Transcription
All right, so I am recording this video about nullification and the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution. Before I get started, I just want you to know that there's a decent chance that the school internet laptops will block this video on YouTube, which is annoying because I am putting the link to this document, which has all these other links on, in the description. So, if you can't get on the YouTube video of this and you're instead watching it on Google Drive, do know that you can watch this on your phone. It's just going to be blocked on your school laptop, which again, is annoying because you have the school laptop for a reason, and you would think that they would allow you to watch an educational video, but no, they block it. And I don't even know what their algorithm is because they don't block every video on YouTube, they only block some. Anyway, it doesn't make much sense.
Okay, so part of the reason I'm making this video is when you talk about the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, every kid learns about them, or at least learns partly about them, or some of them, in school. But this one in particular is usually taught very, very, very badly in schools. So, I'm going to clarify some things and tell you the correct position about the 10th Amendment, the 10th Amendment, and what the hell it's actually for. Because some people basically say that it's useless, and that is not how the Founding Fathers envisioned it. They actually, some of them, actually viewed it as the most powerful amendment in the Bill of Rights, if you will, or the greatest, if you will. Not all of them, but some of them did hold that belief.
Okay, so let me say this first. You know, I actually start with reading the text of the 10th Amendment. So, it's right here at the top of this document, again, which you can get in the description of the video. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Now, when I've studied from different constitutional scholars that really, really know the Constitution very well, and they like, really know how the Founding Fathers understood the Constitution and what they agreed upon at the different conventions and stuff, and said what it would mean, those scholars will say that you need to read the 10th Amendment alongside Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution. Here's the best way I can describe it: There are certain powers which the federal, aka the national government, aka the general government, those are all words that you can use to describe the federal government, federal, national, general. There are certain things that it is supposed to do, and there are certain things that the states are supposed to do.
Now, Article 1, Section 8 talks about the different things that the federal government can do. It can do things like establish post offices. It can do things like coin money and regulate the value of what that money is. Regulate commerce. It can borrow money. It can declare war, right? It can raise an army. It can provide for a navy. Those are powers of the federal government. The state governments, like New Jersey, New York, California, they're not supposed to do those things. They're not supposed to declare war. They're not supposed to make money. Those are powers of the federal government.
Now, if you read Section, Article 1, Section 10, actually. All right, so let me, let me describe it this way. So, you see all these things that are listed in Article 1, Section 8? It's actually not that many things. You could read all these things in Article 1, Section 8 in like a minute or two if you're a pretty fast reader. It's not that many things that the federal government's supposed to do. The state governments, on the other hand, can make laws regarding many things, and basically the states can decide what they want to make laws on. Because, see, states also have their own constitutions. I don't want to get, I don't get you too confused right now, but each state has its own constitution, and it says what it can, and what the state government can and can't do, etc.
So, the things that states can't do are things that the federal government can do. But a state government can basically do anything as long as it's not a power of the federal government. So, a state can't declare war, but a state can make laws about punishing people who are murderers. A state can make a law about, you know, punishing people for reckless driving. A state can choose whether or not it wants to have a death penalty. States can make laws on those types of things.
All right, so you've got to read Article 1, Section 10 with the 10th Amendment. All right? Because Article 1, Section 10 actually tells you the things that states can't do. And by the way, if you read Article 1, Section 10, it's also very similar to Article 1, Section 8. So, Article in Section 10 says the things that states can't do. But like I just said, states can do a lot of things. States, the way that, see, this is why a lot of history teachers get this stuff wrong. A lot of history teachers will say that, um, me, give me one moment. Okay. So, a lot of history teachers will kind of teach it like, "Oh, the federal government is always superior. The federal government has more power than the state governments." That's actu-, that's not actually true, according to how the Founding Fathers designed the system. The Founding Fathers actually wanted the states to have more power than the federal government. This, they wanted the states to have like a bigger say over what types of laws they could do and stuff.
So, again, going back to the 10th Amendment again. The text of it is on the screen. It's in italics right here. Sometimes the federal government does things that it's not supposed to do. And what the 10th Amendment is supposed to do is say, "Hey, federal government, you're doing something that you're not supposed to do, right? You're doing something that should be a state's issue. It should be an issue for a state government. Therefore, you've overstepped your boundaries. Therefore, our state is not going to listen to this law. It's not going to follow this law." That is called nullification.
