The Humble Libertarian original

From my most recent CAIVN article: This weekend, Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone unveiled a plan for thirteen counties in Southern California, excluding Los Angeles and Ventura counties on the coast, to secede from the Golden State and form a 51st state. His announcement came on the same day that Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that will divert $14 million in revenue from Riverside County. Read the entire article at CAIVN . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

While House Republicans’ repeal of Obamacare is laudable, the stark truth is that true repeal is still elusive. An alternative some have considered -- as opposed to waiting on the courts or a new government -- is to try nullification, the oft-maligned, seldom-employed tactic used by state governments where they refuse to enforce laws they deem unconstitutional. Tom Woods of the Ludwig von Mises Institute has written not one but two recent books advocating nullification. In Nullification and Rollback Woods encourages the use of the tactic in a political landscape where choices between the two governing parties could hardly be worse. No shortage of liberal writers have denounced Woods’ book or the idea of nullification. But when scholars in reputedly conservative journals join the dog-pile of their defense of the status quo, one has to wonder why these conservative intellectuals are so intent on letting unconstitutional legislation become more easily enshrined. In the February 21, 201...

I sure hope so! Read the following press release: Will 2010 be the year of the 10th? According to Tenth Amendment Center founder, Michael Boldin, "With people looking to resist D.C. through state laws on everything from national health care to medical marijuana, the 10th Amendment appears ready to be front and center in the national debate this year." Los Angeles, California (TAC ) January 11, 2010 -- In 2009, seven states passed sovereignty resolutions under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Two states passed laws nullifying some federal firearms laws and regulations. States with Medical Marijuana laws in direct opposition to federal laws reached thirteen. In 2010, some expect the ante to be raised significantly. "Already, over a dozen states are considering laws or state constitutional amendments that would effectively ban, or nullify, any proposed national health care plan in their state, and we expect that number to reach at least tw...

A fellow Tennessean over at Tennessee Sons of Liberty e-mailed me a very interesting quote from p. 272 of "The Real Lincoln" by Dr. Thomas Dilorenzo : "Lincoln's admonition that secession would lead to anarchy and destroy democratic government was pure sophistry. Had the South been permitted to go in peace, as was the wish of the majority of Northern opinion makers before Fort Sumter according to historian Joseph Perkins, democracy would have continued to thrive in two nations. Moreover, the act of secession would have had exactly the effect the founding fathers expected it to have; it would have tempered the imperialistic proclivities of the central state. "The federal government would have been forced to moderate its high-tariff policies and to slow down or abandon its quest for empire. Commercial relationships with the South would have been continued and expanded. After a number of years, the same reasons that led the colonists to form a Union in the first p...