Allegiance is a duty of fidelity owed by a subject or a citizen to their nation, and like fidelity to the United States Constitution. Conservatives, particularly teabagger Republicans, are wont to claim their allegiance to America and the Constitution are beyond question. And yet, they are more likely than not to be the first so-called good citizens to dream up myriad schemes to prove their seditious intent and subvert the Constitution as rebels against the nation they claim allegiance to. Some Americans may remember from American history that a group of seditious states decided that they had purview to declare federal laws unconstitutional through a process known as “nullification” that led to the deaths of over three-quarters of a million Americans during the war to put an end to the Union.
Early in American history, Founding Father James Madison warned that the fastest way to “put an end to the Union itself” was through nullification because it would “render each obligation a state’s citizen owe to the union as a whole optional.” That lesson, and the Civil War, is something a Texas Republican legislator, Dan Flynn, is attempting to repeat through a proposal that empowers just two Texas Republicans, the state house speaker and lieutenant governor, with authority to suspend any federal law within Texas’s border. Flynn’s legislation giving ultimate “nullification” power to a bare majority 14 member ‘joint legislative committee on legislation” appointed by the house speaker and lieutenant governor can “temporarily declare that any federal law” they disagree with “has no legal effect in this state,” and once ratified the nullification becomes permanent.
Nullification is a very popular, and patently unconstitutional, theory embraced by anti-American and anti-government malcontents that claim any state can unilaterally declare a federal law unconstitutional and abolish the law in the state; in this case Texas. The idea is also embraced by the anti-American Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association led by treasonous Richard Mack who claims it is the local sheriff, and not the Supreme Court, who is the ultimate arbiter of what is, and what is not, constitutional. However, the Constitution explicitly provides that all federal laws are the supreme law of the land, and constitutional,” and that the Supreme Court and not the local sheriff, or a state such as Texas, decides the constitutionality of federal or state laws.
Advocates for nullification deny the Constitution and claim they have the right to declare a law unconstitutional and are not doing anything as simple as invalidating them. Of course, there is nothing in the Constitution giving state lawmakers like Texas’s house leader or lieutenant governor the power to “issue binding pronouncements on whether a federal law is constitutional or not.” In fact, and this is something an alleged arbiter of the Constitution should know; “all judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Thus, If Texas Republicans believe a federal law is unconstitutional, their proper legal course according to the Constitution is to file a lawsuit seeking to strike the law down. It is what inspired James Madison to warn that nullification would “speedily put an end to the Union itself” because, in effect, it allows a “state to use nullification to secede from the union one law at a time.”
It is unclear exactly which federal law, or laws, Flynn has in mind to nullify first, but it is important to remember Flynn is a Texan and there are any number of federal laws Republicans in the state claim do not apply to them because it is Texas. The idea of seceding from the Union, and nullification of federal laws, are popular among a relatively large number of Texans; including recently indicted and charged for abusing his power Rick Perry. In 2011 Perry signed a law nullifying a 2007 law signed by fellow Texan George W. Bush that phased out less energy-efficient incandescent light bulbs. If Texans are petty enough to pass a nullification law over phasing out energy-wasting light bulbs, it is obvious they have big plans for any number of environmental, regulatory, or immigration laws they disagree with. Flynn’s nullification law was just introduced, but it is likely the anti-government Republicans will take up the proposal quickly at their first opportunity as a first step towards secession.
It is certain that even after the anti-government traitors in the Confederacy attempted to, as Founding Father James Madison put it, “put an end to the Union itself” to disastrous effect, the same traitorous mindset is still at work in 2014. In fact, although there has always been seditionists and secessionists in America, they exploded in numbers when Americans first elected an African American man as President. And, they have nearly universally touted state’s rights over the Federal government as their primary reason for opposing the government in Washington with a Black man as President.
When Texas governor Rick Perry first floated the idea of Texas secession, he claimed Washington has no right to pass laws Texas doesn’t like. Perry’s mindset, like his cohort in the teabag movement, was that “if Washington (with a legally elected African American President) continues to thumb their nose at Texans, who knows what might come out of that?” It is not the legally passed laws that bother Texans, it is that Texas Republicans cannot comport laws passed while a Black man is in the Oval Office. It is beyond dispute that there was not the preponderance of calls for secession or nullification when fellow Texan, and white guy, George W. Bush was president.
What is glaringly obvious is that besides being incredibly racist, these so-called Americans hate the U.S. Constitution as much as they hate President Obama. It is true that as members of the former Confederacy they deny the existence of, and defy, Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution, but by seeking to nullify federal laws as a means to secession to “put an end to the Union,” they reveal that the true source of their hatred and contempt is the United States of America and that makes them traitorous cretins.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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