Commercials are designed in such a way to make us want things we don’t really need. We unwittingly become brainwashed into believing that the commercials’ products will make us cool, popular, happy, successful, glamorous, famous, or attractive to others. Commercials make us believe their products will solve our problems. When you read Thomas E. Woods’ book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, you are reading his “commercial.” Woods wants us to believe that nullification will make us “free.” However, observable facts and logic prove that it won’t.
In the book, Nullification, Woods gives us a history lesson in the first four chapters of the book. Chapter five contains closing arguments. The remainder of the book contains multiple historical documents to support his position.
The first four chapters of Nullification by Woods contains a valuable history lesson that college students and others should read and verify with a second book on the topic. However, there is not a lot of competition on nullification. At my local library, most of the few alternative books on the subject of nullification are older than 1980.
There are several ideas you will acquire from reading Woods’ first four chapters of Nullification if you did not already have knowledge of them prior to reading this book. Woods explains that the U.S. Constitution clearly defines the powers of the federal government and all powers not assigned to the federal government belongs to the state governments. Woods portrays nullification as a legitimate strategy used by state government officials to resist the expansion of powers by federal government officials beyond that which is explicitly defined in the U.S. Constitution. As examples of the nullification strategy, he details the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts and the use of nullification by Wisconsin against the Fugitive Slave Laws. Nullification was used by both northern and southern state government officials to resist federal laws that they believed reached far beyond the limits of federal powers written in the U.S. Constitution and are thus, “unconstitutional.” Ordinary people can reject an unconstitutional law through “jury nullification.” Woods explains that the U.S. Constitution acknowledges that state governmental powers precede that of the federal government and it is designed for state governmental powers to supersede and exceed the powers of the federal government. States can join and secede from a federation of states at will if they desire. The secession of southern states from the union during the 1800s was constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court is not a fair and unbiased arbiter in disputes between state governmental officials and federal governmental officials over the constitutionality of federal laws. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in favor of the federal government, because the U.S. Supreme Court exists within the federal government. These are the main points of the first four chapters.
The fifth chapter contains Woods’ closing arguments. By the end of the fourth chapter, you will “feel” more informed about the history of nullification and philosophy of states’ powers preceding, superseding, and exceeding federal powers as the natural order of existence. The tone of the first four chapters is expository. Woods is re-educating all of us on the true story of government, the states’ rights debate, and nullification practices. By the end of the first four chapters, you may have bought “nullification” as the solution to federal power grabs and “states’ rights” advocates as our “unsung heroes.” However, you might notice that the tone of chapter five changes. It becomes persuasive. This is not an ordinary history book; it is political propaganda designed to make us believe that the grass will be greener if we allow state government officials to pass laws that supersede and exceed the power of federal laws.
Woods’ true feelings about people, who fear the increase of states’ powers over that of the federal government would lead to Black American enslavement and the fragmentation of the union all over again, are revealed in chapter five. Woods’ criticizes those, who invoke Black American slavery and the Civil War as evidence of what will happen if states’ powers superseded and exceeded that of the federal government. It then becomes apparent why Woods spent so much time pumping up Wisconsin’s use of nullification in opposition of the Fugitive Slave Laws. He needed to present evidence that a northern state used “states’ rights” and nullification for the benefit of Black Americans prior to the Civil War. Also, he needed to show that Black Americans benefited from nullification and state’s rights during the time of formal American slavery.
In chapter five, Woods said that the South was different now and implied it could trusted never to bring back Black American slavery, using the migration of Northern Black Americans to the South as evidence of these conclusions. He also said that Southern Black Americans responded to a poll that proved they have pleasant experiences of living in the South. It was these statements that should make readers question everything in the book, Nullification, because Woods’ logic is flawed. Woods is suggesting that Black Americans are running away from extreme racism in the north to a more tolerant environment of the south, which is unlikely. It is cheaper and easier to buy a house in the South. These Black Americans, who have migrated to the South, have likely done so in response to economics, the pursuit of owning a home, and a desire for a lower cost-of-living. Woods is suggesting that these migrating Black Americans have a personal preference to be neighbors with southern whites and immigrants as opposed to northern whites and immigrants. That logic sounds far-fetched. Woods’ failed to recall Black American victims of hate crimes all over the United States regardless of region. In regards to the positive poll by Southern Black Americans, polls and surveys can be subjectively designed to guarantee the statistical results that the researcher wants to create. The source of the poll was not cited, so there is no reason to believe that such a poll actually exists. If this poll that Woods mentions is proof that the South has changed, then his readers should know the source and credibility of the pollster, but he omitted these important details.