Okay. Now, you see I have this word nullification right here. The 10th Amendment and nullification. When you think of the 10th Amendment, you should think of nullification. So, if you're watching this video, you are probably in a group where you have to make a video project about the 10th Amendment. So, when you make your video, you should make scenarios in your video where your state government is nullifying a federal law.
Okay. Now, let me give you some examples in American history where various states have done this. All right. So, during, not Thomas Jefferson, during, um, John Adams' presidency, the second president of the United States. Let me show you a picture of what he looks like. John Adams. All right. There's a chance that maybe you saw a, um, HBO TV show called John Adams. I've had, I've had various students over the years tell me that their middle school teacher made them watch it. Some students liked it, some students didn't. Whatever, whatever. Here's John Adams.
So, when he was president, the federal government passed this law that was extremely unconstitutional. It was a clear violation of federal law. And what it was, I'll specifically talk about this Sedition Acts right now. So, I'm going to pull up, uh, this link so that I have a link right here where it says Sedition Acts. You pull that up. So, I'm going to go ahead and read this word for word. Read along with me: "The Sedition Act, by far the Republicans' greatest source of concern. That act established fines and jail time if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with the attempt to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against them, or either of any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States." Congressional supporters of the Sedition Act defended the legislation by citing the General Welfare and Necessary Proper Clause.
All right. So, you might be wondering, what the hell did I just read? So, I'm going to tell you. So, the Sedition Act basically made it a crime for you to criticize the government, and you could get locked up in prison, and several people were, or you could get fined massive amounts of money for criticizing the government. And there were people, um, within government that got fined for this, and also various journalists, newspaper people, that also got punished for this. Now, you might be wondering, isn't this a violation of the First Amendment? Yes, it is. It is a violation of the First Amendment. But that didn't stop the federal government from passing this law. So, this was an unconstitutional law. This law should have never been passed.
So, um, in response to these laws, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote these things called the Kentucky and the Virginia Resolutions. Now, I am not going to read you a lot of those. I will read you an excerpt of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, written by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson believed that this law was horrible. Okay. Now, Thomas Jefferson is a very confusing guy in American history. So, I'm going to praise him right now, and I'm also going to criticize him in a moment, and I'll get to that.
All right. Let me make this a little bit bigger. All right. So, here's what Thomas Jefferson said when he wrote this Kentucky Resolution of 1799. He said, quote, "That the General Government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop. Nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers. That the several States who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification by those sovereignties of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument is the rightful remedy. That this Commonwealth does, upon the utmost deliberate, uh, reconsideration, declare that the said Alien and Sedition Laws are, in their opinion, palpable violations of the said Constitution, and however cheerfully it may be disposed to surrender its opinion to a majority of its sister States in matters of ordinary or doubtful policy, yet in momentous regulations like the present, which so vitally wound the best rights of the citizen, it would consider a silent acquiescence as highly criminal."
All right. Now, he wrote that over 200 years ago. So, some of that language might be confusing to you. So, I'm going to kind of explain it. Thomas Jefferson said, what I've been talking about. See how you use the word nullification right here? Let me bold that. Underline that. Bold, underline nullification. Thomas Jefferson said, "Listen, the states shall not comply with this law. The states, it is their duty to realize that this law, the Sedition Act, it's unconstitutional. It violates the First Amendment. Uh, the federal government has no power. If you read Article 1, Section 8, talks about the federal government's powers. Nowhere in there does it say that the federal government can fine someone or lock someone up for their speech. And obviously, the First Amendment says that the federal government cannot do that. So, on what basis was a law like this to be passed? It should never have been passed. This is a [ __ ] law."
Okay. So, Thomas Jefferson said the states better not comply with this law because if the states comply with the federal government, they will lose their liberty. All right. And so, various states did not comply with the Sedition Act. All right. We can only wish that more states, uh, didn't comply with it.
All right. Now, when Thomas Jefferson became president, he was the third president. So, he became president after, um, John Adams. And being president is not so easy, is it? So, Thomas Jefferson criticized the president and the Congress when he was not president. And then when he was president, he didn't do something, uh, probably as bad. I mean, maybe, maybe it was as bad. Maybe a little bit more constitutional, I would say. It's definitely, um, the thing that he did, you could make a constitutional argument for it, whereas the Sedition Act, I think, was so clearly unconstitutional. But anyway, so Jefferson had this Embargo Act. And I don't want to get in all the history behind that and bore you with that. But basically, um, Jefferson, uh, basically cut off trade with, uh, parts of Europe because, um, England and France had kept robbing American ships on the seas, and he was upset about this. So, he decided to cut off trade in general, make it illegal to import goods from Britain and France, other countries, and stuff.
