What About Nullification?

Nullification as a Defense Against Federal Overreach

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and we have a special guest with us today who's going to talk to us about a subject that I talked about earlier in the week, and that is nullification, state nullification.

What happens when the national government, in the case, let's say right now, a certain president who has put together an edict that OSHA needs to regulate businesses of a hundred people or more, something like that, you know, nothing that's happening in our backyards, but let's say a president regulates beyond what they're supposed to.

They've stepped outside of the Constitution. What should states do? That's the question. That's the question we have today. And it's not just a question for states. It's a question for also Christians, Christians who live in states.

We are citizens, not just of heaven, but of the states and the countries we reside in. And so to discuss this further and to shed some light on the civics of all this, I have invited to the program the Walter D. Kennedy.

He is the co-author of a number of popular books, among them The South Was Right, Be Separate. In fact, you can go to Kennedy Twins, I believe it is, dot com, Kennedy Twins dot com, and you can find out where you can purchase those books.

They're all right there. There's a number of them. But he's written a lot about compact theory, nullification, secession and all of these things. And not only that, he worked as a nurse. So I think he's got some opinions on what's going on right now.

Walter Kennedy, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program.

Thank you. And please call me Donnie. My legal name is, of course, Walter D. But I go by Donnie, D-O-N-N-I-E. That's my trade name, Donnie.

Well, in the South, for those who don't know, I think the middle name is the name you go by, right?

That's right. You're absolutely right. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you. Ron and I, my twin brother, we've always enjoyed talking to people about the Constitution, the history of the Constitution and why we have rights that we're not being able to enforce today and how we can correct that.

So I hope we kind of get in a little bit of that today.

Federal Vaccine Mandates and the Threat of Tyranny

Well, let's start let's start with what's happening right now, because that's what people that's what's getting their attention is, hey, I'm a business owner. I got 100 employees and now I've got to require all of them to have a quote unquote vaccine.

Some of them don't want to. Now, you are a nurse. I'm sure you've got a lot of opinions about this, maybe from the medical end. But just share us your general thoughts on this. I mean, does this concern you that it's happening?

It not only concerns me, it concerns a lot of people. And these are people that usually are not politically active. That's what amazes me, because they come at me with questions just like you asked. What do you think?

Number one, it's the beginning, the edge of a tyrannical system of government when the government can force you to to take medicine, really medicine that has not been fully approved of, but just because they believe it is good for you to take it, you must submit.

I often wondered how would Patrick Henry feel about this? How would George Washington feel about this? George Washington, a great statement he once made said that government is like fire. It's a useful servant or a fearful master.

What we're seeing now in the Biden administration and even in some of the Republican administration prior to Trump, what we see is a government that is becoming our master. This nation was established with the people ruling the government, not the government ruling the people.

That's why we wrote the Declaration of Independence, pray God. But we see that it's been turned upside down. Now, as far as the vaccine, I have better immunity than the vaccine because I've had COVID.

I'm 74 years old, be another two or three days. I lived through it. I did fine. I'm OK. I will not take the vaccine. I would suggest those people who are highly successful, successful to death because of comorbidity, we call it.

If you're an asthmatic, COPD, heart patient, severe diabetic, uncontrolled diabetic. Yes, I would take the shot. Otherwise, I just don't do it. I've never even taken a flu shot. I'm 74 years old. I don't believe that I'm going to die because I didn't take a shot.

But if I do, hey, I've lived this long and I'm healthy.

I'm just happy with it. And you worked as a nurse and you're saying this.

Yeah, I'm a registered certified registered nurse and this. I dealt with patients with AIDS back when AIDS was a death warrant. Do you know we didn't quarantine people? We didn't make them wear masks.

We didn't label them as unpatriotic. And we dealt with it. Guess how many of my co-workers ever got AIDS? None of us because we use proper technique. And this deal with the mask, that is not proper technique.

I'm sorry. That is it's a talisman. It's a magic wand that people are waving around, thinking they're doing something proper. It may help 10 percent, maybe, maybe. But it is probably more dangerous than it is healthy.

Why States Have the Power to Nullify Federal Action

Well, I'd love to talk to you more about the medical end of this. But the main reason I wanted to interview you was because of your writing on compact theory, nullification and secession and all these kinds of things.

