WEBVTT NOTE An Interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr. 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Hello and welcome to this edition of The Autograph. You're on Press TV with me, Susan Modaris. 2 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:28.840 We're coming to you from New York City. My guest this week is author and historian Tom 3 00:00:28.840 --> 00:00:44.840 Thomas E. Woods. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller Meltdown. However, I'm sitting down to talk to him about his new book, Nullification. What is it? And is it about to start a new movement across the United States? Stay tuned and find out. 4 00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:55.840 Historian and author of 10 books, Thomas E. Woods Jr. holds a bachelor degree in history from Harvard University, a master's from MPhil and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. 5 00:00:55.840 --> 00:01:07.840 Author of the New York Times bestseller Meltdown and the politically incorrect guide to American history, his new book is titled Nullification, How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. 6 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:14.240 Woods believes that citizens across the United States are fed up with politicians in Washington 7 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:18.680 telling them how to live their lives and then sticking them with a bill. He explains to 8 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:24.600 his readers that nullification allows states to reject unconstitutional federal laws. 9 00:01:24.600 --> 00:01:30.020 For many, nullification is rapidly becoming the only way to stop an overreaching government 10 00:01:30.020 --> 00:01:37.100 drunk on power. From privacy to national healthcare, Woods shows how this growing and popular movement 11 00:01:37.100 --> 00:01:42.580 is sweeping. I met up with Thomas Woods in New York City while he was on his book tour 12 00:01:42.580 --> 00:01:49.740 to talk about what may soon become one of the most controversial topics of our time. 13 00:01:49.740 --> 00:01:52.100 Tom Woods, thank you for joining us here in New York. 14 00:01:52.100 --> 00:01:53.100 My pleasure. 15 00:01:53.100 --> 00:01:58.580 I'd like to start off from the very beginning because some of our viewers have never come 16 00:01:58.580 --> 00:02:05.580 across the term nullification. What is nullification, historically speaking, and who are the creators? 17 00:02:05.580 --> 00:02:08.820 Well first we have to understand that the United States, when it was established, was 18 00:02:08.820 --> 00:02:13.340 established as a collection of self-governing communities, that's what it was. 19 00:02:13.340 --> 00:02:17.100 So it was customary to speak of the United States in the plural, so you would say the 20 00:02:17.100 --> 00:02:19.380 United States are a nice place to live. 21 00:02:19.380 --> 00:02:23.780 The emphasis was on this collection of self-governing societies. 22 00:02:23.780 --> 00:02:27.700 That's what the American War for Independence was about, that each of the colonies wanted 23 00:02:27.700 --> 00:02:31.840 to be a self-governing society, but the British government wasn't allowing that. 24 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:35.780 So when they established their own government, obviously they didn't want to undermine the 25 00:02:35.780 --> 00:02:39.180 self-governing societies, that was the whole point of breaking with Britain. 26 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:44.400 So in the U.S. Constitution, in 1791, there were ten amendments that were added to it, 27 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:45.400 known as the Bill of Rights. 28 00:02:45.400 --> 00:02:51.020 The tenth amendment says that any power that the states, when they created the federal 29 00:02:51.020 --> 00:02:55.340 government, any power that the states did not delegate to that government remains with 30 00:02:55.340 --> 00:02:56.700 them. 31 00:02:56.700 --> 00:03:01.140 So any power that's not mentioned in the Constitution is presumed to rest with the 32 00:03:01.140 --> 00:03:28.140 Well, nullification simply derives from this point. The further point, and it was Thomas Jefferson who really codified this idea, that if the Federal Government does try to exercise a power that's not listed in the Constitution and that rests with the states, if it does go beyond its constitutional boundaries, then the states would be bound to resist this act of the Federal Government and therefore within its borders the state would nullify that act. 33 00:03:28.140 --> 00:03:35.140 And the U.S. Constitution was sold to the people of Virginia by taking these aspects into consideration. 34 00:03:35.140 --> 00:03:40.140 That's exactly right. This is hardly known, I would say, among the American population. 35 00:03:40.140 --> 00:03:46.140 If you found even 1% of the population that knew, frankly, what I'm about to tell you, it would be amazing. 