Woods could have used any controversial issue other than Black American slavery to explain how nullification has been used. He could have used, for example, the conflict between state and federal governments over the legalization of medical marijuana several years ago. Couldn’t he have used Native Americans to make his case for nullification and states’ rights rather than Black Americans? If nullification and states’ rights benefit everyone, Native American history should be included in the discussion as well. Like any political pundit, Woods omits Native Americans from the discussion and pretends they no longer exist. The natives are out of sight, out of mind. If Native Americans are “native” Americans, what do we call the majority? Immigrants. The issue isn’t just white and black; it becomes native, slave, and immigrant simply by adding Native American history to American political discussions. Everyone should mean everyone. Political discussions about the direction that American government is heading has no legitimacy if the arguments cannot hold up under scrutiny when Native American history is thrown into the mix. Readers should question the legitimacy of Woods’ ideas on nullification and states’ rights if those ideas cannot benefit every group as Woods suggests in the fifth chapter.
By the fifth chapter, you will realize Woods’ is trying to convince readers that nullification and states’ right would benefit Black American slave descendants as well. In the first four chapters, Woods described only one black male in Wisconsin, who benefited from nullification and states’ rights during formal American slavery. According to Woods, a white male, who was connected with the fugitive slave, was kept out of prison through different forms of nullification. There is no reason to believe that hundreds or thousands of fugitive slaves were benefitting from nullification and states’ rights. Woods provided no statistics to support a conclusion that hundreds or thousands of fugitive slaves benefitted from states’ rights and nullification. There is no reason to believe that every northern state was using states’ rights and nullification to guarantee the freedoms of fugitive, Black American slaves. Once a fugitive slave was free from southern bondage in the north, were they free to protest or verbally disagree with a white or immigrant person without being murdered, jailed, or imprisoned for their insolence and insubordination? Racially motivated murders of Black American slave descendants in recent times prove if it isn’t the case now regardless of region within the United States, it was probably not the case then. The message Woods is communicating is that Black Americans benefitted from states’ rights and nullification during slavery before the end of Civil War and will benefit from states’ rights and nullification in the future. However, Woods has failed to prove that it is true. Thus, his arguments for states’ rights and nullification began to fall apart as a result of illogical conclusions in the fifth chapter and omissions of facts throughout the five chapters.
In the fifth chapter, Woods tries to build consensus between Black Americans and the majority by suggesting all Americans are victims of federal tyranny. There is nowhere in Woods’ book where he has proven that city, county, and state governmental officials would be less oppressive and tyrannical than federal governmental officials. Where there is power, it will be abused at every level of government.
Since Woods used Black Americans in an attempt to prove that the South is more tolerant and accepting of Black American slave descendants than the North, and nullification and states’ rights will benefit Black Americans in the future, let us consider the reality of the Black American experience that Woods conveniently left out. In reality, juries filled with ordinary citizens use nullification as a weapon against Black Americans to maintain their enslaved, subhuman, and subordinate status in this country to this present day. It has been open season on murdering Black Americans in recent times without any fear one would go to prison for life or suffer a death penalty. Jurors or judges in highly publicized racially motivated murder cases of Black American victims have issued not guilty verdicts, probation, or short prison terms for racists’ taking Black American lives in America. Judges and jurors, regardless of region, nullify the Black American victims’ humanity, right to self-defense, civil rights, and right to live. The nullification of Black American lives, humanity, and civil rights is practiced as a weapon against Black American slave descendants everywhere in American society. The courts are not a source of Black American redress against the majority’s oppression as it is traditionally and inaccurately taught to us. According to Woods, jury nullification represents the power of ordinary people to reject laws that they believe are unconstitutional. Apparently, the ordinary citizens in juries all over the country regardless of region believe Black American freedoms and equality to be “unconstitutional.” If ordinary citizens and jurors are nullifying Black Americans’ civil rights all over the country, there is no reason to believe that city, county, and state governmental officials will be less oppressive, genocidal, tyrannical, and abusive in their public powers than the majority of racist citizens and jurors, who elect them into city, county, and state governments. Nullification is used every day by judges, law enforcement, juries, and ordinary citizens in the majority as a weapon to maintain the customs, traditions, and economics of Black American slavery for the immigrant majority to this present day. If this was not the case, Black American slave descendants would not be murdered so easily by law enforcement officers and ordinary citizens and then, walk free, pay a fine, or get light prison sentences. Woods has failed to prove that nullification and states’ rights would benefit Black Americans if “we, the people,” allowed states’ laws to supersede and exceed that of the federal government.
