People around Destin (Okaloosa County, Florida) got tired of waiting for permission from Washington, D.C., to protect themselves from the oil spill disaster which is threatening their beaches. They proposed taking one action after another, only to see it shot down by federal bureaucrats. Washington, D.C., was not only failing to protect them from the oil spill, it was in the way. It was telling them “no” to the things they wanted to do for themselves to stop it.
The county has tired of waiting. The legislative body has unanimously voted to give it’s executive officials authority to act against the oil spill threatening their beaches, even if it means breaking federal law. They voted that county officials no longer needed to wait for permission of the state or federal government to act.
“We made the decision legislatively to break the laws if necessary. We will do whatever it takes to protect our county’s waterways and we’re prepared to go to jail to do it,” said commission chairman Wayne Harris.
Nullification, sometimesconsidered the same doctrine as interposition, is increasingly being used by states and localities against an out-of-control and ineffective federal government which seems to have lost touch with fiscal (and moral) reality. The doctrine, established by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among other founders, says that when the federal government acts beyond the bounds of the Constitution, that state and local governments have the right “and duty” to declare those laws null and void.
Folks in modern times have been trained to think of the federal judiciary as the final referee between the states and the federal government, but if you think about it, there is no way they can be impartial because they themselves are a part of the federal government.
They work for one of the parties in the dispute, andso can hardly be considered unbiased!
What might be the expected result if you have a federal agency (the judiciary) act as the sole determiner of the legitimate extent of the federal government’s power? The only result can be what we have seen in recent U.S. history - a federal government which consistently acts to expand its own reach. Only occasionally, on the most flagrant violations, will the courts sometimes rule so as to limit federal power.
Those who hold to the legitimacy of nullification and interposition maintain that there is no “neutral moderator” between the feds and the states. Because of this, the parties themselves must resolve the disputes based on the original intent of the compact which bound them together (the Constitution).
The feds and the states just have to keep hammering it out with one another, a state of tension that is designed to protect the rights of the people.
Some other areas where states have successfully used the principles of interposition and nullificationare; the so-called “Real ID” act, medical marijuana laws, and, most recently and still in doubt, federal gun laws.
I expect we will see more and more of this. Arizona took matters into its own hands when the feds would not or could not protect the state from illegal aliens.
This Florida county is taking things into its own hands to protect itself from the oil spill.
In Arkansas though, we have too many politicians who are focused on making their way to the top instead of acting to protect the rights of citizens. That can only be because we let them in many ways. It’s time to grow up, and get the state moving to protect its citizens from the blowback of an increasingly dysfunctional federal government.
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Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 06/23/2010