Now, this was a problem because, you know, trade is what makes the world go around. You know, not every, not every country is good at growing certain crops and stuff. Not every country is good at growing certain other types of goods and stuff, and doesn't produce certain natural resources. So, you have to trade with other parts of the world in order to stay wealthy and get other things that you don't have. Anyway, Jefferson implemented this embargo, cutting off, basically making it illegal to trade with Europe. And many Americans starved as a result. The economy really, really, really took a bad hit. But various state governments had basically nullified this embargo. They said, "Jefferson, you don't have the right to, um, to make an embargo, to cut off trade with other parts of the world. You don't have that right." So, some states, um, they did not comply. They did not listen. They nullified the law.
Okay. Um, if only all states didn't comply with such a tragic law. By the way, this is probably the worst thing that Jefferson did during his presidency. Uh, Jefferson claimed to be very free market, very, very much open to free trade and stuff. And, um, so he was kind of being a hypocrite and going against some of his beliefs when he did something like this. But anyway, some states didn't comply with it. They nullified it.
Okay. Conscription, military service. So, um, it's, it's basically, I said, aka military slavery. Conscription is when the government has a draft, basically. They draft you to serve in the military, right? Um, probably the most famous person in history that, in American history, that was drafted was Muhammad Ali, the boxer. He was the boxing champion at the time, right? You know what, I'll go ahead and play that because it's not long. I'm gonna play a clip from the movie Ali. All right, here we go. From the 2001 movie Ali, with Will, starring Will Smith. If it wants to play. Here we go. "I ain't dodging. I ain't burning no flag, and I ain't running to Canada. I should fix my sound, shouldn't I? There we go. I'm staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine. You go right ahead. I've been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for four or five more. But I ain't going 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I'll die right here, right now. Fighting you. If I want to die, you my enemy. Not no Chinese, no Viet Cong, no Japanese. You my poser. When I want freedom, you my opposer. When I want justice, you my opposer. When I want equality, want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won't even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won't even stand up for me right here at home."
Okay. So, that is the great actor Will Smith in the 2001 movie Ali. The reason why I showed you that is because clearly Muhammad Ali was upset over the fact that he was drafted and that he basically had to go fight in a war that he didn't believe in. And if he didn't fight in the war that he didn't believe in, he would go to prison. And he did go to prison temporarily, as did many other people who they called them draft dodgers. But really, I mean, honestly, the way I look at them is there are people who stood up for their freedom. But there have been, um, drafts throughout American history at various points. You look at things like the Civil War, World Wars One and Two, Vietnam War. Obviously, we've had the draft implemented several times. And you always wonder if they're going to bring it back at some point. No, I'm recording this video on November 28, 2021. And there's a lot of people talking about a war with China. Oh my god, I don't really think that's gonna happen because I think that that would be so stupid and so many people would be opposed to it. But people are talking about it. And China has obviously a huge population. But the reason I don't see that happening is both countries have nukes. But, um, is it possible that a draft could be implemented? I mean, we have things like the Select Service Act where basically the government could draft people. But anyway, I don't want to get too off topic. But anyway, throughout various points in history, there was times, um, when people said that the federal government cannot, um, draft people into the military. That's conscription. So, certain states nullified that. And Daniel Webster is one such significant figure in American history. Show you a picture of Daniel Webster, who wrote, um, a lot about this. Daniel Webster. He was very much opposed to, um, conscription. And he wrote about how the states need to nullify any laws where the federal government tries to conscript people.
All right. The Tariff of Abominations. Back is that so, um, Tariff of Abominations. Let me pull that up. Tariff of Abominations. This was during the Andrew Jackson presidency. This made taxes on imported goods extremely high. This disproportionately affected the South because the South imported a lot of goods from abroad. And when you make, when people import a lot of goods from abroad and you make stuff really expensive for them, they're not going to be happy. And the South was not happy. And they felt that this was unconstitutional because if you look at what it says in the Constitution, it says, let me see if I can pull it up quick. Yeah. So, it says that, um, when the government, uh, taxes, it should be uniform. What that means is that basically, it should be equal. It should be fair. Like the North should have to pay, like the same type of rates as the South when it taxes. But the South felt the Tariff of Abominations was very unfair because the South was importing a lot more from abroad, from other countries, than the North was. So, many Southern states decided to nullify this law, particularly South Carolina was the biggest. They, they decided to nullify the law. They said, "Listen, we're not going to comply. We are going to continue to import stuff, and we are just not going to pay that tariff amount." They nullified it. They did not agree. They did not listen to the federal law.