36 00:03:46.140 --> 00:03:55.140 But Virginia was arguably the most important of the original states because so many of our important statesmen came from Virginia. 37 00:03:55.140 --> 00:04:07.220 The Virginians were very skeptical about the Constitution. 38 00:04:07.220 --> 00:04:12.860 So in 1788, when they were being asked to decide whether or not to ratify it, skeptics 39 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:18.140 like Patrick Henry were saying, this government outlined in the Constitution is going to grow 40 00:04:18.140 --> 00:04:24.420 to a level at which no one will be able to control it, it will have no practical limits. 41 00:04:24.420 --> 00:04:28.860 And so supporters of the Constitution assured Henry and other skeptics, don't worry about 42 00:04:28.860 --> 00:04:29.860 it. 43 00:04:29.860 --> 00:04:33.380 This government will have only the powers expressly delegated to it. 44 00:04:33.380 --> 00:04:38.140 And if this government should try to reach for a power not delegated to it, don't worry. 45 00:04:38.140 --> 00:04:41.860 Virginia will be exonerated from that action. 46 00:04:41.860 --> 00:04:45.700 So there really is in germ the idea of nullification. 47 00:04:45.700 --> 00:04:51.100 And Jefferson is really simply drawing it out in 1798 when he really spelled out the 48 00:04:51.100 --> 00:04:52.100 idea of nullification. 49 00:04:52.100 --> 00:05:02.100 You were quoted as saying that it's going to be a lot harder to get the kind of media for this book that I have gotten for my many other books. Why is that? 50 00:05:02.100 --> 00:05:07.100 The idea of nullification is not a popular one. I mean, most Americans have never even heard of it. 51 00:05:07.100 --> 00:05:19.100 But any time you emphasize anything involving the states and the powers of the states, American students, school children, have been taught to believe that anybody advocating this must have sinister intentions. 52 00:05:19.100 --> 00:05:26.100 The only reason you could advocate this is that you want to use these powers of the states to oppress minorities and so on. 53 00:05:26.100 --> 00:05:32.100 Now, nobody doubts that the states can be oppressive, any government can be oppressive. That's not the issue. 54 00:05:32.100 --> 00:05:40.100 The federal government can be oppressive too. The federal government threw a couple hundred thousand Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War II. 55 00:05:40.100 --> 00:05:44.100 And it would have been nice to nullify that if the states had had the backbone to do it. 56 00:05:44.100 --> 00:05:52.100 The point is that today, in 2010, in the South, you do not see the problems that you had in 1960. 57 00:05:52.100 --> 00:05:56.100 Blacks are moving to the South. They're not moving away. They're moving to the South. 58 00:05:56.100 --> 00:06:00.100 That's where they actually find that people treat them reasonably well. 59 00:06:00.100 --> 00:06:04.100 Blacks are not moving to New York, by and large, these days. 60 00:06:04.100 --> 00:06:07.100 And not just because it's impossibly expensive to live in New York. 61 00:06:07.100 --> 00:06:13.100 Nevertheless, there is this presumption that anyone who favors local self-government must have some sinister agenda. 62 00:06:13.100 --> 00:06:18.300 and that is exactly the opposite of the truth every dictator who ever lived has 63 00:06:18.300 --> 00:06:23.180 always opposed the kind of decentralized arrangement that is our birthright in 64 00:06:23.180 --> 00:06:28.080 the US either you have a system in which there's one giant jurisdiction and you 65 00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:31.940 just hope that liberty is preserved there or you have a system with a bunch 66 00:06:31.940 --> 00:06:35.900 of competing jurisdictions in which people can leave if one becomes too 67 00:06:35.900 --> 00:06:40.460 oppressive I think the second one in the long run in which different states are 68 00:06:40.460 --> 00:06:55.260 What was the main driving factor when coming out with this book? Was timing of essence 69 00:06:55.260 --> 00:06:56.260 as well? 70 00:06:56.260 --> 00:06:59.780 Well, it's interesting. I was working on a totally different book, and then suddenly 71 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:04.980 I thought, I should do a book on nullification. I'm such a ridiculous workaholic. I'm already 72 00:07:04.980 --> 00:07:09.300 working on a book. Let me work on this one. But the reason I did it was that I noticed 73 00:07:09.300 --> 00:07:22.300 The thing is that a lot of people were starting to talk about it, and my videos, just that I've done as a historian on this topic, are starting to be viewed by a lot of people, and people are talking about it, and I never imagined that this would come up again. 74 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:30.300 I figured this would be a dusty old historical issue, and I like dusty old historical issues, and that's fine, but I didn't think it would be a live issue once again. 