Mark Levin’s Intellectual Envy

I had respect for Mark Levin.  That is until he ran from intellectual debate from Thomas Woods.  Before that, I was impressed by him.  I had a signed copy of Liberty and Tyranny and enjoyed many of his points.

These days I wonder where his loyalties stand.  I am inclined to believe that he is a Statist operative of the Republican old guard who doesn’t desire for a balanced budget, but for government to work for Republican interests.  Either that or he is an intellectual child who hates the fact that other people have good ideas for freedom.

Case in point, here is his recent quote regarding nullification:

the nullifier kooks are neo-confederates wasting a lot of our time & diverting our focus; they're a small, fringe group

Why is this a diversion?  As far as I can tell, given what happened with marijuana legalization in Colorado, nullification is a much faster process for liberty than working within the Federal system of government.

I’ll grant that Mr. Levin’s amendments he has proposed are not bad ideas.  I would be happy to see all of them adopted into the Constitution.

But I think Levin forgets the one key factor involved in implementing laws: that is the power to enforce them.  And when you pass a law that limits the government, who is going to enforce it?

The government is not qualified to police itself.  As it does this already, we have seen the terrible results, from police wantonly being able to murder citizens without repercussions to an Attorney General who has been caught selling (or donating) weapons to drug lords.

Nullification is not just a remedy to reverse bad laws, but a way for groups of citizens to hold the CentralFederal government accountable for the unconstitutional laws they pass like indefinite detention, prohibition, or forced health insurance.  In effect, it is a means for a collection of people operating under a sovereign state to challenge the decrees of the higher state.

Of course, Mark Levin probably knows this.  I know he isn’t stupid, he is just extremely envious that other people have better ideas than his own.

And so he resorts to age-old liberal tactics like playing the race card.  What a chump.

Unlawful Laws

It is important to remember that the United States Constitution is only as good as the people who have sworn to uphold it.  Mike Maharrey’s logic in this video is sound though and he makes great points.

The mentality among Congress people these days is that any law they passed is constitutional until the Supreme Court reverses.  In other words, they can pass any law they want, require the executive branch to enforce it, and you have to wait for its constitutionality to be tested starting with the lower, inferior courts all the up to the Supreme Court.  This process takes years sometimes.  Meanwhile, the bureaucrats are busily writing into the Second Set of Books (the mandates and decrees which enforce the laws) and are adapting policies to implement the law.

Inevitably, the Supreme Court will usually side with the State over the people.  They have, after all, made a career in working for the State in some capacity.  A lawyer is merely an agent of the State, regardless of whether he or she is a private attorney or a public official.  Their whole job description is about making sure that people stay with the boundaries defined by the State.  And this is why we shouldn’t be surprised with decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson or Kelo v. New London or any other case in which the rights of people were infringed over the interests of the State.  Remember, it was the judges who allowed factories to pollute in the 1800s and who told citizens that any money you deposit in the bank is not yours to withdraw.

Thus, everyone with an agenda gets away with it, regardless of what the supreme contract of the land says while the producers lose more and more to the looter and moocher classes.

And we are told by pundits of both the Left and the Right to work such a corrupt system in order to fix it?

Jack Hunter: The Real Extremists are in Washington D.C.

The following was recorded on October 23, 2010, but just recently uploaded. It features Jack Hunter, the Southern Avenger, discussing the concept of nullification:

Basically, the idea behind nullification is that there are limits to governmental authority and that any time the government goes where it is not permitted, then we are allowed to simply say, “No”.  The trouble is, the government tends to have more guns than the average citizen, so we go along with the more absurd things (like regulating clown cars) because we’d rather not invite the trouble.

This is why having the state governments fight back is crucial.  Regardless of whether they are right or wrong, they will remain an unwritten check on Federal power.  Do you honest expect the Federal courts, both Superior and Inferior, to stand up for the rights of individuals over the tyrannies of the federal government?  I don’t, largely because the courthouse is just another playing field of the government.