] These instances, however, are very limited.
State and local law enforcement would be a powerful force multiplier for immigration law enforcement. Yet, the Senate bill promotes a federal top-down approach to addressing immigration, leaving minimum room for real collaboration.

Otherwise, the bill provides no clear proposal for partnerships between the federal and state or local governments. Indeed, the legislation makes no mention of effective collaborative immigration enforcement programs, such as Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the federal government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement to “act in the stead of ICE agents by processing illegal aliens for removal.”[51]Instead, it pushes a federal-government-knows-best-and-will-fix-all mentality.

Read Heritage’s 9 other points.

Advocates of the Tenth and states’ rights are clearly AWOL.

UPDATE: Jack Kerwick isn’t. He’s out there wrestling with the illogic of the concepts immigration fetishists deploy to beat you about the head. “Toward an Honest Discussion of Immigration”: Read it!

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Democracy And The Immigration Political Steamroller

Constitution, Democracy, Elections, Federalism, Government, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, States' Rights

The essence of democracy is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “general will,” a “national purpose” that must be implemented by an all-powerful state. “Democratic voting is done, not only to select officials but also to determine the functions and goals and powers of the government,” writes legal scholar (and friend) James Ostrowski. “The guiding principle of republics is that they exercise narrow powers delegated to them by the people, who themselves, as individuals, possess such powers.”

James Madison was not a democrat. He denounced popular rule as “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” Democracy, he observed, must be confined to a “small spot” (like Athens). Madison and the other founders attempted to forestall democracy by devising a republic, the hallmark of which was the preservation of individual liberty. To that end, they restricted the federal government to a handful of enumerated powers.

Decentralization, devolution of authority, and the restrictions on government imposed by a Bill of Rights were to ensure that few issues were left to the adjudication of a national majority.

When you consider every bit of legislation written by our democratically elected despotic lawmakers—the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744),” for example—contemplate the words of Benjamin Barber:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.

And where, pray tell, in the immigration tyranny is the Tenth-Amendment Center? Its scholars used to advocate for the right of the residents of the states to determine how they lived their lives. Unless I am doing him a disservice—in which case I apologize profusely—the last time Michael Boldin applied the Tenth Amendment creatively to the political steamroller that is immigration was when he distinguished between immigration and naturalization in 18th century nomenclature, back in … April 28, 2010.

Has the Tenth Amendment Center fallen to the Beltway bigwigs of the Cato Institute?

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UPDATED: The Balanced Budget Deception (‘Debt? What’s That,’ Says The Ass With Ears)

Conservatism, Constitution, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Republicans, Rights, Taxation

At least those who tout the Republican budgetary version of a decrease in the increase in spending are no longer claiming to downsize the government.

So proud was Sean Hannity of Paul Ryan’s latest budget iteration that he boasted that, while it increases spending by trillions, it still manages to shave off $4.64 trillion in increases.

According to the Washington Examiner, the current spending trajectory will see “federal government outlays … rise from $3.61 trillion this year to $5.77 trillion in 2023, for a cumulative 10-year total of $46.1 trillion in federal spending.”

“Under Ryan’s new budget, federal spending would reach just $4.95 trillion in 2023, for a 10-year total of $41.46 trillion. That’s $4.64 trillion in deficit savings, which is a good start,” conclude the Examiner editors.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has dusted off last year’s budget, tweaked it a bit and resubmitted it to Republican applause.

Lauding so-called “balanced budget” initiatives is laughable. The real problem is that the quest to “balance federal spending and taxes” is meaningless. It does nothing to stop the federal government from raising taxes as it increases spending and grows in scope and size, ad infinitum.

Ultimately, “A balanced-budget requirement implies is that government has the constitutional right to spend as much as it takes in; that government is permitted to waste however much revenue it can extract from wealth producers, and that the bums must merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) with what is squandered (spending).”

“The Powers Delegated to the Federal Government are Few and Defined.” A return to the 18 or so functions the Constitution delegates to the federal government would be a much better start. This requires that entire departments be shuttered.

UPDATE: Scrap everything I’ve just said (NOT). This just in from the president: “There is no debt crisis.”

Without reading what TAWE (“The Ass With Ears”) has said, you know that, to dismiss a $16.5 trillion debt, you have to think that “macroeconomics and microeconomic are two separate solitudes, governed by different laws.”

To say such a stupid thing as TAWE has said, “You have to to believe that the values and virtues ordinary mortals hold themselves to don’t apply to government; that the laws of economics are NOT natural, but political, laws.”

“We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,” President Obama told ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos this week.

In uttering such a fatuity, BHO showed that he has no regard for or knowledge of what Thomas Jefferson was warning about, when he said:

“The greatest danger came from the possibility of legislators plunging citizens into debt. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”