Good for Bill Niskanen at Cato for being the only member of the D.C. libertarian crowd to have the guts to speak the truth about nulllification and secession. On the Cato blog he repeats in his own language the fundamental argument in favor of states’ rights that was enunciated by Jefferson and the Jeffersonians: the central government cannot ever be trusted to be the arbiter of what limits will be placed on its own powers. Niskanen here is repeating a vintage Calhoun argument, and will probably be excoritated for it by all the silly Jaffa-ites who know nothing about Calhoun and the Jeffersonian tradition except the falsehoods about them that Jaffa himself has spread. (Interestingly, Niskanen doesn’t quote Calhoun even though he is repeating Calhoun’s argument. He quotes Hamilton instead, who is of course much more acceptable in polite company these days!).

There’s one flaw in Niskanen’s commentary, though. He says: 1) The seventeenth amendment (1913) was the beginning of the end of constitutional government in America; and 2) re-introducing the rights of nullification and secession will help restore constitutional government.

But these rights were abolished in 1865, not 1913. This is an obvious truth, but only those who are not afraid of annoying the politically correct “gatekeepers” of Official History seem capable of stating it.

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