I have read and reviewed carefully the text of the actual Resolution passed by the State Legislature in Oklahoma. This is a classic case of a Resolution that appears to say a lot more than it actually says. Basically, the Resolution reaffirms the commitment of the citizens of Oklahoma to the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, it says nothing about how that amendment should be interpreted, whom should be the final arbiter of competing interpretations of that amendment, and what the State of Oklahoma will be doing if there is an interpretation in a specific circumstance that it finds offensive. In failing to provide any guidance on these specific questions, the Resolution essentially is a paper tiger: it tries to appease the sentiments of patriots who are concerned about federal encroachments (or, in the case of illegal immigration, federal inaction), but in fact it offers them nothing but a nice sounding endorsement of an amendment that has been on the books since the ratification of the United States Constitution. There would be no substantive difference if they passed instead a Resolution saying that they endorse the United States Constitution or that they endorse the Declaration of Independence. Of course, both of those documents are worthy very much of being endorsed by our States; nevertheless, endorsing them would not alter the situation, since presumably every State endorses the same and has been doing so for as long as they have been admitted into the Union. Even the leftists who would throw out our liberties in a heartbeat (such as the justices who "found" a right to gay marriage in our State Constitution and who therefore are undermining the very foundations of our liberties) claim to be in "support" of the Constitution; the Declaration of Independence; bright, sunny days; and apple pie. I know that the Oklahoma State Legislature is acting out of principles that are much more in unison with our own; nevertheless, their legislative action in passing this Resolution has not accomplished anything of substance for the reason stated: it is too broad a statement and fails to provide any sense of what the citizens of Oklahoma believe with regards to several key questions related to the jurisprudence of that amendment. Prior to the United States Civil War, there was a doctrine called Nullification, in which the States presumed the right to nullify federal laws with which they might disagree within the confines of their own borders, if they disagreed with those laws. In effect, they were trying to undo in practice the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Marbury v Madison, in which it conferred upon itself the right of "judicial review" on the Constitutionality of any questions at law, including specifically with reference to questions of federalism (i.e. what the federal government could do within State boundaries, versus what the States could do to offset or to preclude federal policies). At the time, there was a more limited view than is more readily accepted today of the extent and the scope of federal power. Indeed, even as late as the mid 1930s, the United States Supreme Court struck down the heart of the New Deal policies of President Franklin Roosevelt by holding that the NRA (National Recovery Administration), which essentially tried to streamline economic processes by allowing the captains of industries to agree upon protocols for business competitions and labor rights in their respective industries (which, incidentally, proves that Statism is a product of the Left, not the Right, in spite of popular misconceptions to the contrary), was an overextension of federal reach. FDR would respond with his "court packing scheme," which of course failed, but which nevertheless sent the message that it was intended to send. Soon, the Supreme Court had a change of heart; and the modern age of ever increasing federal power (such as in an expanded definition of the Interstate Commerce Clause, for example) emerged. Thus, the practitioners of State Nullification were facing a federal government that was very tame by our standards; nevertheless, even then, they saw too much federal encroachment for their own taste and therefore determined to take unto themselves the right of deciding if and when a federal exertion violated their sovereignty (and, by extension, violated principles of federalism enshrined in the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution). Initially, the State Nullification movement centered on opposition to the National Bank that had been chartered by the United States Congress. The Bank was a hallmark of the Whig system of financing self-improvements that would strengthen our nationalism and allow us to remain independent therefore from Europeans and others who might presume to enslave us economically, if not politically, by taking advantage of our lack of internal commerce. In the minds of the Whigs, like Henry Clay and later Abraham Lincoln, such self-improvement (i.e. building up our own infrastructure, whether it be canals or railroads) was a necessary aspect of remaining in fact independent as a nation and thus central to the Declaration of Independence. Later, after President Andrew Jackson managed to defeat a re-chartering of the Bank, the State Nullification movement focused on defending States' prerogatives in maintaining and in expanding the institution of slavery. The nullifiers of the 1840s became the secessionists of the late 1850s; the United States Civil War therefore became a struggle over whether, or to the extent, any State could presume to nullify federal laws in its own borders or to leave the Union outright, if those federal laws became too capricious. On the one side, there was the nascent Republican Party, which assumed into itself much of the Hamiltonian, federalist, and nationalist agenda of the former Whig Party. Contrary to the misconceptions of well meaning neolibertarians, this defense of Unionism over States' Secessionism (and State Nullification) is the heritage of our own Republican Party. Those who advocated for a nullification viewpoint more in line with Jefferson and later Calhoun are the Democrats, who presumed to hold up slavery as the great symbol of their opposition to a strong, federal government