Okay. And I'll give you another example. Fugitive Slave Laws. So, if you read the Constitution, I'll pull it up. Let me see. Fugitive. I should search the word "deliver." The lit. Oh, no. Why is that popping up? All right. Give me one moment while I get this to work. Okay. So, if you look at this part of the Constitution, Article 4, Section 2, Paragraph 3, which was amended by the 13th Amendment. This is called the Fugitive Slave Clause. This was eventually taken out of the Constitution. But for the first about 90 years of American history, not 90 years, 70-plus years of American history, this clause did exist, which basically says that if a slave, if a slave escapes into another state, it's actually the federal government's job to recapture that slave and then put them back into slavery.
Now, as you can imagine, this pissed off some of the Northern states that had, um, freedom. Particularly the state of Wisconsin. Um, so Wisconsin was a free state, did not have slavery. Wisconsin is in the, it's more in the North than the South. Okay. And Wisconsin basically said, "Now, we think that this is pretty screwed up. Like, listen, the South can have its slaves, but if they escape to the North, it's not going to be our job to capture those slaves and then return them to the South. We don't want to do that." So, basically, even though that was the law, like technically, there were these laws, like if you were, take this, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, for example, if a slave escaped to the North and, um, they were not returned, and someone could prove in court that you knowingly did not do something to get a slave returned, you could actually be fined massively for that and potentially even locked up, I believe. But Wisconsin said, "You know what? Even though we know we can get in trouble for this, we're not gonna follow this law. We're gonna nullify it." So, they nullified this law.
So, what I'm trying to show you is that various times throughout history, states have looked at unjust laws, immoral laws, unconstitutional laws, and some of these different state governments and people in these states said, "You know what? We're not going to comply. We're not going to follow that law." And the federal government's just gonna have to get over it. It's not, it's not our job to comply. We believe in freedom. We believe in states' rights.
Now, I'm going to show you now examples of how nullification is being used today in the modern day. Because everything I just talked about was more than 150 years ago, well over 150 years ago. So, that's, that's like old stuff. But there are some states that are doing this today. And honestly, I wish that more states were doing this because the truth is is that the federal government is way too powerful. It does way more than it should be doing. It screws a lot of people's lives up. I'm going to tell you how.
Okay. So, if you click this link right here, it'll bring you to this playlist, "The 10th Amendment Movement News." There's like 16 videos in here. They're all really short, so you could watch some of them. I'm not going to really play any of them right now. But anyway, um, so I will go over some of the things that you'll see in those videos. So, in one of those videos, there's this massive, uh, NSA facility in Utah. What, what is the NSA? Pull up NSA. The National Security Agency. Okay. Basically, what the National Security Agency does is they spy. Okay. And by the way, when they were initially created, they said, "No, no, the NSA is to spy on foreigners, foreign governments, so that they don't attack us." But the truth is is that the NSA also does spy on Americans. It just does, uh, it spies on Americans. And the government lied and said that the NSA is actually not spying on you. And we found out from various different whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and other types of people that that's a lie. The NSA is collecting literally cabinets and cabinets worth of data on all American citizens. And they kept this a secret from the public. And they've been doing this for a while. But stuff really ramped up like post 9/11. Anyway, so in order to collect all that information, all that data on Americans, the NSA needs these facilities. And, you know, I'll pull up that one video. I'm not going to really play it. But, let's see, where is it? I think this is the one. Let's see if I can pull up a picture. Okay. So, I'm gonna mute this just so I don't play it right now. Okay. So, now let's see. Pop up. So, the NSA basically, they have tons and tons and tons of computers. And they need these basically cooling towers that have water. And these cooling towers basically put water to basically, I, I don't know exactly how it works, but it goes to these tanks. I'm not a sciency type of person. To basically cool down the computer so that they don't overheat. Because imagine all the bandwidth and all the electricity that this NSA facility is using to gather all these massive amounts of data, all the phone calls, all the emails, all the text messages they're going out. I mean, you want to collect all that information, it's going to require a lot of energy. So, what the state of Utah did, let's see, let me pull up Utah on that. Here's the state of Utah. All right. There's Utah. They're one of these states that has a big NSA facility. And I believe it's the city of Bluffdale, Utah. They basically, what their state government did was said, "You know what? We don't agree with the NSA spying program. So, we're going to nullify this law. We're not going to, it's not our job. We don't have to help the federal government spy on Americans. It's a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment." Read the U.S. Constitution. All right. Let me show you the Fourth Amendment right here. Read it. It says that people should not be searched unless they have a warrant. The government needs a warrant to search you. But if the government's collecting all this data on you, are they getting a warrant? So, the state of Utah said, "We're just not going to follow the law. We're going to nullify it. We're not going to help you." So, basically, what the state of Utah did was they shut off water. They shut off the water to the NSA facility. I'm not sure if they were ever able to, if NSA was ever able to get back on. But I believe that, and they have other facilities throughout the country too. But this was a way to make things harder for the NSA.
