220-215: The Tyranny of the Majority

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I had just returned to Washington, D.C. from Montpelier, James Madison’s family home, when it was announced that the House passed ObamaCare late Saturday night.

From our Constitution’s cradle to its grave in one day. What a journey.

Some may have found this development frightening, others anticlimactic, but one thing is certain: It was not unexpected.

Nor should it have been.

Since the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments began in earnest to tie individual citizens’ loyalties more closely to the federal government than to the states of their birth, it was really only a matter of time before our masters in D.C. realized their dream of exercising total control over the populace.

Today they are one step closer. By the end of the year, health care “reform” may have passed Congress and be on the President’s desk.

So what now?

Do the people of the several states surrender, then sit back and wait while the federal government dictates its terms?

Or do we follow the example set by some of our most illustrious ancestors, and join states like Arizona that have already challenged this constitutional abomination?

Thomas Jefferson said in 1799 that:

[W]hensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.

Clearly the House has joined its predecessors in assuming yet more “undelegated powers.”

Should any version of this bill pass the Senate, the question becomes whether our state leaders will protect constitutional liberty by declaring Saturday night’s tyranny to be “unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

In short, they must stand between the feds and our freedom by invoking the principle of nullification.

If not, how can they even be called leaders at all?

Josh Eboch [send him email] has previously served as a research analyst for the Tenth Amendment Center. His articles have appeared in various publications, and he wrote regularly for the Center on issues related to state sovereignty and nullification.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 4:26 pm. It is filed under Nullification and tagged with Founding Fathers, Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.