and to the Union in general. The fact that they held up slavery as their great symbol is not just a reflection of the racism of the times. The fact is, if there is the disavowing of "big government," then the vaccuum invariably is filled by the de facto "big government" of private interests, who are able therefore to converge as oligarchies, as a result of the limited ability of government to hold them in line with the rule of law. Within the slaveholding States prior to the Civil War, this oligarchy essentially consisted of large landowners for whom slavery was considered a necessary characteristic of their economy and culture. If and when oligarchies, like the Sonoma County Alliance PAC, are allowed to run roughshod over our private property rights, in pursuit of their self-interested agendas (as seen, for example, in eminent domain being used for enriching private developers), then we are faced with much the same problem as did the defenders of human liberties against the slaveowners of the past. In either case, while knee jerk nullification may sound like one of the instruments of liberty, in fact it does little more than empower private oligarchs, at the expense of the rest of us, who naturally fill in the power vaccuum that is left behind within the wake of nullification. It is principally for this reason that real Republicans, as opposed to neolibertarians, have never viewed political anarchy as a friend of freedom. Like I said, Oklahoma is not now pursuing a nullification agenda. It is just trying to placate a politically strong constituency with a Resolution that actually offers little change from the past. Thus, I find no reason to oppose it; and, indeed, to the extent that it is trying here to reaffirm the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, then I shall be supportive, since that amendment is as much in need of reinforcement as other provisions which have been tacitly ignored by the people, the legislatures, and the courts in recent years. Nevertheless, if and when anti-federalist "nullifiers" of the future ever try to use the example of Oklahoma as a "precedence" for actual State Nullification of any or all legitimate federal laws, then I shall stand with Abraham Lincoln against them.

For the purposes of this discussion on the recent resolution passed by the joint houses of the state of Oklahoma, I present the text of the 10th amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people. It is clear that the purpose of the above amendment was to guarantee states' rights. Meaning, the membering states of the republic of the United Sates were to be guaranteed a sovereign power unto themselves. The Federal government, that is the government of the United States, was to only be as strong as the member republics themselves. The later part of the amendment then takes it a step further guaranteeing the same sovereignty to the people. The resolution passed by the state of Oklahoma's legislative branch may be lacking in a directive for declaring its sovereignty; but the resolution does nonetheless declare its sovereignty based on the 10th amendment. The reasoning for this resolution is directly related to a "battle" between the state and the federal government referring to Oklahoma law regarding illegal immigration. An issue in which the federal government has so blatantly dropped the ball by non-enforcement. Oklahoma, recognizing the above statement, created new laws and enforced these laws as the people of Oklahoma requested. (As most United States' citizens have requested to no avail.) The purpose of the resolution was in fact an endorsement of the 10th amendment, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; as you pointedly stated. We in the political realm do understand the power of an endorsement; as we endorse candidates, measures and propositions regularly. We, in fact, make a point of making our endorsements public knowledge through press releases and the like; because, we understand the power of an endorsement. The purpose of the resolution was not an attempt at secession. If it was, then, it would have declared secession. It was an endorsement of a founding principle of the Constitution. Our country was founded because of a tyrannical government that did not represent its people. Our founding fathers were so careful of creating another form of tyranny that they developed one of the few documents of the world that limited the power of a central power. It did so by forming a republic made up of membering republics that had powers themselves that equaled the central power. There were of course powers that only the central power had: mainly to see in the protection of membering republics and the equal relationships between membering republics. They were so cautious of the central power that the 9th and 10th amendments were included to guarantee a limited powers of the central government. Many delegates to the Constitutional Convention themselves feared that the Constitution would later be used to form another tyrannical government. Many now fear we live under such a tyrannical government or oligarchy. The above stated oligarchy is the federal government that resists the state of Oklahoma in serving its citizens by rejecting its sovereignty. The federal oligarchy has no interest in stopping illegal immigration, for many reasons we all know, and will not allow the state of Oklahoma to do so. The legislative branch of the state of Oklahoma took actions into its own hands by reminding the federal government of its sovereignty through an endorsement of the 10th amendment. They ended it there. They did not try to nullify any federal laws or seceed from the union; they simply endorsed the Constitution. Let us remember that we are a Constitutional Republic. There are specific powers listed in the Constitution that are reserved for the federal government and then the remainder are reserved for the states and its peoples. If we continue to be a Constitutional Republic, then the state of Oklahoma will have the right to act on behalf of its citizens on an issue that the federal government is not acting and may have no power to act. I am not debating the Oklahoma law on illegal immigration but am simply stating the powers reserved in the Constitutional Republic.