All right. Um, marijuana laws. See, if you click this link right here, it'll bring you to this documentary about this man in the 1980s. His name was Dennis Peron. And out in California, he basically started this movement where it's a federal, it's still a federal law today that you can't sell weed and or consume it, for that matter. Now, you might say, "Well, hold on. I mean, weed is legalized in several states." Yeah, but it wasn't always. And you know what? It took several people like this man, Dennis Peron. Trying to see if I could pull a picture of him real quick. If you watch this, you'll find a picture of him in here somewhere. This guy, Dennis Peron. He said, "I'm just gonna sell it anyway." And, you know, the part of the reason why he sold it to people is he believed that weed was helping people, especially people who had like cancer and stuff, to to lessen their pain and stuff. And he was, if you watch the documentary, he was really effective at like persuading the media and stuff that weed is not as bad as you think it is. I know the government's saying weed is really bad, but weed is really not bad. It's actually really helpful. And he basically persuaded so many people. Like, the government would shut him down and things like this, and then he would just open up another facility and stuff. And eventually, it got to the point where weed was decriminalized in California and other places and stuff. And now it's been full-on legalized in several states. But what happened was, Dennis Peron and other marijuana users, they nullified a federal law. They said, "The national government has no business." Read Article 1, Section 8. Talk. Remember, I, I'm going to keep going back to Article 1, Section 8. That talks about the things that the federal government can do. Read Article in Section 8. Doesn't say that the federal government can tell you what you can and can't put in your body, what drugs you can put in your body. There's nowhere in there. So, it took people like Dennis Peron saying, "You know what? This law is unjust. It's immoral. It's not even legal. We're just gonna not listen to it. Nullify it." He nullified that. The people with the 10th Amendment Center and other people in Utah nullified the NSA spying program.
Civil asset forfeiture. There's several videos in this playlist about civil asset forfeiture, which sometimes people get confused of what that is. But I'll try to explain it really quick. What that is is basically, um, so the, what the government can do is sometimes they can take your property, and they don't even have to charge you with a crime. They could just take your property. And basically, they're filing a lawsuit against the property. And many times, when this happens, people never get their property back. Because what you would have to do is, in order for you to get your property back, and usually the government will claim that this property was, uh, this property was, um, it was acquired by, uh, illegal drug sales or something like that. So, you would actually have to sue to get your property back. And sometimes they might take money. Let's say they pull you over and you got like $2,000 cash. They could just take that cash. Sometimes they might take your car. Let's say you're like, your car was unregistered or whatever, you know, you just, or you know, the, so let's say maybe you didn't have insurance, like your insurance was expired or something like that, but you still own the car, you still bought the car. They could take the car from you. Sometimes, sometimes they can even take your house. That does happen sometimes. Um, and they could even take other possessions too. But, you know, cars, cars and money are the most common things. Homes, definitely less common, but it does happen. And most people, when this happens, they never get their property back because they would have to spend so many thousands of dollars in legal fees in order to get their money back. And sometimes, like, let's say the cops took $2,000 worth of, you know, it might not even be worth it. Like, because it's not like you were in prison. Some people say, you know, it's not even worth it for me to hire a lawyer. So, the government is basically seizing money. It's called civil asset forfeiture. And, um, sometimes some of these states actually have laws against civil asset forfeiture. But what's sometimes what can happen is is that, uh, the federal agents can get involved, like the DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency. And if they get involved, you know, sometimes the state government can be like, you know, "There's nothing we can do." Or something like, some states will just like, because what happens is, like, I don't want to confuse you too much. Watch the video and it'll be explained a little bit better. But there's like this equity sharing program. So, some of these states comply with these civil asset forfeiture laws because sometimes the federal government will end up giving them money, sometimes like up to 80% of what was taken. But some states, like New Mexico, and I think Arizona was another such state, what they did was they actually said that civil asset forfeiture laws, they are illegal. And even though there are federal laws that, um, allow civil asset forfeiture, we will not comply and we will not allow federal agents, such as the DEA, to come in and seize people's property without even charging them with a crime. So, that's a good example of how certain states nullified this horrible program that basically just confiscates Americans' property and makes the government richer at the taxpayers' expense.
