WEBVTT

NOTE Authors Forum: Nullification! & Rollback

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.940
First of all, let me just start out by saying something that runs exactly contrary to everything

2
00:00:04.940 --> 00:00:09.100
that every publisher and marketing department tells you, and that is I'm going to praise

3
00:00:09.100 --> 00:00:13.660
other people's books. You're supposed to just focus entirely on yourself to heck with everybody

4
00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:17.780
else, the dog-eat-dog world out there, but you can't go wrong with any of these books.

5
00:00:17.780 --> 00:00:22.920
And to me, it's an honor to be on a panel with people I've learned from over the years.

6
00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:31.800
And I don't actually mean to say that they're old when I say that, but honestly, I've been

7
00:00:31.800 --> 00:00:35.280
reading a lot of these people for years and years and years, and even people I've gotten

8
00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:40.240
to know only over the past six or seven, like Professor Casey, whom you've just heard from,

9
00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:45.700
I've learned a tremendous amount from, so I'm thrilled to be able to be here with them.

10
00:00:45.700 --> 00:00:52.040
But oddly enough, I actually have three books that have come out since the last time.

11
00:00:52.040 --> 00:00:54.480
The third one is just a collection of essays.

12
00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:56.160
And I don't mean just a collection of essays,

13
00:00:56.160 --> 00:00:58.800
but it's not like three original books.

14
00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:01.160
But the third one is actually going

15
00:01:01.160 --> 00:01:04.880
to be arriving at the Institute, 20 or so copies, I think,

16
00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:06.080
tomorrow.

17
00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:08.480
And it's called Back on the Road to Serfdom.

18
00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:10.840
And I want to at least mention that, because that

19
00:01:10.840 --> 00:01:13.520
was published by the Intercollegiate Studies

20
00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:16.520
Institute, which is kind of a conservative outfit,

21
00:01:16.520 --> 00:01:21.120
but which has some libertarian deviations that force their way

22
00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:34.120
I was the big deviation of the year with Back on the Road to Serfdom. I was able to choose most of the contributors, so I basically chose all Misesians and a few of them are even presenting papers to this conference.

23
00:01:34.120 --> 00:01:48.120
Professor Casey you just met, Per Beeland is here, Professor Mark Brandley also contributed, Paul Cantor who wrote about the path to cultural serfdom, about the culture czars in this country.

24
00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:56.120
in this country. So I think it's a useful contribution and I was glad to be able to take part in it and give it a kind of Misesian imprint.

25
00:01:56.120 --> 00:02:05.120
But what I'm going to focus on in my time are these other books. So let's start with the one from last year, came out the middle of that last year, called Nullification.

26
00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:14.120
And so my most recent two books, they both have Obama on the cover. This is how right-wing publishers think.

27
00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:18.120
You know, like, everybody dislikes Obama, so we'll slap him.

28
00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:23.120
Now, the problem is that for the audiobook, you know, so all right, so here we've got Obama

29
00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.120
and the word nullification is stamped on what they're all doing.

30
00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:30.120
So even if you don't know what nullification is, you kind of figure, well, if it's stamped over these people,

31
00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:33.120
I mean, I guess I probably support it.

32
00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:38.120
But in the audiobook version for the cover there, it's just the picture of them.

33
00:02:38.120 --> 00:02:43.120
With nullification at the top, so it's kind of like, nullification, it's what Obama does.

34
00:02:43.120 --> 00:03:13.120
This is exactly the wrong, alright so forget it, you know too bad, but basically to make a long story short, particularly for the Europeans in the audience who might not be familiar with this concept, basically it boils down to discussing Thomas Jefferson's idea from 1798, but that really goes back even further in history that the states have to have some kind of constitutional role as protectors of the liberties of the people. I realize we all come from you know

35
00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:17.120
and the idea that they're going to be the protectors of the liberties of the people is a bit laughable.

36
00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:23.120
But the argument is that the peoples of the states are the primordial political units of the United States.

37
00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:29.120
And I defend that statement. They are the units that gave life to the Union in the first place.

38
00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:36.120
So obviously then, just in the nature of the system, the structure of that system demands that in the last resort,

39
00:03:36.120 --> 00:03:40.120
the principles to the compact have to be able to have the final say

40
00:03:40.120 --> 00:03:44.120
Regarding Whether Their Own Agent Was Intended to Have Such and Such Power.

41
00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:52.120
It's just a logical argument, but one that can be buttressed with arguments from history, and that's what I do in here.

