According to today’s Times News, the Lehighton 9/12ers (a Glenn Beck-inspired group) had a speaker advocating “nullification.” The problem with autodidacts is they miss so much. They learn a few details, but they miss main points.
The U.S. Constitution states that the Constitution and the laws and treaties made under its powers are supreme over state law. If there is a conflict between the Constitution itself and a law passed by Congress, the Supreme Court established in Marbury v. Madison (1803) that the Constitution is the one we obey. The states don’t determine that issue.
Nullification was a doctrine advanced by South Carolina during the Andrew Jackson presidency that a state could determine what laws were unconstitutional. It can’t, and the doctrine was discredited at the time. South Carolina tried this again when it was the first state to revolt against the U.S. government in 1861.
South Carolina and its rebelling sister states lost that argument after a bloody four-year war. Is the Lehighton 9/12 speaker advocating another Civil War? Does he really want to attack the United States? It sure sounded like that.
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