“Jeff Secession”

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

In looking at what Attorney General Jeff Sessions seems to be doing in regard to having certain Swamp Creatures in Washington investigated by someone from outside of the Swamp, I would have to commend him for this effort. It seems he has been doing this quietly (probably the best way) but he has been doing it.

One problem Mr. Sessions  seems to have, though, is that he seems to believe the federal government is the last absolute word on anything, and if the feds say do it, then you better do it, no questions asked. In this rash assumption he is off base.

Those who follow what I write know that one source (among several) that I use for information is https://www.infowars.com  There are probably a dozen sites that I check out on a regular basis, but I follow Infowars because they usually get it faster than most others, and they get it right. Their sources seem to be good sources–and they must be doing something right because You Tube, Facebook, and Twitter are all trying to censor their videos and articles. You don’t draw that much ire from “the big 3” unless you are hitting the nail on the head. Of course “the big 3” are trying to censor all conservative commentary they can get by with, which tells me that when you have to censor your opposition–then you don’t have anything!

There is one news commentator on Infowars that I particularly enjoy (not that the others are not good, they are) and that is David Knight. Mr. Knight is a Christian gentleman and is not ashamed to let you know that, but he is also a Christian that knows his history. In that, he is part of a (hopefully expanding) minority. We need Christian people in the journalism and broadcasting areas that know their history and haven’t just bought, hook, line, and sinker, what they were taught in those government indoctrination centers we still charitably refer to as public schools.

On his broadcast today (March 9th) referred to some comments Jeff Sessions made about secession and nullification, and it was Mr. Knight that referred to him as “Jeff Secession.” In referring to the illegal immigration conflagration now so rife in the People’s Republic of Commiefornia, Sessions said: “There is no such thing as nullification or secession.” While I understand that Sessions was referring to states needing to obey the immigration laws, his comment here was a little out of context and did not fit the situation in California (the People’s Republic referenced above).

Sessions, like most of us, was probably taught that the War of Northern Aggression and its result forever settled the secession question once and for all. It didn’t. David Knight correctly noted that our War of Independence (the first one) from Great Britain was, after all, a war of secession. Our Declaration of Independence was a secession document. In effect, we seceded from Great Britain. I realize the politically correct don’t like to think of it in those terms, but that’s what it was. Given that fact, it surprises me no end that so many people today look at “secession” as at least a dirty word, if not outright treason. It isn’t.  There must be something lacking in their  educations. How about Truth? 

Mr. Sessions’ view of the States seems to be that they are nothing more that 50 federal districts that are responsible for carrying out federal edicts at the state level and they have no recourse but to do that. Lots of us disagree with that erroneous viewpoint and if the feds come up with some really egregious agenda that harms the states and their people, then that’s where nullification comes in, or should anyway, depending on how much intestinal fortitude state officials have (and I’ve seen lots over the years that didn’t have much).

Tom Woods had an article on http://www.lewrockwell.com for March 9th that dealt with nullification. Woods noted: “Sessions is making precisely the argument that every left-liberal outfit on earth, from ThinkProgress to the Southern Poverty Law Center, was making not ten years ago, when the modern nullification movement was getting started.”

If you want to read a good little book dealing with this, pick up Ron Kennedy’s book Nullification! Why and How published by Scuppernong Press in Wake Forest, North Carolina, but you might check out http://www.KennedyTwins.com which might be quicker.

Ron noted on page iii that “The current unconstitutional system of Federal supremacy has produced the current out of control Federal government. The remainder of this book explains why nullification is an essential unalienable right and how we can reclaim that lost right.” I seriously doubt that “Jeff Secession” would agree with this, and then I wonder–what would his take on the 10th Amendment be???

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Compact or Collectivism

By Al Benson Jr.

Underneath all the national anger in the country over Comrade Obama’s supposed ineptitude (I think much of it is by design rather than ineptness) there also simmers a strong disagreement over just how we should interpret the Constitution. Now I have to admit up front that I have some problems with the Constitution. I find myself much more in line with the thinking of Patrick Henry that I do with that of Alexander Hamilton. In fact, a couple years ago I did a whole series of articles on the Constitution for a blog spot that pulled the plug awhile back. Even though the original blog spot that carried them has gone by the wayside, other sites picked them up and they are still out there. You can find them on http://www.dixienet.org and http://www.spofga.org and I even found one on sonsoflibertyandamericanrevolution.blogspot.com Some of these will probably shock some folks because you never read anything like this before, but if you can, plow through them a little at a time anyway.

In my “huntin’ and peckin’” for some of this material I came across a brief article posted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute simply entitled United States Constitution. It stated that: “By the early 19th century, two schools of thought regarding interpretation of the Constitution had developed, commonly referred to as the ‘Nationalist’ theory and the ‘Compact’ theory. The Nationalist theory argues that the Constitution formed a sovereign nation, under which the states are subordinate in power to the federal government. Thus, the powers of secession and nullification, according to the theory, are unconstitutional. Prominent advocates of the Nationalist theory include Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln.”