75 00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:36.100 When I see that across the country on a variety of issues, on both left and right, there are 76 00:07:36.100 --> 00:07:38.900 some states saying, you know what, we're just not doing this. 77 00:07:38.900 --> 00:07:42.180 Like you know and I know this is not in the Constitution, so we're just not doing it. 78 00:07:42.180 --> 00:07:47.540 So I thought, this is a healthy thing, that we're restoring a humane scale to our political 79 00:07:47.540 --> 00:07:48.540 life. 80 00:07:48.540 --> 00:07:52.020 I mean, one regime for 309 million people, that is inhumane. 81 00:07:52.020 --> 00:07:57.240 And so to restore some kind of human scale to political life, I thought, this is such 82 00:07:57.240 --> 00:07:58.940 a wonderful thing. 83 00:07:58.940 --> 00:08:02.660 And so this movement should have like a kind of handbook, because it will be demonized. 84 00:08:02.660 --> 00:08:06.380 Again, people will assume these are wicked, terrible people. 85 00:08:06.380 --> 00:08:11.660 They need to have a book that tells this forgotten history that defends what they're doing, shows 86 00:08:11.660 --> 00:08:16.220 how purely American it is, shows how moral it is, how constitutional it is. 87 00:08:16.220 --> 00:08:19.880 So I decided, let's get this thing out, but again, let's get it out quickly. 88 00:08:19.880 --> 00:08:22.820 The sooner people have it, the sooner they can act on it. 89 00:08:22.820 --> 00:08:27.560 And frankly, I'm partly a little concerned that if the president does not win re-election 90 00:08:27.560 --> 00:08:34.520 in 2012, and instead is replaced by some Republican, you know, middle-of-the-road hack, you know, 91 00:08:34.520 --> 00:08:40.240 just like we usually have, that all this momentum behind wanting to push against the federal 92 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:41.240 government will disappear. 93 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:44.360 Because a lot of conservatives will think, well, we have one of our own in the White 94 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:46.160 House now, nothing to worry about. 95 00:08:46.160 --> 00:08:50.520 A lot of people still think we've got a vibrant two-party system, it is, it's shocking, but 96 00:08:50.520 --> 00:08:54.320 if the other party gets in, I'm afraid the enthusiasm for this will disappear. 97 00:08:54.320 --> 00:09:04.060 In Nullification, How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, Woods explains not only 98 00:09:04.060 --> 00:09:09.220 why nullification is the constitutional tool the founders of the United States envision, 99 00:09:09.220 --> 00:09:14.080 but how it works, and has already been employed in cases ranging from upholding the First 100 00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:19.720 Amendment to knocking down slave laws before the Civil War. Some of the issues Woods talks 101 00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:24.640 about how the states were meant to be checked against federal tyranny and how 102 00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:29.000 a growing roster of governors are recognizing they need to become that 103 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:33.680 again. Why it was left to the states to uphold the simple principle that an 104 00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:38.920 unconstitutional law is no law at all. Why without nullification ordinary 105 00:09:38.920 --> 00:09:44.360 Americans will continue to suffer oppression of unjust unconstitutional 106 00:09:44.360 --> 00:09:49.680 laws. How hasn't the strategy of giving full authority to federal government not 107 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:59.680 Well, I think people never really consider the alternative. They think either the federal government should impose this kind of educational standard or that kind of educational standard. 108 00:09:59.680 --> 00:10:07.680 It never occurs to them, should the federal government impose an educational standard? I mean, isn't that implicitly saying that people are too stupid to run their own schools? 109 00:10:07.680 --> 00:10:15.680 I mean, this is what it means to be a self-governing person living in a self-governing community. Your community makes decisions for itself. 110 00:10:15.680 --> 00:10:19.520 and sometimes you might make stupid decisions but at least therefore the 111 00:10:19.520 --> 00:10:23.660 fallout of your stupid decision is limited. What if the central government 112 00:10:23.660 --> 00:10:27.800 makes a catastrophically bad decision? There's no escaping it. So at least here you 113 00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:31.400 can let a hundred flowers bloom. This place does something stupid or this 114 00:10:31.400 --> 00:10:35.480 place taxes the population too much, well then those people leave and places 115 00:10:35.480 --> 00:10:39.440 that leave people alone get rewarded. So on net other governments are going to 116 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:44.840 want to imitate that one. Whereas in the United States it is so centralized that 117 00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:55.840 That ability for one government to compete with another one and be an alternative, an example, a counter example to others, is just rendered inoperative. 