I agree with all of your comments regarding the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the action of the State of Oklahoma in endorsing the same. I made two points in my prior email: 1.) that the endorsement by the State of Oklahoma of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was superficial, because it did not say what it would do if it interpreted a federal action or inaction as offensive to its protected sovereignty; whom is the final interpreter of when the Tenth Amendment has been violated; etc. and 2.) that while the State of Oklahoma does not go to the point of "nullification" with this Resolution, if ever there was a move by any State towards the doctrine of "nullification" then I would be in strong opposition. You partially answered my first point, in that you made the case that an endorsement has a value in itself, even if it does not answer all of the legal questions that I have raised (such as what Oklahoma would do if confronted with a differing interpretation; whom indeed is the final interpreter of when the Tenth Amendment has been violated; etc). Simply calling more public attention to the Tenth Amendment, and inspiring conversations like we are having in this forum, serve a good purpose. If that is all that the Resolution manages to do, then you are most correct in saying that that is a good development, since certainly a lot of people - voters and government officials alike - have forgotten the Tenth Amendment in past years. The only point in which I would differ from your analysis is in equating the terms "tyrannical government" with "oligarchy." By definition, a "tyrannical government" is the public force of government overstepping its boundaries and robbing the people of their liberties, rather than protecting the people in their liberties. "Oligarchy" is the private exercise of power by those who are wealthy or well connected for their own, private, profit driven interests, which has a negative effect on the ability of the people to maintain their own liberties. We agree that both "tyrannical government" and "oligarchy" are threatening to our liberties, but I believe that it is wrong to equate the two for this reason: while "tyrannical government" is bad, and must be avoided by securing the Constitution, the effect of actually instituting a too limited form of government (like that version that existed within the Confederate States of America) is for there to be a power vaccuum that is naturally filled by an "oligarchy." We end up simply substituting one version of tyranny for another. Indeed, in some ways, when we live under an "oligarchy," the tyranny is even worse for all of us than when we live under a "tyrannical government," because it is much more difficult to know whom to oppose, in a court of law or in a battlefield if necessary, in order to reclaim our God given liberties. When we suffer under a "tyrannical government," then we know whom to oppose: either an overbearing army, like the British Redcoats in Boston just before the Revolution, or a stuffy bureaucrat, like the Bureau of Indian Affairs which is working hand in hand with developers to impose an Indian Casino on the people of Rohnert Park, even though there is no tribe in Rohnert Park historically, no cessation of land to the federal government by the state, and no vote of the local citizens who are going to be most devastated by the project. When we suffer under an "oligarchy," then we often do not know whom to oppose, since a well entrenched oligarch is often a shadowy businessman, developer, or lawyer who does most of his nefarious business on private golf courses or in backroom meetings. At most, we may realize certain organizations that are heavily associated with "oligarchs," such as the Sonoma County Alliance; and we may realize some of their henchmen, such as a few persons whose names need not be mentioned here but who are well known as essentially carrying the water for their masters in the Alliance. Thus, I support the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and I agree that it is worthwhile to endorse it, even if some questions have been left unanswered. As you very well said, at the very least the Resolution reminds the people that the Tenth Amendment is in existence and should be recalled more often when issues arise. Nevertheless, if ever a future State were to use the example of Oklahoma to take the more drastic step of "nullification," then I would oppose it. My reason is that "nullification," if left unchallenged, would create a government that was too weak to offset the rise of "oligarchy" in our local communities (much like the original Articles of Confederation and then later the Confederate States of America). I acknowledge that Oklahoma has not done anything that could be interpreted as promoting "nullification." My concern thus is reflected on what may occur in the future, if trends continue too far down an anti-federalist path. Historically, what I am articulating here is in line with the federalist positions held by both the Whig and then the Republican Parties. Abraham Lincoln says much the same, when he argues that the loss of the Union would be the greatest threat to the preservation of our God given liberties, precisely because local oligarchies would be able to arise in the wake of the overly weakened governments that would then exist. He correctly regards the slave holding landowners in the South as the expression of such private oligarchies, and that is the main reason why he opposes the expansion of slavery into the new territories prior to the Civil War. He is an abolitionist, that is true; but he is an abolitionist first and foremost, because he associates slaveholding landowners with oligarchies that as such will reduce all of our liberties over time, as they pursue their own private, profit driven interests. That is why Lincoln and the early Republicans were never neolibertarians. They never had a knee jerk reaction to government per se, though of course they would want governments to be properly restricted by adherence to the Constitution. Even more than oppressive federal and local governments, they feared the oligarchies left unchallenged when there is truly not enough government. Thus, the way that Theodore Roosevelt sought to protect all of us from the oppressive, private oligarchs of his own time was to increase government regulations of business. As a good Republican, I support the Progressive Republican policy of Roosevelt, because I see them as more in line with the spirit of the early Republican Party, than what we may called laissez faire or neolibertarianism.