Before reading this book, we may not have had a word for the non-enforcement of civil and human rights for Black American slave descendants. Now, we know from reading Woods’ book, that it is called nullification. Black American slave descendants are not equal or free in America, because their civil and human rights are rarely ever enforced by majority rule whether the responsibility to enforce their liberties fall before a federal official, state official, county official, city official, a state or federal judge, or just ordinary citizens, serving on a jury. Thanks to Woods’ book, Nullification, Black Americans have a new word to describe the non-enforcement of their civil and human rights as “unconstitutional” by the immigrant majority. If we consider Native Americans in this debate over nullification and states’ rights, we can easily conclude the majority of ordinary citizens and illegal immigrants have nullified Native Americans’ claim to the land and have no plans of packing up and going back to their countries of origin either. The non-enforcement of Black American freedoms, equality, and humanity is called nullification. The total disregard of Native Americans’ rights to repopulate their land “from sea to shining sea” is called nullification. We should thank Thomas E. Woods for giving us this new word to describe the evolution of Black American enslavement and genocide following the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement and the perpetuation of Native American genocide in present day America as a great country of immigrants.
I recommend that college students and voters in general read this book. Learning about nullification and the states’ rights debate does not mean you have to agree totally with it. It would be great if this book could help us nullify unconstitutional laws at the city, county, and state levels, but it doesn’t. Even if it did, only the immigrant majority would benefit from it. Woods’ book presumes that oppression, tyranny, and abuses of government powers can only get out of the control of accountability at the federal level as though the same abuses of powers never occur without accountability at the city, county, and state levels of government. Such logic is flawed. Therefore, we can read and learn historical information from Woods’ book, Nullification, but it does not make logical sense to believe Woods’ inaccurate assessments of reality.
Instead of trying to make state governments’ more powerful than the federal government, we should consider changing the way we vote before resorting to states’ rights and nullification as a solution to America’s problems. For example, both Democratic and Republican government officials abuse powers entrusted to them by the public at every level of government from cities to the federal level. Since neither Democrats nor Republicans can be trusted, we should try voting for non-partisan candidates and candidates from alternative parties instead of seeking states’ rights as a solution to political abuses at all levels of government. Oust the Democrats and Republicans from all levels of American government and let’s find out if this country and world would become better places for doing so, but we won’t know unless we try something different. Voting for the same two parties over and over again and expecting a different result is illogical. Instead of voting for that experienced politician with connections high and low, hither and thither, maybe we should vote for that ordinary person, with no experience and no connections in business and in government. An inexperienced candidate would be a relatively, clean candidate, who is beholden to the voters within his district or state and hopefully, under less control by wealthy campaign donors.
There are other tactics we can consider before seeking states’ rights and nullification. Stop voting party lines of what many of us believe to be good parties and evil parties. The two-party monopoly at every level of American government is not moving this country or this world in the best direction. Some voters settle for one party line over another, because they consider one party the lesser of two evils. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.
There are alternative ways of voting rather than doing so along party lines. Vote the issues. Vote the Bill of Rights. Vote logically, not emotionally. Vote for the candidate, who promises to deliver something that is critically important to you and your family. If all candidates fail to promise what is critically important to you and your family, stop throwing your vote away on an experienced, Democratic or Republican politician, who promised nothing critically important to you and your community and is beholden only to their wealthy, campaign donors. These “experienced” and “well connected” candidates are not going to give you, your family, and your community what you need in exchange for your votes. Ask yourselves, did you get the changes you wanted from that party or from that candidate the last time, you helped that party or candidate win an election? If not, you need to change who you vote for. The problem is the voters, not the federal government.
