COMMENTARY Anarchy and nullification
”When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Frédéric Bastiat
Anarchy – the absence of government; a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority.
Society establishes government so that its people may live harmoniously together. People surrender to the government a small portion of their total freedom to establish mutually agreed upon laws to regulate the interactions of the citizens. The government, in the name of order and the greatest good of society, enforces those laws. When the government rules over a society that is increasingly disordered, disobedient, unjust and disrespectful, that society is on a trajectory toward anarchy.
As we look around at our society, we see increasing disorder, disobedience of our laws and disrespect for the authority of our government. This condition was not always so in our nation. There is a correlation between this type of behavior and increasing government regulation and the attendant increasing government control.
The problem with our big and regulatory government is that it has continually sought to redefine its purpose and veered away from its original purposes. The founding values of our government were to promote the well-being of the individual. We are individuals as individuals, not members of any subgroup based on sex, race, age, occupation, disability or anything else. There is a very necessary linkage between the happiness of the individual and good governance.
It is said that regulation grows by “meeting a need”. Need-meeting regulation all too frequently grows into government-imposed regimentation, and regimentation quickly becomes suppression of individual freedom. The reaction to the deprivation of freedom is disorder, disrespect and disobedience, the definitive characteristics of anarchy.
To use an example proposed by Jeffrey Ludwig, consider higher education. As more and more students seek a college degree, more students seek student loans, leading to an ever-increasing number of students dependent on student loans. As we saw in the 2016 election, Bernie Sanders played to this demand by advocating for free college tuition. Should such a program be enacted, it would require that students take a minimum number of credits and then lead to controls of what credits they take. This would then result in government control over what is taught. The result of “meeting the need” of financial support is the curtailment of freedom of thought and freedom of choice – the increased government regulation and control that is the precursor of dissatisfaction and unrest.
To pursue the chain of dissatisfaction one step further, market distorting control of what is taught leads to a mismatch between market demand for skills and skills produced, which then leads to deeply indebted college graduates with no discernible or marketable skills and even deeper dissatisfaction, disorder, disrespect and disobedience and unrest.
When unrest leads to chaos, the need to be met is order, which is frequently more police, more policing, more surveillance and more enforcement. The result is often physical confrontation leading to more chaos and the cycle perpetuates itself. All of this the result of regulation and control.
Recently, we are seeing this phenomena going into hyperdrive with the increase of illegal aliens, the increasing use of opioids, uncontrolled gang violence in major cities and the apparent inability or unwillingness of municipal government to control or contain the situation. This is compounded by the refusal of major cities to enforce federal laws and, in at least one instance, outright obstruction of federal immigration enforcement.
As government has grown larger and more intrusive, prompting increasing regulation, control and regimentation, resulting in the predictable disorder, disobedience and disrespect, the left is clambering for even more government to solve the problem of growing anarchy that is the result of too much government. They will never recognize that size and power, in government, solve nothing.
In the particular case when disrespect and disobedience takes the form of a state choosing to ignore or obstruct a federal law, that is known as nullification.
Nullification is a legal theory that a state may nullify, or invalidate, any federal law that the state deems to be unconstitutional. Great sounding idea but it has never been upheld in a federal court. There were no statements in the Constitutional Convention asserting states have the right to nullify federal laws. Neither do the Federalist Papers assert such a right.
When states like California assert that they can ignore or obstruct federal law enforcement, they do so on no legal ground. They are creating disrespect, disorder and disobedience at a state-sponsored level.
The embrace of nullification by states, the idea that states can ignore or obstruct federal law as they choose, was the precursor to the Civil War.
This is not to suggest that we are headed toward civil war because of the irrational behavior of the left coast and Gov. Moonbeam, but one most consider the potential of such a “Black Swan” event.
Nullification efforts will probably be tied up in courts for years while the social order of places like California continue to disintegrate. When the illegal alien population becomes the majority, wealth-producing business has departed, the state is bankrupt and English is no longer the common language, the discussion may become moot anyway.
President Trump is making positive strides in reducing the regulatory nature of government, but it is so far just a beginning. Decades of cancerous regulation must be reversed and be replaced with state and local control as envisioned by the founding fathers and our Constitution.
When regulation decreases, the opportunity for the regulators to plunder vanishes and with it, the corrupt moral code that supports it.
”The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.” – G.K. Chesterton
Dave Ball is vice chairman of the Washington County Republican Party and a Peters Township councilman.