Bring the Guard Home is an example of, uh, it's actually being discussed at many state levels right now. I don't, I don't know that they've actually had a ton of success yet, but they are gaining more and more momentum. But basically, this is a, a nullification law where various states have, uh, kind of adopted this, that the National Guard cannot be called up by the federal government, um, unless there's like an actual declaration of war. So, the thing is is that sometimes the government starts all these unconstitutional, undeclared wars. So, so various states don't like the fact that the federal government can call the National Guard whenever it wants. So, this legislation will basically nullify the federal government being able to call upon the National Guard whenever it wants.
The federal government has like this license plate tracking program. And again, this is discussed in some of these videos. Right? You can see it like right here. All right. Again, you want the link to where some of these short little videos are? Click this right here. All right. And basically, the government can track all these different license plates. And sometimes they can try to use that, that information to track where you're traveling and things like that, where you're stopping. And sometimes the federal government uses your locations to determine whether or not you committed a crime. And some people have been locked up for this. And this is basically the government spying on your movements. That's not legal. That's a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So, certain states have, um, basically nullified these programs that allow these data centers to basically scan people's, uh, license plates.
Various gun right laws. So, sometimes Barack Obama, Donald Trump, basically pretty much every president that I can think of in recent memory, including even the conservative ones like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, they will pass executive orders. And especially the Democrats, that make certain guns illegal. Well, what some of these, for example, one thing that Donald Trump, Donald Trump, he's a Republican, right? He's pro-gun rights, right? Not so much. Um, Donald Trump actually, uh, when he was president, he signed an executive order banning bump stocks. I'm not a super big gun guy. I'm, I'm getting more and more interested in guns, but I don't currently own one. So, I don't know all the nitty-gritty details about guns. But basically, my understanding is that bump stocks can, um, allow you to have like a, press the trigger quicker so that you can fire quicker. It doesn't make your gun automatic or anything like that. But that's my basic understanding. Anyway, um, but various states have nullified some of these federal laws because if you read Amendment, um, Amendment 2, it says that the people's right to bear arms shall not be infringed, meaning that the government shall not take away people's gun rights. So, various states have just basically said, "Yeah, we're not going to comply with this, um, these executive orders on gun rights and things like that." Yeah, you might pass a federal ban on certain guns and stuff, but here in our state, we're not going to follow that. And again, there's information in some of these videos that will give you more information than I'm giving you.
Drone spying is another one. Stingrays. I'm not going to go over these right now. But anyway, if you're, if you're really, nullification's important, man, because like I'm saying, the federal government is way too powerful. The 10th Amendment Center is doing great work. And they put out a report for the 2019-2020, um, their year report, "The State of the Nullification Movement." I've attached that full 108-page PDF that you can really kind of, you can learn more about what they're doing to nullify certain federal laws that are unconstitutional. Clicking this. And I'm really hoping that this is giving you an idea of what states can do to nullify the federal government. Again, let me go back up. Amendment 10. Right? This is what Amendment 10 basically says. The federal government has certain powers. Those powers are listed in Article 1, Section 8. But any other powers are reserved to the states. So, like, let's say the state of California has in its constitution that it could ban AR-15s. Well, if the, if the state of California has in its own constitution that it can ban, the state of California can ban AR-15s. But Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, they're in charge of the federal government. They can't tell Texas to ban AR-15s. That's not the federal government's job. So, when the federal government is overstepping what it's supposed to be doing, states need to nullify, not comply.
