Another Genius Attacks Nullification

This time it’s former state legislator Kevin Rennie, writing in the Hartford Courant.  I insist you read this for yourself.  It’s the usual enforcer/commissar routine, peppered with three facts he remembers from sixth grade.  His knowledge of American history may rise to the level of Schoolhouse Rock.  Forget about all the northern states that appealed to the Principles of ‘98; this is a crazy southern doctrine and nothing else.  Rennie doesn’t even know (1) that northern states nullified the fugitive-slave laws, and (2) they even cited the wicked Calhoun in doing so.  Were they wrong to do so, Rennie?

Like any commissar, he greets an idea not vetted by the Washington Post or the New York Times with smears and denunciations.  No attempt to understand why Thomas Jefferson would have promoted it, or to reply to (or even mention) any of the arguments he employed in its favor.  It is enough that it doesn’t belong to the Mitch McConnell/Hillary Clinton “mainstream,” which has done so much for the country.  Rennie would have us limit the federal government…how?  By voting for people who give good speeches?  How’s that strategy working?  Onward to more failure, comrade!

The comments are a hoot, too.  Oh, thank you, Kevin Rennie, for saving us from these crazy ideas!  Who would ever want to resist an edict coming down from our wise overlords?  Only a crazy person, of course!

I’d take the guy apart line by line, but how many times can you smack down the same examples of illiteracy?  I have a bunch of pieces that take down this guy’s arguments point by point; see the Nullification section of my Articles page.  Rennie’s no Ivy League professor, but here I smack down a Princeton professor who also tries to win the argument via the enforcer routine.  Turns out he’s as clueless as Rennie.