When the federal government passes laws that aren't in we the peoples' best interest, where can you go for redress?
Monopolies, as we all know, are bad. Lack of competition lets them get away with all sorts of bad behavior, from treating workers poorly to ignoring the wishes of their customer. Indeed, most liberals agree that curbing monopolies is one reason we even have government.
But what happens when government becomes the monopoly? When the federal government passes the Patriot Act, or Real ID, and tells its dissenters, “If you don’t like it, tough”? How about when the federal government passes the NDAA; or claims the right to assassinate its citizens via drone strikes; or appoints drug czars who claim marijuana is as dangerous as heroin?
This isn’t to say that the federal government is all bad; that would be absurd. But there are legitimate cases where it no longer serves the peoples’ interest.
Of course, there’s a difference between a corporate monopoly and a government. If you don’t like the government, you can vote our elected officials out. But in 2012, 114 million people voted; your vote was only one of those. Congressional elections, where incumbents win over 90% of the time, can be even harder to affect than presidential ones. In a country our size, with politicians as entrenched as ours, does your vote really check the federal monopoly?
The solution is one that’s been used by both right and left since 1798: nullification. States may nullify federal laws that they feel infringe on their rights. Admittedly, nullification was code for black suppression in the 1960s. But before then, and since, it’s been used to protect Americans from a dozen federal abuses. Colorado and Washington used it to legalize marijuana. Several states proposed nullifying the TSA. More are looking at nullifying the NDAA.
The record in itself is telling. Nullification isn’t some far-right doctrine that’s code for racial oppression. It’s bipartisan and flexible. It was admittedly used in the 1960s as an attempt to block the Civil Rights Act. And the time before that, it was used to block the Fugitive Slave Act. In the 1850s, when the federal government that handed down Dred Scott vs Sanford said black people were property, it was to states—who nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and declared Dred Scott bad law—that black people turned for support.
It’s worth pointing out that you do not have to support nullifying everything. You can nullify X without nullifying Y. This makes it one of the most flexible tools out there for citizens to change their government.
We all have our favorite example of government overreach. The drug war or the NDAA. Real ID or the Patriot Act. Nullification lets you stand up and fight back against government overreach, but in a way that doesn’t require dismantling the entire thing.
Nullification isn’t liberal or conservative. But I contend that its principles—choice and competition, a bigger voice for the individual citizen—are deeply American.