118 00:10:55.840 --> 00:11:00.840 And so we have this situation now in which we have a government that's completely unresponsive to the people. 119 00:11:00.840 --> 00:11:06.840 In fact, I've got the statistic in the book about the number of representatives we have now. 120 00:11:06.840 --> 00:11:16.840 When the U.S. Congress first opened its doors, there was one representative for every 30,000 Americans, which was 5,000 voting citizens. 121 00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:21.840 It's now one representative for over 700,000 Americans. 122 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:27.840 So if we had that ratio in 1791, we would have had four people in our House of Representatives. 123 00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:33.840 And every four years, we have this low-intensity civil war to see who gets to control everything. 124 00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:38.840 Who gets to dictate to the schools, dictate the agriculture policy, dictate to the whole country? 125 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:41.840 What if we could just have an alternative to this? 126 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:48.840 Regardless of whether it worked or not, it's just not the kind of life that I think if people were given the choice, they would choose. 127 00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:58.840 But the fact is it isn't working because right now the U.S. government is so remote, so unresponsive to anyone other than people with money and people who are lobbyists, 128 00:11:58.840 --> 00:12:28.840 that we now have a system in which our old age program Medicare that provides medicine for medical care for older folks and social security are so underfunded that it would take an additional, on top of the money we spend on it now, an additional $100 trillion to make them actually sound and that figure comes from the head of the Federal Reserve of Dallas, Richard Fisher and yet in spite of this overwhelming 129 00:12:28.840 --> 00:12:37.840 and the tsunami that's about to hit, the U.S. government continues making promises and continues printing up money and handing it to people as if nothing's wrong. 130 00:12:37.840 --> 00:12:46.840 If most decision-making power had been left in the hands of Massachusetts, Vermont, Florida, there is zero chance that we would be in a situation like this. 131 00:12:46.840 --> 00:12:51.840 Absolutely zero. Because at least there the people have some modicum of control. 132 00:12:51.840 --> 00:13:19.160 To quote Robert Murphy, a friend of Wood's, a surprise in the book is Chapter 4, What 133 00:13:19.160 --> 00:13:21.840 is, or are, the United States anyway. 134 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:26.720 Here Woods makes a compelling argument for the compact theory of the union, which is 135 00:13:26.720 --> 00:13:31.600 the view that the federal government was created by the individual states when they ratified 136 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:32.600 the U.S. Constitution. 137 00:13:32.600 --> 00:13:37.360 The nationalist view holds that the people of the United States collectively formed 138 00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:42.080 the central government and that therefore the individual state governments are subordinate 139 00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:43.080 to it. 140 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:52.080 There really was no competing theory, spelled out, systematic competing theory to the compact theory until about 1830. 141 00:13:52.080 --> 00:13:58.080 So this was the theory. And we associate it with Thomas Jefferson and people who followed him. 142 00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:04.080 But the compact theory says that the United States is a compact among sovereign, self-governing states. 143 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:11.080 That the United States is not fundamentally a single whole. It is the United States, not the United State. 144 00:14:11.080 --> 00:14:24.080 And again, that's the whole point of the separation from Britain, is that we wanted to have self-governing communities under the military defense umbrella of a single central government. 145 00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:34.080 Now that is, of course, the model that we've been moving away from for quite some time, but nevertheless, the evidence, as I think I show in nullification, is just overwhelming. 