I mean, these are tools that to if people agree with what you just said, that this is a dangerous, dangerous thing that the government's doing. There's tools in their arsenal that it's like they're unaware of or they don't know how to use or.

And that's kind of how I view it is like you can nullify this. You can challenge this. But I don't know if it's fear. I don't know if it's ignorance. What do you think it is that's preventing more conservative states, we'll say, from really going full bore, challenging this, nullifying this?

Well, one of the main problems that I see is that post Appomattox, since the end of the war between the states, the federal government has assumed the role of the sovereign of this nation. Prior to Appomattox, even Yankee states, I'm looking at right here a nullification act by Connecticut in 1812.

And Connecticut declared that the state of Connecticut is a free, sovereign and independent states, that the United States are a confederacy of states, that we are confederated and not a consolidated republic.

Back then, states understood that they were sovereign and the federal government understood that if you went against the will of the people of the state, the federal government was one that would stand in fear and not the people.

Today, whether it's South Dakota or Texas, when those states nullify or attempt to nullify an egregious federal action, they're looking at 100 years, 150 years history where the states have been taught, well, you're not really sovereign.

The federal government is sovereign. So we need to re-educate Americans about where does sovereignty reside in these United States. It does not reside with the federal government. It resides with we, the people of each sovereign state.

If you're from New York, then New York is sovereign. You're the one, the people of New York are the ones to decide how they should be governed. If we could ever get that message out, then the federal government will begin to understand they cannot treat states as if they're provinces of an empire.

And right now, that's how they're treating us. I think, and as you're pointing out, with all this going on in the Biden administration right now, I think people are beginning to wake up and realize that the, uh, that the federal government is a leviathan.

It is a monster that needs to be controlled. So I think this is a great time to be discussing these topics of real states rights, which is inclusive of nullification and or secession. In other words, only the people of the state have a right to determine how they are ultimately to be governed, not the federal government.

Nullification, Slavery, and the History of State Resistance

Well, I wanted to maybe throw a few of the objections that are commonly given out there. Obviously you're, uh, you can tell by your accent, you're a Southerner, right? And, um, I think today more than anything else, there's a vilification of anyone who would say states rights, because that has, that must mean racism.

That must mean slavery somehow. And so even if it's being wielded in defense of your population from getting an experimental drug forced down their throats, it's still somehow there's, there's gotta be a racist angle to this.

Um, you, you just cited something about, you know, from Connecticut, um, talk, talk to me a little bit about, you know, the, the logic that's the, or the, the, the reasons maybe, um, nullification has been used or can be used.

Um, I mean, can it be abused? I'm assuming it can be abused. So, uh, I mean, is, is this, is this an abusive thing that the states can now just nullify whatever, I mean, are, aren't we going to have anarchy?

Aren't we, aren't states in the South, you know, going to subjugate people if, if they get this kind of power?

Yeah. Well, that, that is, uh, uh, the argument that the left use, but let's go back. Where did nullification really, really start out in this country, in the United States. And I, I guarantee you 99 of the people that when I say this, they going to say what?

It started with the 11th amendment to the constitution. I bet you can't even tell me right now what the 11th amendment is and don't feel bad. 99%. I didn't know what it was until I started doing some investigation.

The 11th amendment to the constitution, basically, and I'm, I'm, I'm really, uh, truncating this down to a quick argument, but basically it says that no state can be drawn into a federal court against its will by the citizens of another state.

And they said that because states were sovereign. Georgia was compelled in, uh, I think it was eight, 17, 1793, just a few years after the constitution was adopted, Georgia was compelled to go into the federal court to defend itself against some citizens of South Carolina at the behest of the British empire.

Georgia refused. They nullified that federal court order and stated that any federal agent that came into Georgia and attempted to enforce that or that, uh, that edict would be quote hung by the neck until dead without benefit of clergy.

And then Georgia turned to the other states and said, we've got to do something. We were told that when we entered the union states were sovereign. Now they're treating us like, now the federal government is trying to treat us like an appendage of the federal government.