The article then went on to define the other theory, the Compact theory, by saying that: “The Compact theory argues that the Constitution was a compact, that is, the voluntary agreement of thirteen sovereign states to create a general government to take on specific roles. According to the theory, the compact was voluntary and the states retain their sovereignty, so any state has the right, under the Constitution, to secede from the Union. Some proponents of the Compact theory also argued that nullification, that is, a state’s refusal to obey a law of the general government, was also constitutional. Prominent advocates of the Compact theory include Thomas Jefferson, Abel P. Upshur, and Jefferson Davis.” That briefly sums up the two positions and as long as we live under this Constitution (which the federal government almost totally ignores except at swearing in ceremonies) my natural choice would be the latter rather than the former.

I have been told that most of the founding fathers were of the Nationalist persuasion, Hamilton, Madison, Washington, and this may be somewhat accurate. If so, then there is all the more reason for the articles I wrote that are previously mentioned regarding the Constitution. However, that is not where Thomas Jefferson was coming from. In an article on the Tenth Amendment Center website, writer Gennady Stolyarov II wrote of Jefferson that: “Jefferson portrayed the Union as voluntarily entered into by the states; the states were ‘not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government’ (KR 153).”

He continued: “The Union was created by the ratification of the Constitution, which served as a ‘compact’ by which the states ‘delegated…certain definite powers’ to the general government (KR 154). The government’s exercise of powers not expressly granted to it by the Constitution was thus illegitimate . For Jefferson, the Constitution both defined and limited the Union’s nature and essence.”

And Jefferson gave a warning which has almost been totally ignored when he warned that the federal government should never be “the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself (KR 154), since that would allow the government to define the scope of its powers…”

The Future of Freedom Foundation has a website that carries different articles relating to freedom. In one that was posted on December 20, 2011, author Tom Woods Jr. reviewed a book written by Luigi Marco Bassani called Liberty, State, & Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Woods observed that: “To assess Jefferson’s endorsement of the Constitution we need to bear in mind the very limited consequences that its ratification entailed in his view. In an era in which ‘Tenther’ (i.e., a supporter of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution ) has, absurdly enough, become a term of derision, Jefferson’s approach to the Union is a splash of cold water: The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants…

Woods then observed that Bassani turned to the discussion of states rights. He says: (“States’ rights,” a phrase Jefferson himself used, is of course a shorthand term; Jefferson understood as well as anyone that states do not have rights in the sense that individuals do.) Jefferson was a principal architect of the compact theory of the Union, which conceives the states as a collection of self-governing, sovereign communities (the states)). (More precisely, it is the peoples of the states who are sovereign; no governmet is sovereign in the American system.) These communities, according to the compact theory, have not forfeited their sovereignty by delegating a portion of their sovereign powers to a central government that is to act as their agent…That it is the peoples of the states (often referred to in shorthand merely as ‘the states’), rather than the American people in the aggregate, who are sovereign is evident from history…The British acknowledged the independence of those states by naming them individually. Article II of the Articles of Confederation declared, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence”; the states must have had that sovereignty to begin with in order to retain it in 1781,when the Articles took effect. And when the Constitution was to be ratified, it was ratified by each state separately, not in a single national vote. This simple historical overview establishes a very strong prima facie case that the states remained sovereign and were never collapsed into a single whole…What that meant for Jefferson and many of the thinkers who followed in his footsteps was that in the last resort the states, the constituent parts (and creators) of the Union, had to have the power of nullification, the refusal to allow the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws within their borders.” The states do, indeed, need some kind of protection by which they can prevent the abuse of federal power from destroying the very system they themselves created.

Bassani noted that “…the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 which vindicate the compact theory—and which countless historians have tried to run away from—contain ‘the whole of Jefferson’s theory of the federal union.” He stated also that Jefferson’s draft contained the term “nullification” which was later taken out by chicken-hearted legislators, but in Jefferson’s thinking it was an integral part of the whole.

So all of the statesmen of that period did not buy into the “perpetual Union” theory. The “perpetual Union” folks are free to believe in that. It’s probably what their history professors taught them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the gospel.

How About Nullification In 2014?

by Al Benson Jr.
As we approach the year 2014 there are dire predictions all around about what’s coming. One I recently read said, of 2014, “More of the same, only worse.” I can understand the rationale for that. Comrade Obama will only be through half of his last (so we are told) term in office by 2014 and he has lots of damage left to do yet. His handlers over at the Council on Foreign Relations expect him to have our economy and most of the middle class totally incapacitated before he leaves office to be replaced by Ms. Hitlery Clinton in 2016. If he accomplishes that then Comrade Klinton will not have to work too hard to preside over the ruins of what was once America but has now become Amerika—The United Socialist States of Amerika—the “People’s Republic.”