My God, a superbly literate conversation! Is that what you Republicans do, because we Democrats don't, not in Sonoma County anyway. As one of those "leftists who would throw out our liberties in a heartbeat," I find little fault with what has been said below. Thank you for including me. I especially enjoyed reading of our shared distaste for libertarians. Back in December, the Fox Business Channel brought me into a San Francisco studio at 4am to have a goofy debate with Ed Hudgins, formerly of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, now the executive director an Ayn Rand cult called the Atlas Society. I wonder how long this guy can keep stepping to the right before he falls off the planet. The occasion was the scheduled launch of STS-122, which at one time was intended to carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS. Naturally, it being "fair and balanced" Fox, it was an ambush. The moderator let Hudgins rant repetitious slogans about the grounding of the spectrometer as an example of government waste, and as I was gearing up to verbally beat Hudgins' arguments to a bloody pulp, what do you know, Fox was suddenly out of time. Even the studio technician was startled. "Man, that was a hard 'out!'" Anyway, I confidently predicted on-camera that Congress would come up with the money to fly the spectrometer, and last week the House passed a NASA authorization bill that provides money for and mandates flying the spectrometer. Funny thing about these "government is the problem" libertarians... if the government writes off a billion-dollar spectrometer, they call it waste; when the private sector writes down a hundred billion dollars in sub-prime loans, they call it a business decision. Could this be why Atlas shrugged? The latest bit of zaniness is that I learned from a friend that the Ron Paul camp "says that NASA is not constitutional because space exploration is not a job of the national government--and therefore belongs to the states!" Well, I often carry the Constitution around with me, so I took a look, and sure enough, NASA is not mentioned in the enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8, nor in any of the articles of amendment. Well, there are a few scattered phrases about providing for the general welfare and promoting the progress of science, but apparently that's not enough to satisfy the libertarians. So, I suppose that we need to draft and ratify a NASA amendment. While we're at it, we also need a USAF amendment. Section 8 includes "To raise and support Armies" (Clause 12) and "To provide and maintain a Navy" (Clause 13)... but no Air Force! I'm shocked, shocked to discover that I swore an oath the support and defend the Constitution, all the while violating that Constitution by serving as an officer in an unconstitutional branch of the uniformed services. Unfortunately, the space advocacy community is riddled with libertarians with goofy ideas about abrogating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty so that corporations can lay claim to the Moon and other celestial bodies, on the pretext that this would be a catalyst for the private development of outer space. Since even Bush Administration officials have called the treaty the bedrock of the international law of outer space, there's no danger that the US would abrogate the treaty, but if it did, it would utterly destroy the business environment, as every space launching state staked conflicting claims. Without a universally-recognized legal regime, there is no protection of private property rights. What can these people be thinking? Michael distinguishes between tyranny and oligarchy, and rightly so. The legal environment (or lack thereof) that libertarians would have in outer space would encourage the establishment of huge corporate empires, no kidding, the size of Alaska on the Moon and the size of the United States on Mars, vast properties that would need to be protected and defended by appropriately huge standing armed forces. I address these and other issues in my book manuscript, "What No One Has Owned Before: Private Enterprise, International Law, and the Development of Outer Space," which hopefully will be under contract any day now. But, back to the 2008 NASA Authorization Act. You may know that Lynn Woolsey has one of the most dismal records with regard to our civil space program. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics gives her a rating of zero. I asked for a meeting with her, her staff shoe-horned me into the schedule very quickly, and I presented my views to her on 27 May. On 4 June, the House Science Committee, on which Lynn sits, reported the NASA authorization bill by unanimous vote, and on 18 June she was one of 409 yeas in the House floor vote. My experience, and this was not the first, is that Lynn listens.

