Enough is Enough! It’s Time for States to Start Pushing Back.

President Barack Obama incorrectly, improperly and unconstitutionally used the power of recess appointments to install Richard Cordray as the head of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) along with three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. Here in Tennessee, the actions drew fire from Senators Corker and Alexander.

Beyond the political concerns of the professional political class, however, there are real reasons to be concerned about the actions of the federal government imposing its will upon the nation in unconstitutional and unaccountable ways. The more we practice government by imposition as opposed to government by constitutional legislation, the harder it will be to overcome the savaging of America increasingly originating inside the beltway regardless of which political party is in power.

For the last few months, I have been sharing with friends my growing disillusionment with all things Washington DC. Increasingly I find the actions there to be political theater for consumption by other DC insiders and divorced from day to day life across the nation. Actions such as President Obama’s and the hopelessness, not hope, that they produce are, in no small measure, behind the rise in the number of activists in recent years and their focus on state legislatures as opposed to an unresponsive and unappeasable federal leviathan.

Recently, Hal Rounds, a Tennessee activist reminded me and others of a key statement in the Tennessee state Constitution. Article I, Section 2 states in full, “That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”

That point bears repeating; the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind! It sounds an awful lot like Edmund Burke’s famous observation on the conditions needed for evil to triumph. It reminds one, too, of Burke’s premise that, “There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.”

How then, should we proceed from here if nonresistance is absurd, slavish, destructive, non-virtuous and promoting of evil? Certainly the avenues of individual resistance and civil disobedience to unjust and unconstitutional laws are open to all persons willing to pay the immediate and serious consequences for challenging the state. Better, however, is a more corporate approach whereby the several states, in fulfillment of their responsibilities to their citizens, once again take up their Consitutional role and refuse to be dictated to by the federal government.

It is no secret that the several states created a weak, limited and clearly defined federal government and retained the vast majority of strong, vast and loosely defined political power for themselves. It took over 150 years to flip the roles. It’s time to begin to reverse that process. Perhaps I will not live to see the return of Constitutional governance to our Republic. But it’s a fight worth fighting regardless.

Space restrictions prevent even a brief accounting of suggested and needed actions and strategies to accomplish such a grand ideal. I’ll be writing more later as, I suspect, will many of you. The one thing I will suggest is that we have reached that place Burke talked about. Continued forbearance has ceased to be virtuous. Whether or not we have reached the place where it may properly be considered treasonous is open to debate. But continuing to do little or nothing and hoping things will work themselves out is no longer an option for those who love our Republic and its Constitution.