CT Blue

Wow. If you ever needed proof that the people of these states, particularly those in the South, have a habit of electing truly stupid and/or crazy people, check this out. Hendrik Hertzbert reports (I got to him via the Washington Monthly) on a Georgia State Senate Resolution that adopts whole hog the reasoning of the Kentucky Resolutions:

Really, you can’t make this stuff up. You have to read it in full to believe it. Even then you can’t believe it. You thought that “nullification” had been rendered inoperative by the Civil War? Well, think again. You considered secession a pre-Appomattox kind of thing? Well, reconsider. You assumed that John C. Calhoun was a dead parrot? Well, turns out he was only resting.The resolution is written in a mock eighteenth-century style, ornate and pompous. Just two of its twenty sentences account for more than 1,200 of its 2,200 words. But the substance is even nuttier than the style.

The resolution is written in a mock eighteenth-century style, ornate and pompous. Just two of its twenty sentences account for more than 1,200 of its 2,200 words. But the substance is even nuttier than the style.

For those of you not totally up on your history, the Kentucky Resolutions were written in a moment of weakness by Thomas Jefferson (Madison penned the Virginia Resolutions) as a protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Kentucky Resolutions stated that the various states had the right to “nullify” any federal law that the state legislature, in its infinite wisdom, violated the constitution or the rights of the state. Much to Madison’s later chagrin, they formed the intellectual foundation for those who felt that secession was an option.

The vote in Georgia was nearly unanimous, with only one person of brain (and also of color) opposed. This sort of over the top reaction to a government that has behaved no differently than any other federal government since the Depression can, one would think, be explained by only one thing: the color of the gentleman that occupies the presidential chair.

But that’s where sheer stupidity must come into play. After a painstaking search utilizing the vote tally here, and looking at the pictures of the Georgia State Senators you can get to by following the links here, I conclude in amazement that the vote in Georgia was somewhat bi-partisan (a number of Democrats did not vote) and also bi-racial.

Jefferson’s frustrationin 1798 was born out of the fact that he saw no way to redress what was a clearly unconstitutional act. Marbury vs. Madison was about six years in the future, and in any event, the federal judiciary was, at that time, a branch office of the ruling Federalist party. That excuse is no longer operative. Jefferson was certainly aware, as Madison most painfully was, that in practice the theory would render the Union ungovernable.

At least in those days there was an identifiable threat. Where is the threat today, as opposed to a year ago, when we were ruled by a President who made daily incursions into our liberties and who considered the Constitution a technicality? What could possess a black Democrat to vote for a resolution that could have been written by the Confederate Congress? And why is the reaction to this so muted? In 1798 the country went crazy. Okay, maybe the lack of reaction is because we all know that state legislatures are pretty meaningless bodies when it comes to national law.

To all my left-leaning friends who confidently assert that Sarah Palin could never be elected President, consider that the crazies who passed this resolution are not confined to Georgia. Similar resolutions have passed in Oklahoma and South Dakota.

There is nothing you can conceive of that is so stupid that the American people would not do, given the right circumstances.