Let's see. Do I want to talk about jury nullification? Um, I'll briefly mention jury nullification is. So, what jury nullification is, is basically, um, at some point in your life, you might be called to serve on a jury. Everybody gets jury duty. But oftentimes, when you get called to jury duty, they just will dismiss you and go home and send you home. But sometimes you might need to serve on a jury or a grand jury. And one of the things that you can say is that, well, listen, this person might be guilty of this thing. Like, yeah, this person might have had this gun illegally. They didn't get the proper permit. Or, yeah, maybe this person sold drugs. I think the evidence really indicates that they sold lots of cocaine. But, you know what? I don't think that there should be laws against cocaine. Or, you know, I don't think that there should be laws against, you know, having a handgun without a permit. And if you think that that law is unconstitutional, if you think that that law is unjust, you could basically say, "Yeah, well, I'm not going to convict the person because I think that this law is immoral or unjust." And I do know of somebody. I don't really know this person personally, but I do know of people that have been on juries and that basically were able to persuade other people that a law was unjust. And then they were able to get the other jury members to basically not convict the person because they said that the law was unjust.
All right. I'm going to get, I'm getting close to wrapping up this video. But I do want to show you how most people basically, um, talk about nullification. A lot of people. All right. You know what? I'll, I will show you. Give me one more. [Music] We always have an IOMATO justification of the greatest potential dangers to the stability of the UK. So, this woman is, um, she is a liberal political commentator. She's on MSNBC. She's been there for quite a while. Um, and she does not like nullification. Let's see what she says about nullification. U.S. homeland nullification. Now, so many of the hallmarks of the Civil War and of the Confederacy are in political fashion again. Nullification, which helped steer South Carolina into its militant anti-US stance. Nullification is now enjoying a remarkable renaissance. Helpfully, Matto has also identified the roots of this evil nullification idea in the Civil War. The great pride of the South Carolina secessionists was this guy. This guy with the teen idol good looks, Senator John C. Calhoun, the beloved pro-slavery politician who was South Carolina's greatest political export at that time. He had been Vice President of the United States, Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and as well as being a rabid proponent of slavery. John Calhoun, to that end, championed the cause of nullification. Nullification, the idea that states could and should refuse to follow federal laws they didn't like, that they thought went beyond the powers of the federal government. That's right. Slavery. Neo-Confederates. Bloodshed. Did we mention slavery? Oh, and racism. That's what nullification is all about. Oh, sure, there are the.
Okay. So, um, by the way, the guy who you just heard narrating, he was, uh, he was mocking Rachel Maddow and people that share beliefs like her. He does not agree with her viewpoints about nullification. So, that's how a lot of people actually talk about it. And that's how actually, I would say most history teachers would talk about it. They said, "Oh, one of the biggest proponents of, in history, of nullification was John C. Calhoun, and he was a slave owner." Slave owner. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. James Madison was a slave owner. And all these guys, they advocated for nullification. Yes, they were all slave owners. There's no doubt about that. But actually, they were never advocating to use nullification to justify slavery at all. That's not what they were. John C. Calhoun was talking about, no, using nullification for South Carolina to disobey that the Tariff of Abominations that I was talking to you about earlier. Thomas Jefferson used nullification, and James Madison used nullification to, um, remember the Sedition Act that I was talking about, that John Adams presidency, where basically it was a crime to criticize the government if you used your threat of free speech and freedom of the press. That's what they used nullification for. They didn't use nullification to maintain slavery. So, that, let me just be honest, that political hack, that woman that you just saw, she's either an idiot and knows very little about the history that she's claiming to know, or she's just lying. She's totally wrong about that. Nullification was not used in order to sustain slavery. Um, as a matter of fact, like I told you before, nullification was used actually in certain states like Wisconsin to not comply with the federal government when it was trying to, uh, enforce slavery. Remember, the state of Wisconsin said, "We are not going to listen to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850." So, that woman is completely wrong. And that is also what, um, these guys, they made. I gotta be honest, this video is a little corny. But if you're into like, kind of like corny-ish humor, you might like it. So, basically, um, I'm not gonna play it for you, but you can watch it yourself if you want. This guy, not the guy who's holding it, but this book right here, "Nullification," which I've read before, read it twice actually. It's where I learned a lot of this stuff about nullification. This guy actually knows a lot of this [ __ ]. And most history teachers don't teach this. So, the guy who wrote it is this dude right here, Thomas Woods. Um, I don't have the full copy of the book, so I can't send it to you. But anyway, um, so in this mock interview right here, this guy, Tom Woods, is trying to teach the zombie person about what nullification is. And if you watch the video, the zombie person doesn't say much. He just says, "Slavery," or "Neo-Confederate," or "Racist," or "I'll say Hitler." Like, he's not actually, like, he's not actually refuting what Tom Woods is saying. Tom Woods is dropping all this knowledge on him, and this zombie doesn't actually have any actual arguments. He could just call him names. So, sometimes when you try to bring up nullification, people will just call you, "Oh, you're a racist. Oh, you, oh, you want slavery. Oh, you're a neo-Confederate." And it's like, you don't know anything. You don't know anything about anything. Nullification was not used to justify slavery. Just wasn't. Regardless of whether or not John C. Calhoun, who was a slave owner, who did support slavery, he was not arguing that nullification should be used to sustain slavery. That's just, it's just a lie.