You are already throwing your vote away by voting for Democrats and Republicans, why not vote for neither of those parties and use your vote to communicate your disappointment with those parties, your rejection of those parties, and your desire for a different kind of leadership? Hypothetically, if 60 percent of voters in a district or state voted for their favorite comic or cartoon hero, god, oneself, or writing in the name of the most sensible person in your network of family and friends that would mean that whomever wins the election with 40 percent of the votes does not have legitimacy to speak or act on the behalf of your district or state. It would be apparent that the two-party monopoly represents only a 40 percent minority of the voters. If you are opposed to American invasions into foreign countries for no legitimate reason, then you should vote against both Democrats and Republicans. If you are opposed to American clandestine agents’ inciting civil wars within foreign countries, then you should vote against both Democrats and Republicans. If you are opposed to Americans’ choosing puppet government officials in foreign countries, then you should vote against both Democrats and Republicans. Sixty percent of the voters would have communicated publicly that no Democrat or Republican was fit to represent your district or state, because they did not promise you the things you need them to do.
Voting for a write-in candidate will communicate that you don’t like the directions that the two-party monopoly is taking the United States and the world. Also, it would communicate to the world that a majority of Americans are opposed to both Democratic and Republican federal officials, who order the invasions and the ousting of national officials in sovereign countries. Changing the way we vote might change the social, ideological, moral, and political composition of every level of government if a majority of voters stopped voting for the two-party monopoly and for politicians, who do not promise us what we need them to do. By writing in a candidate, who is not on the ballot, you are saying that neither Democrats nor Republicans are fit to lead. If a large percentage of voters within a district or state voted for lesser known, write-in candidates, perhaps by doing so, we can force the news media to invite independent and alternative party candidates to more televised debates, so we can have better choices of representation by ordinary people, with no connections in government and business.
If every level of government was dominated by ordinary people with no experience or no political connections, perhaps, the Bill of Rights will be strengthened and there would be no need for nullification and states’ rights. Power would be vested in ordinary people rather than politically connected state, county, and city career politicians, their children, their wives, and their cronies. For example, why are people talking about Michelle Obama’s running for president? Is she going to pass a law, requiring us all to exercise? Are we going to be taxed if we don’t buy a fitness club membership? Will welfare recipients be denied their food stamps if they don’t wear a mandatory fitness bracelet and walk five miles a day? We can call her law “Obama-fit.” Either this will happen with Michelle Obama as president or she will partner with some corporation to put her name on a line of fitness products. Why would Michelle Obama make a great president as opposed to yourself or the most sensible person in your own network of family and friends? Experienced and well-connected politicians and media personalities pass elected office and other government jobs from one family member to another as though the core of American democracy is monarchy. Maybe, that is exactly what the American system of government is. The United States has monarchy in the guise of democracy. If a majority of people voted against both Democratic and Republican candidates, it would be a public protest of democratic monarchy as well. Vote ordinary people into public office as a protest to abuses of power at all levels of government by the two-party monopoly. Woods’ book has not proven that state officials, using nullification and states’ rights, would be any less corrupt, oppressive, or tyrannical than federal officials. Woods has not proven that “we, the people,” can hold state government officials accountable for crime and corruption if we allowed state laws to supersede and exceed the federal government. The two-party monopoly and the corrupt network of individuals will remain intact if we allow state laws to supersede and exceed the power of federal laws. Therefore, voters should try changing how they vote rather than calling for states’ rights and nullification of federal laws.
Another alternative to states’ rights and nullification is changing campaign finance laws even if we must do so by ballot measures within our states. Woods does not consider changing voting tactics or campaign finance laws as strategies to deal with federal power grabs. The focus of his book is nullification, so of course, he is going to explain it in depth, but he offers no alternative tactics to reiterate that states’ rights and nullification are meant to be last resorts. Getting rid of all Democrats and Republicans from every level of government will not eliminate corruption. Crime and corruption are inevitable, but voting ordinary citizens, who have no party affiliation, no political connections, no business connections, and no governmental experience should greatly reduce political corruption and change America for the better rather than allowing Democrats and Republicans to stagnate this country with a two-party monopoly across all levels of government.