42
00:03:52.120 --> 00:03:59.120
I think that the argument for this, again, not just the moral argument, which I think is just clearly a home run,

43
00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:03.120
obviously if the federal government is committing violence against you, you have the right to resist that,

44
00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:08.080
is that, but I think you can also make a very strong historical and constitutional argument

45
00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:13.400
using history that has completely, and I mean completely, fallen down the Orwellian memory

46
00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:14.400
hole.

47
00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:20.040
And I'm resurrecting a lot of that, and I think that the argument for it is just overwhelming.

48
00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:24.600
It's actually much stronger than I thought it was when I started working on the project.

49
00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:30.080
Now why should this matter to me or to any of us?

50
00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:35.420
Because for a lot of us, the idea of state nullification of federal laws that are unconstitutional

51
00:04:35.420 --> 00:04:40.320
seems, if anything, shockingly tame and timid.

52
00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:46.120
This is the very, very least we should be thinking about doing.

53
00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:52.960
And plus with me, Constitution's sponstitution, really.

54
00:04:52.960 --> 00:04:57.000
We would be better off if the federal government did limit itself to this thing, but it has

55
00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:15.000
I like solving puzzles. I like doing dorky things. I like beating people at their own game.

56
00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:26.000
When it comes to the Constitution, I want to show them that even from their own premise, I can still somehow carve out some kind of resistance mechanism.

57
00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:29.000
And this has driven people crazy.

58
00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:37.000
It's gotten quite a few Straussians up in arms and all the usual bad guys just are beside themselves with this.

59
00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:40.000
How dare we make arguments like this?

60
00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:47.000
To me, though, the real value of the book is not just its contribution to our understanding,

61
00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:53.000
whatever contribution that may be, but really that it's getting a lot of Americans thinking forbidden thoughts.

62
00:05:53.000 --> 00:06:08.000
And to me, that's an end in itself because we are stuck in this country inside this suffocating box in which all of our views are supposed to run from Joe Biden to Bob Dole, like somewhere in there.

63
00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:17.000
And what I'm trying to do with nullification and rollback is to crush that box into the ground and then set it on fire.

64
00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:21.680
and what's been going on with this book is that a lot of ordinary Americans have

65
00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:25.040
gotten interested in this and they want as soon as they hear this idea they

66
00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:25.880
think great

67
00:06:25.880 --> 00:06:29.200
you know gee what should we get started with it's an embarrassment of riches

68
00:06:29.200 --> 00:06:33.120
where do we begin applying this idea it's wonderful and the reason this is so

69
00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:38.200
encouraging to me is that there has been in effect a blackout about the subject

70
00:06:38.200 --> 00:06:42.600
and about this book I mean just no you know after meltdown I got a lot of

71
00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:47.640
Media for that, and that went very well, but nobody will touch this with a 10-foot pole,

72
00:06:47.640 --> 00:06:51.240
especially the right-wing media.

73
00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:56.000
They don't want to have anything to do with this because this is not respectable.

74
00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.400
It's not between Biden and Romney.

75
00:06:58.400 --> 00:06:59.760
So how could it be?

76
00:06:59.760 --> 00:07:03.320
So no mention, we're not going to pretend it's not happening, we're going to pretend

77
00:07:03.320 --> 00:07:04.840
this doesn't exist.

78
00:07:04.840 --> 00:07:10.480
And so what impresses me is that we've been doing a tour, the 10th Amendment Center and

79
00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:14.900
WeRefuse.com and a bunch of organizations have been doing a tour of the country called

80
00:07:14.900 --> 00:07:15.900
Nullify Now.

81
00:07:15.900 --> 00:07:19.220
It's like, okay, you don't want to talk about it, we're going to bring it to your city and

82
00:07:19.220 --> 00:07:20.940
just get right in your face about it, you know?

83
00:07:20.940 --> 00:07:22.820
What are you going to do about that?

84
00:07:22.820 --> 00:07:27.340
And a lot of people who are showing up at these events are people who are not in the

85
00:07:27.340 --> 00:07:29.340
traditional Mises Institute circles.

86
00:07:29.340 --> 00:07:33.300
A lot of these are just regular Americans, usually older, and they've never heard these

87
00:07:33.300 --> 00:07:36.860
ideas before, but they hear them and they jump right on board, even though all their

88
00:07:36.860 --> 00:07:52.860
I find that incredibly encouraging. They're willing to take a position that is not even on the radar, that they know they're going to be condemned and smeared for by all a fashionable opinion, and yet they're adopting it anyway.