146 00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:43.080 The most overwhelming, probably the most obvious and clearest piece of historical evidence on this point is the manner in which the Constitution was ratified. 147 00:14:43.080 --> 00:14:50.080 We didn't have a single vote of the American people in the aggregate. We had votes taken separately in each of the states. 148 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:59.080 In fact, Rhode Island did not choose to ratify the Constitution for two full years after it had already taken effect over some of the other states. 149 00:14:59.080 --> 00:15:11.080 So, each state was separate, independent, and James Madison said that if a state had chosen not to ratify the Constitution, then there would have been no political relations subsisting between us and them. 150 00:15:11.080 --> 00:15:16.080 Today, of course, we have moved completely away from that model, but I think that model has much to recommend. 151 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:24.080 The whole world has moved toward strong, centralized governments that do not have any competing jurisdictions within their boundaries. 152 00:15:24.080 --> 00:15:46.280 Won't breaking the government in different states at this point in time when there is 153 00:15:46.280 --> 00:15:52.520 already a sense of tug-of-war, so to say, between the two parties on so many issues 154 00:15:52.520 --> 00:15:56.160 is created chaos and ultimately lead to secession? 155 00:15:56.160 --> 00:15:58.840 Well, I don't know. 156 00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:05.440 When nullification was suggested by Jefferson and then later by other American figures, 157 00:16:05.440 --> 00:16:09.680 by and large they thought of it as an alternative to secession, that it was the moderate middle 158 00:16:09.680 --> 00:16:14.560 ground between secession on the one hand and complete submission on the other. 159 00:16:14.560 --> 00:16:18.520 So nullification was thought to be a way that you could stay in the union and enjoy whatever 160 00:16:18.520 --> 00:16:22.460 benefits that brought, but yet at the same time resist something that you believed was 161 00:16:22.460 --> 00:16:27.740 is unconstitutional. So nullification could in fact help to hold the Union together. But 162 00:16:27.740 --> 00:16:32.180 at the same time, nullification is kind of a last resort. I mean, the fact that we are 163 00:16:32.180 --> 00:16:37.060 resorting to it means that all other options really have failed at this point. So it's 164 00:16:37.060 --> 00:16:44.060 very hard to say what the future will hold, but at least I think we can find enough issues 165 00:16:44.140 --> 00:16:50.820 on which left and right agree that, you know, whatever our own opinions are, the Federal 166 00:16:50.820 --> 00:16:55.820 The federal government has nothing to do with this issue. They should leave us alone to make our own decisions. 167 00:16:55.820 --> 00:17:00.820 I think there are enough cases of that, that we can peacefully push off the federal government and say, 168 00:17:00.820 --> 00:17:05.820 don't worry, you have enough problems to worry about as it is. Leave these matters to us in the States. 169 00:17:05.820 --> 00:17:11.820 We're not a bunch of stupid rubes. We are self-governing individuals, as Jefferson wanted us to be. 170 00:17:11.820 --> 00:17:18.820 And has the government been receptive in addressing the issue of nullification, or perhaps when it's questioned, 171 00:17:18.820 --> 00:17:24.940 And how has it responded when at one point or another a reporter, for example, comes 172 00:17:24.940 --> 00:17:29.380 out and says, this law that's being passed is not constitutional, because I know in the 173 00:17:29.380 --> 00:17:36.700 very beginning of your book you have a story of when the U.S. House Speaker was asked the 174 00:17:36.700 --> 00:17:40.020 question how she responded to this issue. 175 00:17:40.020 --> 00:17:41.020 That's right. 176 00:17:41.020 --> 00:17:45.780 The Speaker of the U.S. House was asked to justify from the Constitution how she could 177 00:17:45.780 --> 00:17:54.780 You could get away with the health care legislation and you would think she could at least refer to some clause, even if it was a stretch, say something. 178 00:17:54.780 --> 00:17:57.780 Instead she said, are you serious? And then just laughed. 179 00:17:57.780 --> 00:18:02.780 Well, that wasn't really a stupid question, sort of a legitimate question. 180 00:18:02.780 --> 00:18:08.780 And again, it should not be hard for her to at least come up with at least a silly answer, some answer. 181 00:18:08.780 --> 00:18:13.780 But the idea of nullification is that it forces them to take account of the Constitution. 