So enraged was the people of Massachusetts that the representative of Massachusetts and that's new England. Now he was the first representative to get on the floor of the United States house of representative after the federal Supreme court, uh, issued its edict and declared that this was an attack upon the sovereignty of the states.

And he introduced a bill to prevent the federal Supreme court or courts to do and what they had done to Georgia. And it passed unanimously throughout the Congress and out of the 14 states that were in the union at that time, 13 ratified it.

So, uh, nullification has a long history. States rights has a long history. I'm looking at a thing in Wisconsin in 1859, this is just one year before South Carolina seceded from the union. You realize that Wisconsin nullified a section of the constitution, period.

Now remember that's Wisconsin. And what it did, they were nullifying an act that would protect, that caused them to send slaves that had escaped from slavery back into slavery. And they call this personal liberty laws.

And they nullified that section of the constitution and said, no, we will not be part of this because at this point in time, we cannot agree that it is morally correct. And that was just two years before, uh, one year, really for South Carolina seceded from the union.

So in other words, even Yankee states like Wisconsin believed in real states rights, real sovereignty, and they were using nullification, not as a protection of slavery, but a protection of the personal liberties of freed slaves.

Southern Memory, State Sovereignty, and the Limits of Federal Power

So, so this isn't something that's unique, uh, to the South or Southerners, but it seems like this is something that has lasted longer. At least this tradition, uh, won't go away quite as quickly in the South.

Uh, the people have, remember, uh, I guess have a longer memory, uh, down there. And, and so that right now, um, as it stands, it's, it's a lot of Southern governors who are challenging this edict from the Biden administration, or at least in their rhetoric.

I don't know if it'll have teeth or not, but they're, they're saying that they don't want, they're not going to abide by it and these kinds of things. Uh, think of the governor of Florida, governor of Tennessee, governor of Texas.

Um, and so, you know, I don't know what's going to happen. I actually be curious to hear your thought. Do you think this is going to have some teeth? Do you think something's going to happen here? Or do you think it'll just kind of fizzle out and they'll back down?

No, I don't think so. And here's the reason why. Number one, you said the South that we, we have a longer memory. Uh, uh, many, many years ago, an old Confederate veteran, a colonel, uh, he was talking to a New York reporter and he was kept bringing up the aspects of the war and what happened and everything.

And, uh, and the reporter from New York said, uh, colonel, this is very interesting, but the war has been over for 50 years. Why don't you just get over it? And the colonel looked at the, uh, the Yankee reporter and said, son, always remember a conquered people never forget.

And I think that is one reason why the South is hung on to states rights so, uh, so strongly, because we understand maybe not in the front of our minds, but at least in the background minds that we have been conquered, but we were conquered in defense of states rights.

And we still love that attitude. Uh, the sons of Confederate veterans, I'm a chief of heritage operations for the sons of Confederate veterans. And in our SCV constitution, the preamble, we are, we are instructing, instructed to, uh, to pay allegiance to the constitution of the United States as a document that was a state's rights document.

So, you know, it's just in our blood. Now, going back to your, your question though, how about South, uh, South Dakota? I think South Dakota is going to be the next state that's going to be saying, no, we've got to nullify this.

And, and there are Northern states, blue states that don't like some of the things that say Trump administration, they are willing to nullify things. So nullification cuts both ways. And it really the reason nullification and John C Calhoun stated this, the reason you have nullification is to keep two people who really don't agree with each other, keep them in the same government and the same union.

So I can't force you to agree with me and you can't force me to agree with you. Uh, any government that will force your conformable bloody band-aid, that's, that's a tyranny. That's not a free government.

Why Nullification Is a Check on Tyranny, Not a License for Anarchy

What do you say to someone who says, look, uh, if we do this, this whole state's rights thing, uh, and we nullify a tyranny coming from the national government, we're, we're going to create more tyranny because look, if, if, if we did that, we would still have slavery.

We would have segregation and, and, and sort of, they, they attribute, um, uh, this level of, of, of righteousness to the national government that states don't have. I don't, I think there's an assumption behind it that the national government, they, they always have the right solutions.

They're, they're, they're good people, but it's those, some of those pesky states, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna do some bad things. So if you really, you know, Donnie Kennedy, if we followed what you're saying, then we would still have slaves out there.

