Ditto. And thank you for digging into the previous rulings regarding this.
I suspect a great many Americans are very frustrated at the ineptitude of our government. Our Constitution clearly indicates that the Federal government should protect our borders, yet it does not. Citizens have complained to the appropriate officials for years, even decades, yet the problems at our borders have not been resolved. I was delighted to see a movement to impeach Mayorkas, as he has utterly failed to do his job, as required by law. What else can a state such as Texas do, other than to take matters into its own hands? Can anyone suggest an alternate course of action?
The even larger issue is that government has failed to uphold hundreds of laws across our land. For example, our cities have laws and ordinances prohibiting squatting on public land, yet the homeless camp there anyway, and frequently with government aid! This is in violation of the law, but we citizens have no course of redress - other than protesting and subsequently voting the bums out of office. Our frustration is: UPHOLD THE LAW! That is the very essence of what is required by government officials, elected or unelected. Why, why, why, is that so much to ask?
Consequently, the voters may indeed stage a remarkable revolt at the voting booths this November. Frustration usually builds slowly, then heats to a boil.
By the way, the comment I posted elsewhere on Substack last Friday, “I stand with TEXAS!” had received 94 ‘likes’ by the following Monday morning.
What has emerged as a de facto policy at the Federal level as well as at the local level is a perverse form of nullification.
Politicians find certain laws inconvenient or not sufficiently catering to their particular voter base, so their solution is to employ quasi-populist rhetoric against said laws, which then becomes a pretext for simply disregarding those same laws. Opposition to their ad hoc nullifications is generally denounced as "racist".
This is quite different from the Anti-Federalist/Jeffersonian theories on State Nullification first put forward by Jefferson in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 (the rhetoric of which would be coopted by John Marshall in his famous Marbury v Madison ruling in 1803), and which reached its apex with Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis of 1830. There the political thesis was advanced that states retained the power and the prerogative to ascertain whether an act of the Congress was or was not repugnant to the Constitution; if such an act was considered repugnant to the Constitution, that state was free from obligation to follow the strictures of that act of the Congress.
In DHS v Texas and the order vacating the injunction, Abbott seems to be taking a cue from, of all people, founding Democrat President Andrew Jackson, who in a dispute with Marshall over a Supreme Court ruling, was famously believed to have remarked "Marshall has his ruling--now let him enforce it."
Incidentally, this is where I believe the presumed plans and agendas of the wannabe authoritarians break down. People see government indolence and ineptitude, and they see the consequences; it presumes a large measure of desperation and even gullibility on the part of the American people to conclude that, after a period of government dereliction, the people will embrace an authoritarian regime as the solution to that dereliction. It seems far more likely that people will instead either demand accountability from those who would presume to govern or simply turn their backs on the would-be authoritarians and craft their own solutions.
As the world saw during the space between the February and October Revolutions in 1917 in Russia, in the rise of fascism in Italy in 1922, and in the collapse of Weimar Germany in 1933, authoritarianism becomes the response when government is seen to be weak and not merely derelict. When a new regime proves unequal to the task of governing, the people will trend towards a stronger, firmer, and ultimately more authoritarian hand.
What we are seeing is not a regime that is unequal to the task of governing, but a regime that flatly refuses to govern, and is playing cynical manipulation games that aren't even sufficiently effective to be considered as Machiavellian. We are seeing government abandoning whole swaths of the electorate deliberately, with malice and with forethought.
Vigilantism and ad hoc extralegal forms of government are far more probable outcomes to the current regime's dereliction than an wholesale embrace of centralized authoritarianism.
Ditto. And thank you for digging into the previous rulings regarding this.
I suspect a great many Americans are very frustrated at the ineptitude of our government. Our Constitution clearly indicates that the Federal government should protect our borders, yet it does not. Citizens have complained to the appropriate officials for years, even decades, yet the problems at our borders have not been resolved. I was delighted to see a movement to impeach Mayorkas, as he has utterly failed to do his job, as required by law. What else can a state such as Texas do, other than to take matters into its own hands? Can anyone suggest an alternate course of action?
The even larger issue is that government has failed to uphold hundreds of laws across our land. For example, our cities have laws and ordinances prohibiting squatting on public land, yet the homeless camp there anyway, and frequently with government aid! This is in violation of the law, but we citizens have no course of redress - other than protesting and subsequently voting the bums out of office. Our frustration is: UPHOLD THE LAW! That is the very essence of what is required by government officials, elected or unelected. Why, why, why, is that so much to ask?
Consequently, the voters may indeed stage a remarkable revolt at the voting booths this November. Frustration usually builds slowly, then heats to a boil.
By the way, the comment I posted elsewhere on Substack last Friday, “I stand with TEXAS!” had received 94 ‘likes’ by the following Monday morning.
What has emerged as a de facto policy at the Federal level as well as at the local level is a perverse form of nullification.
Politicians find certain laws inconvenient or not sufficiently catering to their particular voter base, so their solution is to employ quasi-populist rhetoric against said laws, which then becomes a pretext for simply disregarding those same laws. Opposition to their ad hoc nullifications is generally denounced as "racist".
This is quite different from the Anti-Federalist/Jeffersonian theories on State Nullification first put forward by Jefferson in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 (the rhetoric of which would be coopted by John Marshall in his famous Marbury v Madison ruling in 1803), and which reached its apex with Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis of 1830. There the political thesis was advanced that states retained the power and the prerogative to ascertain whether an act of the Congress was or was not repugnant to the Constitution; if such an act was considered repugnant to the Constitution, that state was free from obligation to follow the strictures of that act of the Congress.
In DHS v Texas and the order vacating the injunction, Abbott seems to be taking a cue from, of all people, founding Democrat President Andrew Jackson, who in a dispute with Marshall over a Supreme Court ruling, was famously believed to have remarked "Marshall has his ruling--now let him enforce it."
Incidentally, this is where I believe the presumed plans and agendas of the wannabe authoritarians break down. People see government indolence and ineptitude, and they see the consequences; it presumes a large measure of desperation and even gullibility on the part of the American people to conclude that, after a period of government dereliction, the people will embrace an authoritarian regime as the solution to that dereliction. It seems far more likely that people will instead either demand accountability from those who would presume to govern or simply turn their backs on the would-be authoritarians and craft their own solutions.
As the world saw during the space between the February and October Revolutions in 1917 in Russia, in the rise of fascism in Italy in 1922, and in the collapse of Weimar Germany in 1933, authoritarianism becomes the response when government is seen to be weak and not merely derelict. When a new regime proves unequal to the task of governing, the people will trend towards a stronger, firmer, and ultimately more authoritarian hand.
What we are seeing is not a regime that is unequal to the task of governing, but a regime that flatly refuses to govern, and is playing cynical manipulation games that aren't even sufficiently effective to be considered as Machiavellian. We are seeing government abandoning whole swaths of the electorate deliberately, with malice and with forethought.
Vigilantism and ad hoc extralegal forms of government are far more probable outcomes to the current regime's dereliction than an wholesale embrace of centralized authoritarianism.
I concur with Gbil7.
The breadth and depth of your knowledge and wisdom continues to astound your readers, Peter!
Your kind words and support are always greatly appreciated. Thank you!