89
00:07:52.860 --> 00:08:00.860
And so I thought, okay, look, if I can get them thinking of one forbidden thought, then rollback comes along. I've got a whole bunch more where that came from.

90
00:08:00.860 --> 00:08:08.860
I think once I got your attention, let's move on. But let me just say a couple quick other things about nullification.

91
00:08:08.860 --> 00:08:20.860
First, I did a little video as a kind of promo for the book. And some of you may have seen it, but if you haven't, I want to direct you to the page for it.

92
00:08:20.860 --> 00:08:26.580
for it and even if you have I would still like you to go to type in this URL

93
00:08:26.580 --> 00:08:30.620
because you can watch the blooper tape also which is much funnier than the

94
00:08:30.620 --> 00:08:34.320
original video it turns out and the video is called interview with a zombie

95
00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:40.420
and the idea of it is that a zombie has his own television talk show how

96
00:08:40.420 --> 00:08:43.940
different that is from our normal television of course and he's going to

97
00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:48.660
interview me about my book now of course the zombie is actually Mises Institute

98
00:08:48.660 --> 00:08:55.760
Adjunct Scholar Bob Murphy, who obviously has no dignity whatsoever, which is great for me.

99
00:08:55.760 --> 00:08:59.760
All right Bob, go ahead and degrade yourself. That's fantastic.

100
00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:06.160
But the idea of it is that he's interviewing me about my book, but every time I make a substantive argument

101
00:09:06.160 --> 00:09:13.060
and I have a lot of things to say that are relevant to the subject, all he can do is come back with a one-word response,

102
00:09:13.060 --> 00:09:24.500
I patiently explain nullification was never used on behalf of slavery.

103
00:09:24.500 --> 00:09:26.140
Why would it be?

104
00:09:26.140 --> 00:09:30.100
What anti-slavery federal laws would they have needed to nullify?

105
00:09:30.100 --> 00:09:35.480
To the contrary, it was used to fight against slavery as when a number of states, but Wisconsin

106
00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:40.340
more spectacularly than any other, nullified the federal fugitive slave laws.

107
00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:43.700
But of course, he can't compute this, so he just keeps calling the name.

108
00:09:43.700 --> 00:09:46.700
So in other words, no substance is discussed.

109
00:09:46.700 --> 00:09:49.780
And the point of this was to illustrate this is exactly, of course, we all know that's

110
00:09:49.780 --> 00:09:51.540
what's going to happen with a book like this.

111
00:09:51.540 --> 00:09:53.420
I mean, everybody knows that.

112
00:09:53.420 --> 00:09:56.500
That's the charade we all go through.

113
00:09:56.500 --> 00:09:58.340
And that's indeed what has happened.

114
00:09:58.340 --> 00:10:02.300
When the left has taken notice of this, I'm sorry to say the left has not seen the progressive

115
00:10:02.300 --> 00:10:06.200
potential of nullification, which is obvious to me, seems obvious to me.

116
00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:09.700
If you believe small is beautiful, that should apply to politics too.

117
00:10:09.700 --> 00:10:14.700
How come 309 million people governed infallibly from one city is just the right size?

118
00:10:14.700 --> 00:10:18.700
Don't you believe smallies be like, why do they not see the progressive potential for this, but they don't?

119
00:10:18.700 --> 00:10:23.700
Or, you know, when they're incarcerating the Japanese Americans during World War II, wouldn't it have been nice to nullify that?

120
00:10:23.700 --> 00:10:26.700
Like, why do we assume nationalism is a progressive force?

121
00:10:26.700 --> 00:10:29.700
I don't know, I can't seem to get them to go along with this.

122
00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:36.700
But basically, the progressive response has not been to go through this book and critique the arguments.

123
00:10:36.700 --> 00:10:38.700
I knew that wasn't going to happen.

124
00:10:38.700 --> 00:10:40.700
To the contrary, what happens?

125
00:10:40.700 --> 00:10:48.700
Well, Woods is a bad guy, and oh gosh, he's outside the Biden to Romney box, so everybody block your ears.

126
00:10:48.700 --> 00:10:49.700
You better not listen to this.

127
00:10:49.700 --> 00:10:52.700
Really, it's like living in a society.

128
00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:55.700
These are people who would fit in perfectly at Pravda.

129
00:10:55.700 --> 00:10:57.700
They would have no problem.

