by Topher Morrison
Unlike many people I harbor a guilty pleasure while watching the Rachel Maddow show. I enjoy the occasional cocktail she concocts if only because I wish I had a show in which I had an excuse to drink and drink well for that matter. I find extraordinary eloquence in her perlocution, I enjoy her enthusiastic sarcasm and subsequent pause as if she's waiting for a laugh track that never comes. She has a wonderful knack for talking right passed the debate by supplying her own self-contained argument albeit through abandoning the basic tenants of the opposition, but it is this frequently employed stratagem which allows Maddow to frame such an advantageous position. There are rarely concessions in her take-no-prisoners approach to any exchange, therefore I find her to be a deft political pundit.
However, once her arguments are integrated with the facts her self aggrandizing tirades are instantly dealt with as any pathogen would be within a body of truth.
In Maddow's world:
In Maddow's world:
- Nullification was used to support slavery and thereby claims only a nefarious history e.g. espoused by the likes of John C. Calhoun, vice-president of the Confederacy.
- The "nullification cause inspired a lot of anti-US militancy" ostensibly leading the South to war against the North.
- Nullification advocates "downplay" the Civil War being about slavery.
- "Confederate politics" are in fashion again 150 years after it lost on those ideas.
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] Submits that confederate ideas moved out of the South during reconstruction and only thereafter the Civil War did it become a part of the national fabric.
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] In regards to the resurgence of these principles we would be "foolish to imagine this is uncorrelated with having an African-American president."
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] Having an African-American president brings up unresolved political baggage i.e. nullification, currencies based on gold/silver, etc. derived from the "confederate mindset."
- Derided are states who are "flexing their tenth amendment muscles, flexing their state sovereignty muscles, flirting with secession..."
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] posits that opposition to the recent Health Care Reform is based on an "others" i.e. latino immigrants, African-Americans, etc. anxiety where [white] people are made to believe they are going to be taken advantage of by minorities.
- Almost out of nowhere Maddow concludes with: "There has never been a moment in US history where we would not have been better off with a bigger vocabulary for talking about class."
In the real world:
- The battle of Fort Sumter, which officially kicked off the Civil War is merely one event in a long chain of crises and confrontations between the North and South of which many rarely centered around the issue of slavery.
- Abraham Lincoln heralded as the "Great Emancipator" used nullification to justify not returning slaves to the South after escaping to the North.
- Nullification has been used to extricate our states from the costly and futile drug war, however, Maddow's overtly Liberal audience wouldn't see too much red meat in the phrase “These neo-confederates are trying to destroy the union by refusing to comply with the drug war! Beware!!”
- Nullification has also been used by half the states in the Union and is championed by the ACLU to reject Bush’s 2005 Real ID act. Again no red meat there.
- While she did mention nullification of new "Food Safety" laws (as if simply pronouncing the contrived title forestalls the debate over its substance) she conveniently omits the fact that the recent "Food Safety and Modernization Act" passed by Congress creates yet another branch of government called the Food Safety Administration (FSA). Isn't the FDA and USDA charged with the safety of our food and drugs? Apparently more government is needed.
- Maddow also avoids the fact that the 10th Amendment Center also advocates nullification of TSA pat downs and body scans which is definitely a sore subject for most Americans. Maddow served herself well by avoiding that prickly issue, claiming that "Nullifiers want to inhibit the government from sticking their hands down your kids pants and radiating you with unknown amounts of radiation." Wouldn't garner a whole lot of sympathy for her derisive argument.
- In a classic Straw Man approach Maddow and Harris-Perry obfuscate the fact that principles of state sovriegnty, sound money, small central government (versus nationalist government), nullification of law, and secession from tyranny are part of our national tradition since the Revolution not merely that of the Confederacy which only thereafter bled into the national fabric.
- Nullification is just one more weapon in the arsenal of freedom and something which our own jury system is charged with exercising if they deem state or federal laws to be unconstitutional. Repeated repudiation of a given law by juries nullifies that law - this is constitutional.
- The slave trade and its institutionalization in the South was deplorable, but to say the Civil War was predominantly focused on this issue is false. The emancipation proclamation was delivered only well into the civil war, it had a strategic purpose for the North and is evidenced in the fact that over 1/2 a million slaves in Northern border states were not freed because of it until those states passed legislation to that effect. The civil war was about the enlarging role of central government at the detriment of state government (this included the slave issue adding to the complexity of the debate), tariffs were an issue (what a surprise Americans fighting over taxes), a central banking system, standing armies, etc. A significant shift from traditional mores was occurring in the 1860s some positive, but most negative in directions thereby leading to the Civil War.