Democrats and Republicans are not working against each other; they are working against the public, who empowers them. They are using opposing ideologies for a common goal in order to degrade the Bill of Rights. For example, gun control at the city, county, and state governmental levels infringe upon your Second Amendment right to bear arms. Democratic officials lead laws to restrict access to guns. Another example is using the First Amendment to justify denying abortions and contraceptives to individuals and groups, thus violating their Fourteenth Amendment rights. Republican officials lead laws to restrict freedom of choice to abort or to use contraceptives. Democrats and Republicans united together to pass the Patriot Act, to violate the privacy of any American citizen at the discretion of those in power, to declare any crime an act of terrorism at the discretion of those in power, to declare any protest against American governmental actions an act of treason and a terrorist threat, and to preserve the Patriot Act under its new name, the USA Freedom Act. Do you still want to vote party lines for what you may believe is the lesser of two evils? Ask yourselves whether you are getting more of your Bill of Rights every time you help Democrats or Republicans win an election or whether you are losing bits and pieces of the Bill of Rights with every successive election there are Democrats and Republicans in power. The Democratic and Republican parties normally erode the Bill of Rights in their own unique ways, but both parties are united when it comes to abusing intelligence agencies to collect private information about any one of us at their discretion without probable cause and due process of law. In other words, Democratic and Republican governmental officials are two sides of one coin. They are two parties with one goal of eroding the Bill of Rights. We should exhaust all other remedies to the abuses by government officials such as changing the ways we vote, ousting both Democrats and Republicans from every level of government, and changing campaign finance laws at the state level by ballot measure before resorting to states’ rights and nullification.
In regards to Native Americans and Black Americans, they need to take strategies that are unique to their histories. They are American by force, not by choice. All levels of government and the majority of ordinary people have contributed to their genocide and/or enslavement through nullification and states’ rights among other tactics such as displacement by immigrants, assimilation, accommodation, miscegenation, and integration. Therefore, all levels of American government are illegitimate to govern Native Americans and Black American slave descendants. They can’t vote their way to freedom and equality, because the immigrant majority will always win. They can’t sue for their way to freedom in neither state nor federal courts, because the immigrant majority, represented through judges or juries will easily rule against them. All levels of American government are designed for immigrants to win, prosper, dominate, and control natives and slaves. An isolated case in Wisconsin during formal American slavery, as cited in Woods’ Nullification, may have resulted in one black male escaping the Fugitive Slave Laws, but it does not prove all groups will benefit equally from states’ rights and nullification. In order for Native Americans and Black American slave descendants to be free and equal with America’s immigrant majority, they must have their own separate, sovereign states exclusively for them on equal grounds with the United States with all the rights of security and self-defense that the immigrant majority reserves only for itself. Voting the issues or rejecting the two-party monopoly over all levels of government will not work for Native Americans and Black American slave descendants as it would for the immigrant majority, who may want to reduce the abuses of powers by government officials for themselves. No immigrant majority has legitimacy to govern Native Americans and Black American slave descendants. Therefore, Woods’ attempt to build consensus for all Americans to pursue nullification and states’ rights will only benefit the immigrant majority, not the Black American slave descendants and not Native Americans. The injustices of the immigrant majority against Native Americans and Black American slave descendants are too reprehensible to ignore unless that immigrant majority consents to repairing the damages committed against natives and slaves on terms drawn up by natives and slaves. A coalition of all groups, comprised of immigrants, natives, and slaves, will only benefit the immigrant majority. Woods’ efforts to build a consensus is illegitimate.
