Nullification: Constitutionally, the Federal Government is an Agent of the States « Independent American Party – Official

Nullification: Constitutionally, the Federal Government is an Agent of the States « Independent American Party – Official

Nullification: Constitutionally, the Federal Government is an Agent of the States

June 25, 2012 Posted by: Kelly Gneiting

Tell your state representatives to get ready to Nullify the spew that Washington DC is spitting out  to try to control them (refer them to this article) 
The original intent of the Constitution is that the federal government is an agent of the states.  Hence in ratifying the Constitution each state had an opportunity to approve or disprove of the document, which allowed the federal government to have ONLY its limited powers.
The Constitution, with its 10th Amendment, is not an instrument for the federal government to restrain the states, nor the federal or state governments to restrain the people.

“[The Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”–Patrick Henry

In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Thomas Jefferson penned the Kentucky Resolutions, which states in part:

“[The] Constitution for the United States… delegate[s] to that [Federal] Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General [Federal] Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force… the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge of itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

The federal government was and is a joint action of the states in creating a compact among themselves, and cannot tell the states, with no room for disagreement or appeal, what their own Constitution means.
James Kilpatrick, working with Thomas Jefferson, put the question this way:

“Are the alternatives two only: submission, or arms?  Is the choice truly confined to an acceptance of tyranny on the one hand, or a resort to the sword on the other?  Every consideration of reason, common sense, and constitutional theory demonstrate that in a civilized and enlightened society, disputes are not to be so resolved.”

The only way a state can both remain in the Union and retain its liberties in the face of an unconstitutional act by the federal government is to declare the federal action null and void and refuse to enforce it—or in other words to nullify it!  Nullification of ANY mandate by the federal government deemed inappropriate or NOT in observance of the Constitution, is a duty of all state leaders, policy-makers, and representatives.

“The State government will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.” Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 28

Information for this issue was taken from “Nullification: The Jeffersonian Brake on Government”, by Thomas E. Woods Jr., an article printed in Ideas on Liberty, March 2002