182 00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:31.780 You can pass all these laws, but if the people aren't going to obey them, then are you going to send tanks in to Texas or Maine or New Hampshire, really, because of medical marijuana or because of a gun issue? Really. 183 00:18:31.780 --> 00:18:39.780 So nullification in a way is a kind of way to say to the federal government, look, you want us to do this, we're not going to do this, so now what? 184 00:18:39.780 --> 00:18:45.140 Isn't the Supreme Court responsible to stop the federal government from passing laws that 185 00:18:45.140 --> 00:18:47.020 are not constitutional? 186 00:18:47.020 --> 00:18:49.060 The Supreme Court has a role to play. 187 00:18:49.060 --> 00:18:53.300 Now Jefferson's view is that the Supreme Court was largely an advisory body because he did 188 00:18:53.300 --> 00:18:59.660 not trust giving any number of unelected people the final word on the meaning of the Constitution 189 00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:02.060 because then they would be running the country. 190 00:19:02.060 --> 00:19:05.900 More than that though, he feared giving the federal government a monopoly in general on 191 00:19:05.900 --> 00:19:12.900 The problem with the Supreme Court is not only that the Supreme Court is not an impartial arbiter, but it's also that the Supreme Court has to accept a case. 192 00:19:12.900 --> 00:19:19.900 The Supreme Court could decide, we don't even want to hear this case, and so then there could well be an unconstitutional act. 193 00:19:19.900 --> 00:19:25.900 If the Supreme Court won't hear it, then what recourse do the people have? There must be something beyond this. 194 00:19:25.900 --> 00:19:31.900 And in his famous so-called report of 1800, James Madison, who was the president of the United States, 195 00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:48.900 And in his famous so-called report of 1800, James Madison said that we have to have some mechanism to protect our liberties in those cases in which even the judicial branch is not an appropriate or a responsible sentinel for our liberties. 196 00:19:48.900 --> 00:20:00.900 And where does the signing of memos fall in your discussion considering the fact that since the Reagan administration onward there has been the signing of these memos which reached its peak during the Bush administration 197 00:20:00.900 --> 00:20:12.900 Administration and then was rolled back, so to say, during the Obama administration where the president basically feels that a certain law is not constitutional and it writes it off and it signs it off. 198 00:20:12.900 --> 00:20:24.900 Well, there are two issues that come up in what you've discussed. One of them is called a signing statement and that really peaked under George W. Bush. So that is when the president goes to sign a bill into law. 199 00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:32.900 This used to be just a purely ceremonial affair, you know, the Girl Scouts come there and everybody's smiling and he puts a signature to it. 200 00:20:32.900 --> 00:20:39.900 But George W. Bush really pushed forward an innovation whereby in the statement attached to his signature he would say, 201 00:20:39.900 --> 00:20:49.900 oh, by the way, I really think that Article 2, Section 3 of this is an unconstitutional constraint on my power, so I'm not going to enforce it. 202 00:20:49.900 --> 00:20:55.900 But usually, these were perfectly constitutional constraints on the president's power. 203 00:20:55.900 --> 00:20:58.900 But he would just sort of say, well, I just don't think I'm going to enforce this. 204 00:20:58.900 --> 00:21:04.900 Now, historically, the understanding was, you either take all of a bill or you take none of it. 205 00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:10.900 And there were reasons for that. But if he doesn't like a provision in it, he vetoes it and he sends it back to be redrafted. 206 00:21:10.900 --> 00:21:18.900 He can't pick and choose. But that's what began to happen, was that, you know, if I want to torture, I'm going to torture regardless of what this says. 207 00:21:18.900 --> 00:21:26.900 If I want to give money to some overseas war and I'm told I can't, I'm going to do it anyway. 208 00:21:26.900 --> 00:21:34.900 Even John McCain, who was hoping to be the Republican successor to George W. Bush, even he said he wouldn't do that as president. 209 00:21:34.900 --> 00:21:37.900 So the signing statements really were important. 210 00:21:37.900 --> 00:21:42.900 But also there's the executive order, which is the idea of the president basically just going ahead and making a law. 211 00:21:42.900 --> 00:21:47.260 Making a law, like he feels like the congress won't support him, so he'll just sign it 212 00:21:47.260 --> 00:21:51.700 into law without congressional authorization, and that's been done a number of times in 213 00:21:51.700 --> 00:21:56.060 American history, it really picked up in the 20th century. There are some times when the 214 00:21:56.060 --> 00:22:00.540 president can do that, like if the president pardons someone who's guilty of a crime, he 215 00:22:00.540 --> 00:22:04.020 does that through an executive order, that's fine, the constitution gives him the authority 216 00:22:04.020 --> 00:22:09.540 to pardon people. But what if he basically exercises a congressional power, like what 217 00:22:09.540 --> 00:22:15.540 What if he imposes a new tax without consulting Congress and just institutes it as an executive order? 