Nullification by Woods takes advantage of our feelings of anger and helplessness when we engage with all levels of government and directs them only at the federal government as the sole perpetrator behind the loss of freedoms and civil rights, because according to this book, the tyrannical things the federal government officials are doing to limit freedoms would never get out of control at the state and local government levels. Right? Is there any instance that you can recall government officials and employees’ abusing their governmental powers at the city, county, and state governmental levels where you live? Were all those corrupt things that happened at the city, county, and state governments truly held accountable by citizens and voters? If you can recall ongoing violations of your freedoms or total disregard for your civil rights by government officials and employees at the city, county, and state governments as a regular aspect of your daily lives, then you must conclude that the federal government officials are not the only people robbing you of your freedoms. You must conclude that officials at every level of government are threats to your civil rights. Thus, Woods’ strategy to apply states’ rights and nullification only to the federal government’s abuses, ignoring all other governmental abuses at the city, county, and state levels, must be terribly biased and will not solve the many civil rights violations committed by officials and employees at all levels of American government.
Because Nullification by Woods contains historical information and primary sources, I recommend that college students and voters read this book. We should learn the history of nullification and the states’ rights debate. However, Woods omits important facts and analyses and thus, distorts reality. Woods arguments are not credible or logical. Woods did not even briefly give examples of other strategies we can use to combat the abuse of power by government officials before resorting to nullification and states’ rights as solutions. He could have written a chapter briefly discussing other strategies before turning to nullification and states’ rights as last resorts. Furthermore, since he used Black Americans to make his case for nullification and states’ rights, Woods’ have failed to prove that nullification and states’ rights will benefit Black Americans at all.
The federal government officials are not the sole source of the erosion of the Bill of Rights. There is plenty of blame to go around. Government officials and employees at all levels of government erode the Bill of Rights. Now, that Woods has re-educated his readers with the knowledge of “jury nullification,” we can conclude the majority of ordinary citizens and jurors nullify freedoms and civil rights on a daily basis, often based on race, color, ethnicity, class, ideology, religion, and/or heritage. America operates on a system of majority rule. If America’s Bill of Rights has no value anymore, it has no value, because the majority of Americans wants it to be that way. Such a conclusion is consistent with the functionalist interpretation of social orders. American citizens lack freedoms and civil rights by social design or by consent. The majority of Americans collude in their own demise in many instances. In other instances, the majority of Americans conspire in the socially accepted deprivation of human rights of Native Americans and Black American slave descendants.
Woods can blame the federal government. We can blame all levels of government, or we can blame the two-party monopoly over all levels of government, but the majority of Americans are to blame for the way things are in this country, because the majority of Americans do not want to change the way they vote and the majority of Americans do not want Native Americans and Black American slave descendants to govern themselves under sovereign, separate governments within the United States and to procreate into very large numbers. The erosion of freedoms and civil rights in general cannot occur without a majority power group, granting consent to government officials to erode those civil rights. The majority of American citizens vote for the same ineffectual candidates within party lines over and over again and expect “change” once that same ineffectual candidate or a different, ineffectual candidate of the same political party as the previous official takes office. If you voted for Barack Obama as president twice, did you get “change” or “more of the same?” Did things get worse for you and your family by voting for Obama as president for eight years? If nothing has changed, everything stayed the same, or things got worse by having Barack Obama as president for eight years, do you really think you can get what you want or need if you vote for his wife, Michelle Obama, in the future? The majority of American citizens are thus responsible for the loss of civil rights by their own voting behaviors. States’ rights and nullification are not going to eliminate the consent that the majority of voters give to a two-party monopoly to erode the Bill of Rights.
Recommending Woods’ Nullification for others to read and learn from is not a recommendation to resort to states’ rights and nullification. Recommending this book encourages readers to learn from this book that which is supported by observable facts and discard that which is not. Read Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods and come to your own conclusions. However, nullification and states’ rights are the snake oil and Woods is the peddler. Nullification and states’ rights will not cure the abuses of governmental power. However, changing voters’ behavior may reduce political abuses for the immigrant majority. As for Native Americans and Black American slave descendants, they are unable to vote or sue their way out of oppression or genocide and thus, require unique political tactics.
Reference
Woods, Thomas E. Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2010.
Links:
Thomas E. Woods at Mises Institute
Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods at Amazon.com
Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods at Audible.com
Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods at Facebook.com
Copyright © 2018 www.landofbooksandhoney.com. All rights reserved.