Tom, this Colorado character, Barry Noreen, does say some incredibly stupid things in his column, but of course he’s just parroting the neocon/Claremont Institute line on nullification, Calhoun, nationalism, etc. He blames South Carolina for almost causing a civil war in 1833 by nullifying the federal “Tariff of Abominations,” which raised the average tariff rate to about 45%. But the Tariff of Abominations was sponsored by Henry Clay and supported entirely by Northern manufacturers who clearly wanted to use protectionism to plunder their fellow citizens in the South (The tariff increased the prices of manufactured goods made almost exclusively in the North). South Carolinians correctly understood that this was a break with the constitutional compact which called for all taxation to be uniform, not discriminatory. Northern politicians and Henry Clay, the “Prince of Hemp,” were the aggressors here, not South Carolinians. (Clay was a hemp farmer who said he entered politics to enact protectionist tariffs on hemp).
The second dumbest thing Noreen says in his blog, which I looked up, is that if there are threats to our liberties from the central government, we should just “trust the courts.” Yes, trust the central government itself. Well, we tried that for the past several generations and it failed miserably. Trusting the federal courts to guard our liberties is like trusting a pyromaniac to protect your home from fire.