130
00:10:57.700 --> 00:11:00.700
They would assimilate perfectly well into that type of line of work.

131
00:11:00.700 --> 00:11:01.700
of Work.

132
00:11:01.700 --> 00:11:06.960
So what we've managed to do though, very successfully, is begin to push back against this version

133
00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:07.960
of the narrative.

134
00:11:07.960 --> 00:11:12.300
My friend Michael Bolden, who runs the much more radical 10th Amendment Center, you think

135
00:11:12.300 --> 00:11:16.840
of it as kind of a lame mainstreamy group, it's a much more radical center than you think,

136
00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:23.500
he goes around, he's from California, I'll just leave that at that, and Bolden goes around

137
00:11:23.500 --> 00:11:26.820
and they'll say to him, you know, tell us about this nullification thing that's going

138
00:11:26.820 --> 00:11:27.820
on.

139
00:11:27.820 --> 00:11:30.820
I think we can sum it all up in one word.

140
00:11:30.820 --> 00:11:32.940
And they all go, what's that one word?

141
00:11:32.940 --> 00:11:35.020
Weed.

142
00:11:35.020 --> 00:11:36.140
What?

143
00:11:36.140 --> 00:11:38.860
He says, look, he says we got more than a dozen states that

144
00:11:38.860 --> 00:11:41.940
are actively defying the federal government on medical marijuana.

145
00:11:41.940 --> 00:11:44.580
And in LA County, we still got all these dispensaries going,

146
00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:46.140
even though the courts are against us

147
00:11:46.140 --> 00:11:48.020
and the executive branch is against us.

148
00:11:48.020 --> 00:11:49.300
And they're still doing it.

149
00:11:49.300 --> 00:11:51.740
So Bolden will go to these events where

150
00:11:51.740 --> 00:11:54.860
it's all conservative tea party people.

151
00:11:54.860 --> 00:11:56.700
And he'll get up there and say, do you

152
00:11:56.700 --> 00:12:10.700
And they honestly don't know how to answer that question, but this has got to be a trick of some kind.

153
00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:14.700
He says, look, these people are just saying, okay, gee, thanks for your decision, federal government.

154
00:12:14.700 --> 00:12:19.700
We're going to go ahead anyway. So that's how he's been sort of selling it.

155
00:12:19.700 --> 00:12:25.700
We just had an event last weekend in Cincinnati, and think of the mischievousness of this.

156
00:12:25.700 --> 00:12:31.500
of this, we held the event in the Harriet Tubman Theater of the National Underground

157
00:12:31.500 --> 00:12:34.060
Railroad Freedom Center.

158
00:12:34.060 --> 00:12:38.980
So of course every progressive head exploded at this, like how, what, you mean you people

159
00:12:38.980 --> 00:12:42.940
are against slavery, I mean I thought, and of course nobody is stupid enough to think

160
00:12:42.940 --> 00:12:47.220
we support, I mean really, it's just absurd, but to be able to be there, what an extraordinary

161
00:12:47.220 --> 00:12:51.620
thing, and of course it's a federal boondoggle by the way, it was a $120 million project

162
00:12:51.620 --> 00:12:55.880
to build that thing. And then it loses money every year. So we figure we might as well

163
00:12:55.880 --> 00:13:00.280
put it to some use. That's how I feel about the states. They're crummy, they're crooks,

164
00:13:00.280 --> 00:13:03.920
they're sociopaths. So we might as well put them to some good use by getting them out

165
00:13:03.920 --> 00:13:09.520
there and resisting the federal government. There was an ABC report out in Idaho because

166
00:13:09.520 --> 00:13:14.040
Idaho was strongly pursuing this and the governor was in favor of nullification. They had all

167
00:13:14.040 --> 00:13:27.320
A book is having influence here in Idaho, particularly in the state legislature.

168
00:13:27.320 --> 00:13:30.320
Our reporter so-and-so reports, I'm not joking.

169
00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:36.720
So sure enough, the reporter comes on, well, this is the book right here, and I'm watching

170
00:13:36.720 --> 00:13:40.480
this from my own computer thinking, I can't believe it, I'm in the Twilight Zone here.

171
00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:41.480
This is going on.