218 00:22:15.540 --> 00:22:29.540 Well, a lot of times he has done that. The president during World War II, there was a brief moment where Franklin Roosevelt imposed on his own a 100% tax on all income over $25,000. 219 00:22:29.540 --> 00:22:33.540 Well, eventually Congress intervened and said, now wait, you cannot do that. 220 00:22:33.540 --> 00:22:38.900 But what usually happens is, once something has been enacted by a president, now people 221 00:22:38.900 --> 00:22:43.780 get used to it, or the Congress will eventually reconcile itself to it, so it's a very dangerous 222 00:22:43.780 --> 00:22:44.780 thing. 223 00:22:44.780 --> 00:22:53.380 And finally, the supporters of your work and idea have termed your latest work, Nullification, 224 00:22:53.380 --> 00:22:55.100 to be a gem. 225 00:22:55.100 --> 00:23:01.500 But what is your message to those who have not converted, so to say, and who argue that 226 00:23:01.500 --> 00:23:09.420 The ideas that you pose are very in line with conservatism and the Tea Party movement and 227 00:23:09.420 --> 00:23:15.180 taking the United States back, so to say, to the Bush era, perhaps? 228 00:23:15.180 --> 00:23:20.420 Well, I don't think anyone anywhere in American life has talked about decentralizing power 229 00:23:20.420 --> 00:23:25.260 for years and years. I mean, certainly I didn't see any power being decentralized under George 230 00:23:25.260 --> 00:23:34.260 Mr. W. Bush, Mr. I'm going to go to war on my own say-so, I'm going to engage in warrantless wiretaps and listen to your phone conversation. 231 00:23:34.260 --> 00:23:38.260 I mean, does that sound like a guy who wants to turn power over to local communities? 232 00:23:38.260 --> 00:23:45.260 The neoconservatives are probably my biggest opponents on this. They argue for a so-called national greatness conservatism. 233 00:23:45.260 --> 00:23:51.260 So the idea of states dissenting from the federal government is utterly distasteful to them. 234 00:23:51.260 --> 00:23:55.140 Today and the mainstream left will be arm and arm against me on this. 235 00:23:55.140 --> 00:24:00.460 But the old-timey, old-fashioned left, like my friend Kirkpatrick Sale, who years ago 236 00:24:00.460 --> 00:24:05.860 wrote a book called Human Scale, in which he said, business is too big, agriculture 237 00:24:05.860 --> 00:24:10.620 is too big, government is too big, it's just on a scale that's just not appropriate for 238 00:24:10.620 --> 00:24:13.300 real human life, face-to-face interaction. 239 00:24:13.300 --> 00:24:17.900 And so he thinks, yeah, we've got to cut this thing down, and yeah, in my community, we're 240 00:24:17.900 --> 00:24:24.900 We're going to socialize the cost of a lot of things, and in your community maybe you won't, but I live in my community, you'll live in yours, and we'll both be happy. 241 00:24:24.900 --> 00:24:30.900 Where the heck did that go? So there's no reason this has to be a left or right issue. 242 00:24:30.900 --> 00:24:38.900 And in fact, in California, there's a ballot initiative now to decriminalize marijuana, not just for medicinal purposes, but across the board. 243 00:24:38.900 --> 00:24:43.900 Now that's not a cause that's associated with the right wing, but it's one that I heartily support. 244 00:24:43.900 --> 00:24:49.100 Even if I didn't support decriminalizing marijuana, I would still support the power of California 245 00:24:49.100 --> 00:24:52.260 to do it, so that we could again have some type of competition. 246 00:24:52.260 --> 00:24:56.140 Well, people who like that can live there and people who don't can live somewhere else. 247 00:24:56.140 --> 00:24:59.760 There's no reason that that should be conservative or liberal. 248 00:24:59.760 --> 00:25:05.340 The real distinction is between people who believe in governing themselves and imperial 249 00:25:05.340 --> 00:25:07.580 people who believe in running everyone's life. 250 00:25:07.580 --> 00:25:10.300 Tom Woods, thank you for joining us on The Autograph. 251 00:25:10.300 --> 00:25:11.860 My pleasure. 252 00:25:11.860 --> 00:25:15.220 That's all the time we have for this edition of The Autograph here on PressTV. 253 00:25:15.220 --> 00:25:17.220 Thank you for staying with us and watching. 254 00:25:17.220 --> 00:25:21.580 Remember you can always send us your emails to theautographatpresstv.com. 255 00:25:21.580 --> 00:25:23.220 We're always looking forward to them. 256 00:25:23.220 --> 00:25:27.300 Until next week in another show from all of us here in New York City, goodbye.