Okay. So, if you want, you can watch this whole video. And this video was made to make fun of the Rachel Maddow type of people that just call people who support nullification and call them names. Now, I will tell you who didn't like nullification, though, for real. Famous person in history. You've definitely heard of this person before. None other than Adolf Hitler. Where is he? Let's show you a picture of him in case every student learns about Hitler, whether it's a world history class, whether it's an English class, whether it's a, uh, U.S. history class. Everybody's heard of Hitler. And every student is told to think that he's bad. And guess what? He is bad. No doubt about it. Let's see what Hitler said about nullification. So, he wrote this book called "Mein Kampf." I've read that book. "Mein Kampf," dumb book. Don't recommend it. So, and he wrote "Mein Kampf" actually before he became the Chancellor, the leader of Germany. Here's what he said. He said he and his party would totally eliminate states' rights altogether. He said, quote, "Since for us the State as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular, we cannot grant to any individual State within the nation, and the State representing it, sovereignty and sovereignty in the point of political power." End quote. The future dictator went on in that book to promise that, quote, "The mischief of individual federated States must cease and will someday cease. National Socialism as a matter of principle must lay claim to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous federated State boundaries." End quote. So, Adolf Hitler did not like nullification.
And again, I'm going to sum up what nullification is. So, we live in this country, right, where we're supposed to have 50 states, right? And the laws in these 50 states are supposed to differ from each other, right? Texas has more gun rights than a state like New Jersey does. Okay. States like New Jersey are more lax when it comes to things like abortions, right? Certain other more conservative states might only allow abortions during the first trimester of a woman's pregnancy. So, the laws in our states are supposed to differ. Now, there are certain federal laws. These are laws that basically every state is supposed to follow. But what about when the federal government does something it's not supposed to do? And truthfully, the federal government is not supposed to have that much of a say in laws. The states are actually supposed to have more of a say. Well, the states can simply nullify those laws, say, "We will not comply," because the federal government, you have overstepped your boundaries. And if we ever really want to get back to having a smaller government, not having the federal government have so much power, and having the states have more rights, and getting back to having actually more liberty and freedom, more and more states will need to nullify. And as already told you, I am a fan of nullification. And I'll just leave it with this right here. Um, part of the reason I wanted to make this video right now, too, is I've been teaching about nullification for several years, but I never felt like I did a great job explaining it before. So, I wanted to give lots of examples historically and what's even going on right now. But one thing I didn't mention about what's going on right now is all this COVID tyranny. So, I'm recording this video, what is it, 20 months after COVID first hit the United States, something like that? And the federal government's trying to get more and more power. For example, Biden, Joe Biden, issued this executive order basically stating that, um, [Music] all, um, all companies that have more than 100 employees, they will have to, um, have their employees vaccinated. And if they don't comply, then their company can be fined massive amounts of money. Well, some states simply said, "Yeah, we're not going to follow that, and we're not, we will not enforce it." Because OSHA only has like 5,000 employees in the whole country. We're not going to, um, we're not going to have our police officers arrest companies. We're not gonna, um, you know, if, if somebody's unvaccinated and they're a company that has over a hundred people, they're not gonna get arrested. We're not gonna fine, uh, a business owner that has over a hundred employees. We're just not going to follow this. Certain states, like Florida, with Governor Ron DeSantis, I don't know if I have a video of him saying that, but I know I've definitely seen videos. I'll show you, you probably don't know what he is, what he looks like. Here's Florida Governor. So, this is an example of him nullifying a federal law. He basically says, "Oh, well, this, the federal government has no say whether or not, um, the people of Florida want to get va-, have to get vaccinated or not. That's not the federal government's job." So, he is nullifying that. And other states are doing the same thing.
Okay. So, um, I am a supporter of nullification. I, I do not like that the federal government has so much power and then it just continues to grow and grow and do more and more things that it's not supposed to be doing. All right. Anyway, uh, thank you for watching. And I hope that this helped.