All Posts Tagged With: "states’ rights"
Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century
How can Americans restrain an out-of-control federal government that won’t recognize any constitutional limits on its power? In Nullification: How to Resist Tyranny in the 21st Century, Thomas Woods argues that state invalidation of federal laws could be the answer. First, though, Woods identifies what almost certainly won’t work: trying to effect change by sending [...]
21Sep2011 | Jacob H. Huebert | 26 comments | ContinuedStates’ Rights and the Union Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876
Historian Forrest McDonald has produced this fine survey of how the idea of divided sovereignty has played out in American history. “Imperium in Imperio” means “sovereignty within sovereignty, the division of sovereignty within a single jurisdiction.” They said it could not be done — that sovereignty could not be divided. In 1789, however, the Americans [...]
30Jun2010 | James Ostrowski | 0 comments | ContinuedForgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin
Antifederalists get no respect. Historian Cecilia Kenyon called them “men of little faith.” Other historians (even Charles Beard) pegged them as rural debtors. In this brief but engaged life of Luther Martin, though, Bill Kauffman enters a plea for “the people who lost”—an un-American enterprise he shares with William Appleman Williams. Martin, likely the most [...]
15Oct2009 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 2 comments | ContinuedTime to Revive Individualism?
One problem facing people who broadly favor smaller, limited government; private property; and free exchange is what to call themselves. Historically the word “liberal” was the answer and still is in many parts of continental Europe. However, in the Anglophone world, particularly the United States, the word has now come to refer to those who [...]
1Sep2007 | Stephen Davies | 2 comments | ContinuedProtecting Property in a Post-Kelo World
Two years ago, when I began writing a book,
peoples eyes would glaze over when I told them
the subject was eminent domain, the power of
the government to take property by force on just
compensation to the owner. Rarely could I mention the
subject without having to explain it in detail, and
incredulity was a typical response to the realization that
government now takes property for private uses rather
than for the public uses allowed by the
Constitution.
Hijacking a Principle
This publication would not normally take notice of a Republican politician’s embarrassing moment. But former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s apparent retroactive endorsement of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist presidential campaign is relevant to Ideas on Liberty. It is relevant for this reason: the cause of liberty has been gravely harmed by the association of certain [...]
1Mar2003 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedStates’ Rights and Freedom
To the Editor: Gene Healy represents a disturbing trend among some libertarians to nostalgically recall the good old days when states were bastions of freedom. Those days never existed; and as James Madison depicts them in Federalist No. 10, even at the founding they were such bastions of tyranny that a stronger national government was [...]
1Feb2000 | FEE Admin | 3 comments | ContinuedStates’ Rights Revisited
Lamenting the Supreme Court’s recent batch of pro-federalism decisions, the New York Times termed the Court’s newfound affinity for states’ rights “Supreme mischief,” “deeply disturbing” to right-thinkers everywhere. One expects such talk from dedicated cheerleaders for centralized power. What’s more disturbing, however, is the extent to which the Times’s perspective has gained credence among advocates [...]
1Dec1999 | Gene Healy | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Southern Tradition: Implications for Modern Decentralism
Mr. Woods, a founding member of the Southern League, is a doctoral candidate in history at Columbia University. This paper was delivered in June 1996 at the E.F. Schumacher Society Decentralist Conference held at Williams College in Massachusetts. The American tradition of decentralism has attracted adherents on both sides of the ideological spectrum and from [...]
1Dec1996 | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy Not Freedom! America’s Revolt Against Big Government
Wesley Allen Riddle is assistant professor of history at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, where he teaches Advanced American History and the American Political Tradition. He is also a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation for the 1996-97 term. The Kennedy brothers of Louisiana have followed up their successful title The [...]
1Aug1996 | Wesley Allen Riddle | 0 comments | Continued-
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