Health Care and the ‘N-Word’
Posted on | January 27, 2011 | 13 Comments
Last week, when I did a post about efforts to promote state nullification of ObamaCare, my friend Ali Akbar joked on Twitter that I was using the “n-word,” but now apparently nullification is the latest rage:
BOISE, Idaho — Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states are reaching into the dusty annals of American history to fight President Obama’s health care overhaul.
They are introducing measures that hinge on “nullification,” Thomas Jefferson’s late 18th-century doctrine that purported to give states the ultimate say in constitutional matters.
GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming are also talking about the idea. . . .
You can read the whole thing. Professor Thomas Woods’s recent book Nullification has helped promote this trend, but the Associated Press didn’t find him worth quoting, instead relying on anti-nullification sources who derogate the authority of states to defend the liberty of their citizens. Certainly the revival of interest in this doctrine — first promulgated by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions — is a testimony to the depth of opposition to ObamaCare.
UPDATE: Via Red State Eclectic, here’s video of Professor Woods discussing the recent controversy in Idaho:
Watch this mild-mannered scholar and try to convince yourself that he’s a radical extremist. His Web site is TomWoods.com.