And we, none of, none of us obviously want that that's wrong. Right. So, so nullification is wrong. I mean, that's very simplistic, but what would you say to that?

It was the federal Supreme court, not the federal or a Southern court that, uh, uh, that canonized or made, uh, Jim Crow in the Plessy versus, uh, Ferguson in 1897 Supreme court and say that was a federal court.

Now, the interesting thing, and that was a federal Supreme court. There was only one just court that voted against Jim, uh, establishing Jim Crow laws in America. And that was a Southern justice. The law was based, Jim Crow law was based on a Massachusetts law of 1847 that segregated, segregated black and white school children.

And the majority opinion was written by a Minnesota justice. So this idea is a sham. It's a sham argument that slavery and racism is a Southern thing. No, it was an American thing. And thankfully, thankfully we have come beyond those things.

We don't have to worry about re-establishing slavery. Uh, that that is about the dumbest thing that anybody, you know, COVID, you know, that that's just old hat. It's not going to happen. And it's a sham argument.

It's a, it is a, a must abide by the constitution or else these States are going to slap us down right now. The federal government knows whatever they present to us, all three branches agree. We have to agree with a classic example is Arizona.

When Arizona decided that it would enforce federal immigration laws within their state. Well, the federal government said, no, you cannot. Hey, you know, the problem is the federal government is supreme and not we, the people of the sovereign States.

So notification, uh, there's a, on our website, there's a great little booklet called red state red County secession, in which we talk about how even in blue States, there are red counties that are talking about like in Oregon, the Eastern side of Oregon, Washington, the Eastern side of Washington, they're all talking about, look, we can't get along with these people.

We need to separate in peace. That is the coming agenda. If we can separate in peace, if we can nullify things that we don't agree with, the federal government will then be under control and it won't start causing problems.

All the problems we have right now is because the federal government can run a muck of our constitutional right. And there's no way to stop them. The constitute, uh, there's a faith state state statement.

I think Calhoun made that said that the constitution is not a self enforcing document that, you know, you can't weigh the 10th amendment in front of a federal judge. And he said, Oh, I'm sorry, we can't do that because the 10th amendment, you have to have a means of enforcing your rights or you're going to be trampled upon every time.

You know, that as a man, if you, if you don't have the ability to defend yourself nine times out of 10, you're going to get bullied. So right now the States do not possess that power to defend themselves and to enforce the limits of the constitution.

Local Accountability, Armed Citizens, and Checks and Balances

Well, and I think that's a good analogy because if you, if you allow your citizenry to be armed, are they going to shoot each other? Are there going to be murders? Yeah, there will be. I mean, if they have guns, they can, they're going to use them.

Men have evil hearts, but if you take away their guns and you only have one big dog, who's got all the guns and he goes, that dog goes evil. Then, um, then, then everyone's in trouble. And it, the, the, the disaster is bigger than it could have been.

And so, um, that's, I think that's the, kind of the point with nullification. It's like, you know, people could use it for nefarious purposes. I guess that's possible, but there's a, there's a bigger problem here that this is meant to alleviate and grinding gears is not a bad thing.

It's it checks and balances are good. That's because man's evil. Absolutely. Um,.

Can I make one point here? Yes. States can do evil things, but it is hell within a certain area, small area. If the federal government does an evil thing, it spreads throughout the entirety of the nation.

So, you know, and as you said, we're not ruled by angels at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level. Yes. Rights can be abused. Power can be abused, but I'd much rather have my local sheriff abusing power than a federal agent in Washington, DC, because his power is pushed on everybody.

Whereas my local sheriff, I have to deal with him and he can be dealt with much easier than the guy in.

Washington, DC. More accountability. Yeah. So, um, I want to ask this, uh, you've written a book, uh, or coauthored a book, uh, be separate. And, uh, it's got a Bible on the cover and a cross. And, um, I know you're a Christian right now.

A lot of the audience, uh, are Christians as well. And they're concerned about what's going to happen, um, in the next 10 years, let's say. Uh, and I, you know, we have the Benedict option. I don't know if you've heard about Rod Dreyer's book, the Benedict option.