It is in our best interest to emancipate ourselves from our oversimplified vision of American history and reclaim the truth about the Civil War and its legacy in American politics.
For a southern libertarian view on the South and its secessionists tendencies here is the Southern Avenger.
- The "nullification cause inspired a lot of anti-US militancy" ostensibly leading the South to war against the North.
- Nullification advocates "downplay" the Civil War being about slavery.
- "Confederate politics" are in fashion again 150 years after it lost on those ideas.
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] Submits that confederate ideas moved out of the South during reconstruction and only thereafter the Civil War did it become a part of the national fabric.
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] In regards to the resurgence of these principles we would be "foolish to imagine this is uncorrelated with having an African-American president."
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] Having an African-American president brings up unresolved political baggage i.e. nullification, currencies based on gold/silver, etc. derived from the "confederate mindset."
- Derided are states who are "flexing their tenth amendment muscles, flexing their state sovereignty muscles, flirting with secession..."
- [Melissa Harris-Perry] posits that opposition to the recent Health Care Reform is based on an "others" i.e. latino immigrants, African-Americans, etc. anxiety where [white] people are made to believe they are going to be taken advantage of by minorities.
- Almost out of nowhere Maddow concludes with: "There has never been a moment in US history where we would not have been better off with a bigger vocabulary for talking about class."
In the real world:
- The battle of Fort Sumter, which officially kicked off the Civil War is merely one event in a long chain of crises and confrontations between the North and South of which many rarely centered around the issue of slavery.
- Abraham Lincoln heralded as the "Great Emancipator" used nullification to justify not returning slaves to the South after escaping to the North.
- Nullification has been used to extricate our states from the costly and futile drug war, however, Maddow's overtly Liberal audience wouldn't see too much red meat in the phrase “These neo-confederates are trying to destroy the union by refusing to comply with the drug war! Beware!!”
- Nullification has also been used by half the states in the Union and is championed by the ACLU to reject Bush’s 2005 Real ID act. Again no red meat there.
- While she did mention nullification of new "Food Safety" laws (as if simply pronouncing the contrived title forestalls the debate over its substance) she conveniently omits the fact that the recent "Food Safety and Modernization Act" passed by Congress creates yet another branch of government called the Food Safety Administration (FSA). Isn't the FDA and USDA charged with the safety of our food and drugs? Apparently more government is needed.
- Maddow also avoids the fact that the 10th Amendment Center also advocates nullification of TSA pat downs and body scans which is definitely a sore subject for most Americans. Maddow served herself well by avoiding that prickly issue, claiming that "Nullifiers want to inhibit the government from sticking their hands down your kids pants and radiating you with unknown amounts of radiation." Wouldn't garner a whole lot of sympathy for her derisive argument.
- In a classic Straw Man approach Maddow and Harris-Perry obfuscate the fact that principles of state sovriegnty, sound money, small central government (versus nationalist government), nullification of law, and secession from tyranny are part of our national tradition since the Revolution not merely that of the Confederacy which only thereafter bled into the national fabric.
- Nullification is just one more weapon in the arsenal of freedom and something which our own jury system is charged with exercising if they deem state or federal laws to be unconstitutional. Repeated repudiation of a given law by juries nullifies that law - this is constitutional.
- The slave trade and its institutionalization in the South was deplorable, but to say the Civil War was predominantly focused on this issue is false. The emancipation proclamation was delivered only well into the civil war, it had a strategic purpose for the North and is evidenced in the fact that over 1/2 a million slaves in Northern border states were not freed because of it until those states passed legislation to that effect. The civil war was about the enlarging role of central government at the detriment of state government (this included the slave issue adding to the complexity of the debate), tariffs were an issue (what a surprise Americans fighting over taxes), a central banking system, standing armies, etc. A significant shift from traditional mores was occurring in the 1860s some positive, but most negative in directions thereby leading to the Civil War.
It is in our best interest to emancipate ourselves from our oversimplified vision of American history and reclaim the truth about the Civil War and its legacy in American politics.
For a southern libertarian view on the South and its secessionists tendencies here is the Southern Avenger.
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