172
00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:47.880
Again, total blackout and silence. I just got an invite, would you please come to our,

173
00:13:47.880 --> 00:13:51.480
I'm getting this all the time, would you please come to our state, so I've been doing a lot

174
00:13:51.480 --> 00:13:57.600
of writing, I did at statenullification.com, I put up a link with responses to criticisms

175
00:13:57.600 --> 00:14:02.120
so that I don't have to go to every single state, that people can answer the criticisms,

176
00:14:02.120 --> 00:14:08.080
but I got this thing where 44 organizations in a particular state, and these are big organizations,

177
00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:43.580
that yields us this budget, that, oh my gosh, if it weren't for the political class, where would we be?

178
00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:55.580
Oh, we'd all be wandering souls. We'd have no art. Every artist would put down his paintbrush, were it not for Joe Biden.

179
00:14:55.580 --> 00:15:00.580
We'd have no science, so we'd all be out there doing a rain dance fruitlessly.

180
00:15:00.580 --> 00:15:06.080
We'd all be ignoramuses. Exploding consumer products would be blowing all our limbs off.

181
00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:10.480
Our kids would be working for a dollar a day in a mine.

182
00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:17.680
The country would be run by short white men with mustaches, carrying around sacks of money

183
00:15:17.680 --> 00:15:19.140
with dollar signs on them.

184
00:15:19.140 --> 00:15:20.720
This is where we'd all be.

185
00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:22.960
That's what we all got in school.

186
00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:26.440
Basically I'm taking a machete to this, but I'm going step by step.

187
00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:29.000
I'm starting where the Tea Party people are.

188
00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:30.000
Obama's bad.

189
00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:32.280
Okay, all right, yeah, yeah, Obama's bad.

190
00:15:32.280 --> 00:15:35.560
But then by the time you get to the end, they have no idea what they're in for by the time

191
00:15:35.560 --> 00:16:05.560
I want to bring them in further. But it's not intended primarily for them. It's really for our people. What I wanted to do was to buttress people's arguments, the best I could, against all this. Let's suppose the kids were educated not by the government, but by Walmart. So every day they go into Walmart classrooms, and on the wall is all the Walmart CEOs, and they sing songs to the Walmart CEOs, and every year they have a special

192
00:16:05.560 --> 00:16:35.560
Special day, where the kids get off from school to honor the great contributions of the Walmart CEOs and without them, where would we be, we'd all be helpless and pathetic boobs, but now, how come when it's U.S. presidents on the wall, nobody thinks it's creepy at all, oh well sure, where would we be without presidents, so and so, so basically I'm just going through every claim the government has been making for itself, oh without the government we'd have all these financial crises, oh yeah, how different it is with government, right, so okay, so we'd have financial crises, we'd never get out of them because we wouldn't have stimulus,

193
00:16:35.560 --> 00:16:40.560
and the stimulus package. All of that I go after. The financial crisis was caused by deregulation.

194
00:16:40.560 --> 00:16:47.560
Well, I go through the actual deregulation that occurred and argue, well, what's the connection between that and the financial crisis?

195
00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:52.560
So we go through the Federal Reserve. Where would we be without the wise experts in charge of our money?

196
00:16:52.560 --> 00:16:57.560
Haven't things been more stable since we got the Fed? I mean, all these common arguments that we get.

197
00:16:57.560 --> 00:17:04.560
The military-industrial complex. I've got some material in there that actually comes from an ASC paper I gave a number of years ago.

198
00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:08.040
And then I get to a chapter called The Myth of Good Government, which I stole from a Mises

199
00:17:08.040 --> 00:17:09.040
Circle.

200
00:17:09.040 --> 00:17:12.120
That was a title of a Mises Circle event called The Myth of Good Government, where I go through

201
00:17:12.120 --> 00:17:17.240
some of the hard cases, again, like we'd have no science, right, wouldn't we all be dead

202
00:17:17.240 --> 00:17:21.440
without the regulatory apparatus, or the war on drugs, which is not something I've written

203
00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:25.640
about before, so I had to really get myself into that literature, so that by the end these

204
00:17:25.640 --> 00:17:29.860
people are being exposed to all this stuff, and then my regular readers, you know, maybe

205
00:17:29.860 --> 00:17:33.780
we'll find some additional arguments for their arsenal.

206
00:17:33.780 --> 00:17:39.140
My publisher put the first chapter of the book up at a website called rollbackbook.com,

207
00:17:39.140 --> 00:17:43.240
which makes it easier to say on the radio so you don't keep having to promote your own

208
00:17:43.240 --> 00:17:48.520
personal site and you sound like some crazy ego case. But I hope you will consider checking

209
00:17:48.520 --> 00:17:53.520
these and the other books on the panel out. And thank you very much.