So we're kind of, kind of become monks again, go underground, wait till the world is ready for us to come back up. Uh, that, that's probably a terrible summary, but, um, you have people that are wanting to, to, to be more abrasive and more, uh, just out there with their Christianity.

But then, um, I, this is one of the options I don't think is being looked at as much as maybe, maybe being in a local area or a state that values Christianity and, uh, you know, sticking, sticking to Christianity, not allowing, um, the federal government and whatever it, it wants to, or, or even media, not just the government, but media forces that would stand against Christianity to take a hold in that region.

So that's kind of a localist approach. I haven't heard a lot about that, but I just wanted to get your thoughts on that as a Christian. Um, and, and because you wrote this book, what, what solution do you have to what's going on out there?

The Great Commission and Christian Political Engagement

First of all, back to your original statement, I believe in the great commission go ye therefore into the world and make ye disciples of all nations. It didn't tell us to go get in some plastered, uh, uh, uh, bunker somewhere and hide until the Lord fixes things.

We are the instrument of the church. The Christians are the instrument of the Lord. We need to be out there being light and of the community. So we need to be activists. Now, one thing that I and the reason this book be separate was really written was to encourage Christians to look at the political aspects that are involved in making sure that your community is a, a wholesome community.

Uh, here in Louisiana, we detest the idea of, uh, of abortion. And that's, you know, we just, we're opposed to that. Even though we have a quote democratic governor right now, he wouldn't dare try to bring abortion into this state.

At the national level, we are forced to agree to it. Why can not the state say, no, if, if the nation wants to go to hell y 'all go, we will not because this goes against our moral values. And that's why we need to be more politically involved in the community and realize, and this is something that a lot of people done on the evangelical right that realize the same neo-Marxist enemy who wants to destroy the second amendment rights to own guns or the same neo-Marxist enemy that are attacking the 10th amendment.

And there are the same neo-Marxist enemy that are attacking religious freedom. The people who were pulling down the statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, those are the same people, pro-abortionists, anti-gun people.

We're, we all are in this together. So evangelical Christians, Southerners who have pride in their Southern heritage and want to defend that, that right, uh, gun owners, we all are in this together. And that is one of the key points that Be Separate is looking at as to why we need to work together.

We can have a morally acceptable society, even if Massachusetts wants to have a corrupt pagan society. And that is what we're looking at. Now does that mean that we wash our hands of the people of Massachusetts?

No, we go to Massachusetts because the great commission tells us to, but we don't force Massachusetts to adopt our, our point of view. We offer them and in the Lord's time and the Lord's will, if they accept it one way, not then it's on them, not us.

Gotcha. Okay. So it's an argument for localism and preserving what you have in your, in your backyard there.

You need to be sure you conserve what you have, protect what you have, but don't forget the great commission.

Well, I appreciate you sharing, um, your thoughts on that. If people want to go check out some of the books, they can go to kennedytwins .com. The book Be Separate is there. Also a number of other books, a lot of books on the South, a lot of books on, um, the compact theory and Jeffersonian tradition and all of that.

Uh, I think, uh, that'll be of interest to many of you. Uh, any final thoughts for us, uh, Donnie?

Uh, no, uh, you know, I believe in action, I believe in, uh, in the SCV, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we are dedicated to educating, motivating, and activating our people. And that is what we all should be interested in doing.

We got to educate, but we also had to motivate and activate. We've got to use that education. We can't just learn all the history of the constitution and then go home and forget about it. You have to put it into action.

And that's what every book from the South was right to the latest book that we've written. That's what we're pointing the American people to. This is not a Southern issue. Yes, the South uniquely defended the constitution in 1861, but the constitution is an American document.

And we, as American people, if we don't get together, we'll forget about our little things that we disagree on and point, look at the thing that we agree upon mostly, and that is freedom and liberty. Patrick Henry, let me leave you with this quote.

Patrick Henry said it very well. When he said, the first thing I have at heart is American liberty. The second thing I have at heart is American union. You see for our founding fathers, liberty always trumps government.

We should feel the same way.

All right. Well, I appreciate it, Donnie. And anyone who wants to check out those books, go to the website, God bless you and have a good day. All right. Thank you, sir.