Without the sovereignty that our country was founded on, the unique character of our government system - the premise that our rights come from God and that government is obligated to secure them, and that because we are such sovereigns, we can
"alter and abolish" our government - becomes now merely a myth; it's folklore.... "There once was a time......" The fact is that government has taken over; IT has become the supreme sovereign. It has become so powerful that it has extinguished the sovereignty of the People and the States, or at least has whittled the reserved powers of the State down to nothing (token sovereignty). We, in the United States, now enjoy our rights only to the extent that government allows us to. That's the reality. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently threatened that Democrats will one day soon use the Emergency Powers Act to confiscate guns. And Senator Elizabeth Warren wants a near confiscatory income tax on the very wealthy. What the US Congress can't, or won't do, the federal courts will... and they do.
If sovereignty is stripped and if rights and powers are permitted only to the extent that government allows, how are we any different from any other country where government is supreme over the individual?
In 1868, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no right to secession. (Texas v. White). It concluded that when the Constitution was signed, a permanent, perpetual Union was created. (However, Justice Salmon Chase did acknowledge that secession might be permitted if ALL states decided together to dissolve the Constitution and the Union or if the people revolted... In other words, only if people are willing to lay down their lives might they be permitted to wrestle sovereign power from the government). In a letter he wrote in 2006, Justice Scalia also opined that there is no right of secession. And in 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that States have no right to try to remind the federal government of its constitutional limits and to prevent its encroachments upon the rights of the people through nullification efforts (Cooper v. Aaron).
So, next time you hear people profess the opinion that the Supreme Court has given the final word on efforts to reclaim sovereign power, ask yourself: "Does it have the authority to permanently deny sovereignty?" It does not. It doesn't even have the authority to temporarily deny it. Sovereignty was not surrendered permanently in the creation of the US Constitution.
Nullification is an essential first step in reclaiming power that the federal government has unilaterally and inappropriately usurped from the states and from We the People. No one wants to exercise the right of secession. I'd like to think we would all prefer to remain in a harmonious relationship with our fellow states, if that can be possible.