Congress, for the most part, with a few exceptions, is bought and paid for by the same crowd that pulls Comrade Obama’s puppet strings, so you can’t expect much help there. The Supreme Court justices, most of which are so concerned how future generations of socialists will view them, will be no help to ordinary Americans (remember their vote on Obamacare?).

The whole thing has been set up so that most Americans will be so beset by the futility of what they see around them that they will just cave in and offer no resistance to the One World government crowd.

But, as well as the CFR/Trilateral/Bilderburg consortium has planned our demise, there is still resistance. They have not been able to shut it all down, and it’s very possible they never will. After all, there is still a God in Heaven and He does rule in the affairs of men, even when they do not choose to realize it.

I  just read an article published on http://www.zerohedge.com  which noted, on 12/12/13, that the State of South Carolina was about to pass a bill to nullify Obamacare. The article started off: “While we all know that the disaster that is Obamacare is extremely unpopular throughout the country, South Carolina is leading the charge to actually nullify the legislation. House Bill 3101 already passed the state House back in April by a wide margin, and is set to be voted on in the state Senate in January. It is widely expected to pass and then be signed into law by Governor Nikki Haley. If that happens it would set up a huge states rights victory and likely encourage other states to follow suit. It will be extremely interesting to see how the feds respond to this…” It will, indeed, and you can bet they will respond.

More resistance—an article on http://www.msnbc.com in which Ron Paul has suggested that states should nullify Obamacare. Mr. Paul said: “I’ve been working on the assumption that nullification is going to come. It’s going to be a de facto nullification if it’s not legalized. Because pretty soon things are going to get so bad that were just going to ignore the feds and live our own lives in our own states. Why should we grant this authority to a few thugs who want to take over the government to make all our decisions for us?”

Then there was the article written for the New American  magazine by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. which appeared on http://chasvoice.blogspot.com for December 28, 2013, which stated, in part, “Four Georgia state legislators are listening to the crescendo of constituent opposition to Obamacare…At their press conference, the lawmakers sought not only to explain their proposal, but to drum up support for it among like-minded Georgians…Representative Stover denounced the federal government’s usurpation of unconstitutional power. ‘To tax someone for simply being alive is anti-American, anti-Constitutional and anti-common sense…The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.’ Stover’s analysis of the Constitution is right. Understanding that the states created the federal government will help state legislators and citizens appreciate the constitutional propriety and potency of the principles of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798.” Now that’s a subject I’d be willing to bet your public school “history” books have not spent too much time dwelling on. The less you know about that, the better—for them!

There will be an election in 2014, provided Comrade Obama does not get the order from his bosses to just seize power. Americans should now direct their attention to ousting from office every single excuse-for-a-congressperson that voted in favor of Obamacare. But, then, how successful that will be may well depend on who gets to count the votes after the election.

An article on the Capitalism Institute website, http://www.capitalisminstitute.org has recently noted that the One World government types will blithely tell us that the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution trumps all state efforts to do anything the feds find offensive. The articles observes: “However, those at the Tenth Amendment Center disagree…The major argument used by those that oppose Nullification is the Constitution’s supremacy clause. But in fact, the arguments for the supremacy clause ARE the arguments for nullification. The major architects of the Constitution, and those that led the fight for its adoption, laid down what the supremacy clause meant during the ratifying conventions. By doing so, they defended state sovereignty, and set the stage for the negation of unconstitutional  actions.”

Even that would-be monarchist, Alexander Hamilton, was forced to admit: “…but the laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.” Again, something the “history” books no longer mention—what I call “memory-hole material.” And then, there is that list of 27 states that have filed suits over the constitutionality of Obamacare as of 2011. Can Comrade Holder just call all these state suits null and void? He will if he can. The Justice Department today is hardly about anything remotely approaching justice and it is more about “just us—and our friends”—a little crony capitalism for the good old boys in Washington and New York.

And, for someone who would like to read a little more about all this in depth, I would recommend the book by the Kennedy Brothers, Nullifying Tyranny. This is a book that should be used in every civics or political science class in every high school in the country and in colleges, too.

On page 10 of their book the Kennedy Brothers state: “The central theme of this book is that the political system devised by the founding fathers and handed down to ‘we the people’ has been perverted and distorted by special interest groups. These special interest groups now use the power of the federal government to advance their social agenda while at the same time enacting laws that repress traditional Christian morality and are destructive of traditional family values…We believe that America’s current political system is broken, and, if Christian moral values are to survive in the United States, there must be a radical restoration of America’s political institutions—back to the form and functions intended by the founding fathers when they gave ‘we the people’ a constitutionally limited republic of republics.”

So, if things do, indeed, get worse in 2014, at least let it not be because the majority of Americans just decided to complain and after that to sit it out. Do some homework. Read the Kennedy Brothers book and find out what you can do to help remedy our tragic situation. And work to support those legislators in your various states that seek to protect you from federal thugs via the nullification process.fer no resistance to the One World government crowd.

he futility of what they see around them that they w