When Zombies Attack
The commissars are out in force against me these days.
It started like this. Martha Dean, a candidate for attorney general in Connecticut, repeated her support for state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws in a recent televised debate. She opened up my book Nullification and quoted from Jonathan Trumbull, the nineteenth-century Connecticut governor who declared: “Whenever our national legislature is led to overleap the prescribed bounds of their constitutional powers, on the State Legislatures, in great emergencies, devolves the arduous task — it is their right — it becomes their duty, to interpose their protecting shield between the right and liberty of the people, and the assumed power of the General Government.”
Yes, that was a Connecticut governor. Connecticut, as you may recall from your studies of geography, is in the North.
I won’t leave you in suspense regarding the reaction of her opponent, George Jepsen. Nullification, he said, is an outdated concept that led to the Civil War and “has no place in our discussion today. . . . The U.S. Supreme Court is the final arbitrator with what is constitutional and not constitutional. It’s not for the states to decide.”
One benefit of being a commissar is that you need never debate truly important matters. These can simply be portrayed as “extreme,” “outdated,” and having “no place in our discussion.” That’s a lot easier than openly pleading ignorance.
Now Alan Pyke, a commissar-enforcer at the left-wing hypochondria site Media Matters, is giving Dean a hard time because she likes my work. Why, doesn’t she know what an “extremist” Woods is? (You are an extremist, by the way, if the enforcer can’t find a place for you on the spectrum that runs from Mitch McConnell to Hillary Clinton.) He then runs through the usual routine, digging up 15-year-old articles and shouting, “Eek! A mouse!” If he looked a little harder, he’d find that in the 1990s I’d even supported the Persian Gulf War and written an academic journal article (in American Studies) somewhat skeptical of capitalism. Might have been easier to look at my writing from, oh, five days ago, but that wouldn’t be any fun!
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