I concur with your assessment of the practitioners of the Ayn Rand cult. Several months ago, I participated in a debate on the issue of illegal immigration with Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. It was sponsored by the Objectivist Society at U.C. Berkeley and well attended by Berkeley leftists, Ron Paul Republicans, and Ayn Rand cultists. I made essentially a Whig/Free Labor/Lincoln Republican argument against open borders: mass, illegal migration is meant to depreciate wages among lower middle class and "vulnerable" members of our American labor; therefore, by undercutting market wages, it provides the windfall profits to a few at the expense of the many, thus reducing real purchasing power among all but the most elite of Americans; therefore, cultivating oligarchy at the expense then of republican self-governance. For me, illegal immigration is akin to slavery: it works to exploit the most vulnerable, who are prized as "commodities" by their "overseers" (i.e. Valerie Brown and other supporters of sanctuary status referring to the amount of grapes each illegal may pick, rather than to the intrinsic humanity of the illegal immigrant, when passing a Resolution promoting an open borders policy several years ago); it lowers real wages in industries where wages most impact the quality of life of employees (i.e. lower real wages in construction, meat packing, and related jobs); it increases the mass of an unassimilated populace, that has little or no ability to live as free citizens in a Republic. My opponent had no refuge but the typical "free market" advocacy of the libertarians and Ayn Rand cultists. For them, the highest ideal is the commodification of human relations, where the free flow of labor and commerce allows for the price of human relations to be a purely market driven phenomenon. As Dr. Brook stated, if he wants to pay a pittance of a wage to an illegal immigrant for back breaking work, and if that poor man has no capacity to demand otherwise, then that is his right; and it is "tyranny" for any government to say otherwise. Literally, such a society would be a return to the jungle, where there is in fact no real freedom at all from the dictates of the wealthiest oligarchs and their private armies. If we think that this is just theoretical, then I urge people to consider the actual history of mideval Europe, where most men had no identity beyond serfdom for a private tyrant who ruled over his life as if one of his pieces of property. When there is nothing but a "free flow of commerce and labor," then there is in time a refuge into fiefdoms, where the few provide a semblance of security from the jungle, in return for a lifetime of serfdom. The very reason why the Federalists, and later the Whigs and early Republicans, provided for a nationalist economy and a rule of law premised on a strong Constitution (rather than a weak Articles of Confederacy or a subversive Confederate States of America) was so that a new generation of American men could emerge, who stood tall as free men, precisely as a result of their ability to own land, to manufacture goods, to provide labor, and to pass on to their children the fruits of their enterprise. By providing for the rule of law, rather than some sort of libertarian minded lawlessness, and by providing for protective tariffs, rather than the fallacy of so called free trade, these nationalists maintained a system in which men really could live out their lives as free men, rather than as permanent serfs of local oligarchs and foreign powers. It is precisely in maintaining secure borders, limits on trade, and laws with regards to commerce and labor rights, that the Federalists, Whigs, and later Republicans allowed for real freedom to emerge on the American landscape, while our Democrat friends stood firmly with the anti-federalist, slave interests (and later Jim Crow laws) in the South, and later our Libertarian friends stood for the false utopia of the "free flow of commerce and labor." It is in reviving a positive vision of community and American nationalism that we are going to establish once more a foundation for living out our own lives as free men. On another note, I have been supportive of the efforts of Ron Paul supporters in running en masse for County Republican Central Committee seats, even though in fact I do not share all of the libertarian ideas associated with the Ron Paul movement. While I agree that they sometimes promote ridiculous ideas about the Constitution, as you have well articulated, I nevertheless believe that it is most helpful to have a growing segment of activists who care at least about maintaining adherence to the Constitution, as a defense against corporatist and internationalist forces. To the extent that the Paulists are libertarians, I am likely to be in disagreement, for the reasons stated. To the extent that the Paulists are nationalists, as in defending border security, opposing free trade, and disavowing long standing, corruptive foreign entanglements, I am likely to be in agreement. After the debate, one of the Ayn Rand cultists wrote a one-sided description of the debate in an Objectivist blog. He attacked me as a "Hamiltonian Republican." I may say only that that is a compliment in my mind, even if intended as an attack, though I should hope not to defend my nationalist credentials against the likes of an Aaron Burr anytime soon.