Nullification and the Firearms Freedom Act

Here's another thought about civility in government: democracy is messy. Democracy is people shouting, pounding on tables, name calling and being mad at one another. That's the way it works. In contrast, dictatorships and governments (and other organizations) that control or attempt to control every aspect of your life do not tolerate such stuff. They can and do terrorize people. People disappear in the middle of the night. People behave. Things get done. The trains run on time.

Dictatorships can still be democracies, it's just that not many people get to vote. Things happen behind closed doors without reporters hanging around. But much often hangs on a whim. As Goering said, "I get to determine who's Jewish or not."
 
who here thinks state governments are any better than the national government?
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It seems that way to me. Has any State government proposed an amendment to its people, and when it failed, forced the people to pass it at the point of a bayonet? Has any Governor increased the number of state supreme court justices in order to stack it with his appointees and take it over? The US construes its powers so liberally that if a State did the same thing the state governments would be absolute.
 
I lived in a state that called out the State Militia, as it was then, to fight striking miners. They even dropped bombs on them. I can't really say that was worse or not. I wasn't there. You'll have to ask the survivors. But, yeah, you're right. The state government's powers would be pretty close to absolute. Now, has that ever happened?
 
Besides, who here thinks state governments are any better than the national government?
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In truth, they're FAR worse. I'm very active in politics in my part of NY State, and have friends who are active elsewhere, and I can say conclusively that state politics is much dirtier than federal. State senators here in New York routinely get away with things any Congressperson would be nailed to the wall for.
 
Well, here I am about to take the other side again.

In theory, state governments are "closer" to the people. In practice, maybe not. If you come down a notch, to local government, that's more likely to be true, only it might not make any difference. People running for office still knock on doors and shake hands, stand outside polling places (really, by then it's too late) and are not the distant figures that congressmen are. Local officeholders may have a harder job, too, because they really do have to have a balanced budget. Your county can't run in the red for ten years in a row because they simply can't keep borrowing money. You could say they are where the rubber meets the road. To use the same analogy, the president is pretty much a hood ornament.

Obviously local politics has its problems, especially with officials giving jobs to their friends and relatives, corruption and total indifference to local problems. That even happens down to department level in fire departments, police departments and so on. And if you were in the half that voted for the guy that lost, well, too bad.

I guess the only system that works significantly differently is a monarchy and peerage, which is, as you know, a system where the son succeeds his father in office.
 
Besides, who here thinks state governments are any better than the national government?
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There is a VERY important difference. When states are stupid, people can easily leave to another state. When the federal government is stupid, leaving is much more difficult.

When a state government gets stupid, like a particular state on the West coast, people leave. This has been the case in that state for many years. The wealthiest, hardest working, best and brightest leave that state for states that are not as stupid. States that are not as stupid gain the rich and their capital, who then start and grow businesses and make the economic pie larger. The hard working and bright people follow and work for those companies.

The smart government states, like Texas, gain population and tax revenue and grow, the stupid states lose revenue and stagnate. That one stupid state on the west coast is facing a serious budget shortfall because the most productive are leaving.

When the federal government does something stupid, it is much more difficult for people to leave and go elsewhere. The stupidity is not as swiftly and harshly punished.

When the South had their Jim Crow Laws, what did blacks do? Many LEFT the south, for other states where they were not discriminated against so heavily. The south suffered economically because of their stupid policy by loosing a good portion of their hardest working citizens. Other states gained those hard working people and benefited from it.

When the US government got stupid during WWII and interned 110,000 Japanese American citizens, what could they do? They couldn't move to another state because it covered all states. They couldn't move to another country. They had to sit there and take it.

For years we lost a great number of bright and hard working people who would have been invaluable to production, research and development, as well as other sectors of the economy. Would it not have been great had a state said, "No, these people have done nothing wrong and we need them in the economy?"

Remember that the SCOTUS upheld the internment as constitutional too. Showing that the SCOTUS is no help when deciding if the Federal government has overstepped its bounds. Going to the SCOTUS to decide if the Federal government has overstepped its power is like you and I referring a dispute we have to my mother. You see right away that the deck is stacked against you. No party enters into a contract where only the other party gets to interpret the contract.
 
The smart government states, like Texas, gain population and tax revenue and grow, the stupid states lose revenue and stagnate. That one stupid state on the west coast is facing a serious budget shortfall because the most productive are leaving.
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I'm sorry to interrupt the Ayn Rand tribute :p, but how then do you account for the fact that Texas is facing a budget shortfall of 21 billion dollars and growing? Which is 50% more per capita than the California budget shortfall?

Almost all the states are in budget trouble because of the economy. One doesn't need to look any farther than that. And last I checked, Wall Street was still located in New York, and Hollywood was still located in California. There's not an overabundance of millionaires moving to Butte, Montana.
 
Well, maybe you think it's easy to pack up and leave if you don't like things and move to another state but there's probably a lot of people who might if they only had the price of a bus ticket. There was a time, however, when it wasn't even as easy as you might think. During the dust bowl days when people were leaving Oklahoma, local law enforcement in places like Arizona treated them like foreigners, keeping them moving on out of the state.

And you think people are right-wing today.
 
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