What’s wrong with Kansas?

Evidently, they don’t do sexy Otherness as well as radical chic, westernized Chechnyan bombing suspects. Not only that, but Kansas has dared to pass laws requiring that the state follow the Constitution, even if that means not enforcing federal law.

The liberals — who elsewhere are arguing state’s rights with respect to defining same sex marriage (even as they argue the opposite with respect to CA and its definition of marriage, anti-foundationalism being the justification for inconsistency and ostensible hypocrisy) — have been taught to screech “Supremacy Clause” as if that magically allows the federal government under our Constitution to impose its will in all matters on the separate states, an interpretation of the Clause that would obviate state government entirely, reducing it to a bureaucratic appendage of centralized federal control.

— Which, it is fairly evident to my admittedly untrained constitutional ear, runs entirely counter to the federalism that was necessary to secure both our founding and Constitutional ratification. States have their own Constitutions for a reason.

At any rate, these are the kinds of sovereign state decisions — and the showdowns that ensue as a result — that we need. When states say to the feds “enough is enough,” one can respond either by denouncing the states for their zealotry and their refusal to follow the law of the land, a position that supports things like federal raids on states who have passed laws allowing, say, marijuana legalization; or else one can respond by pointing out that those powers not enumerated in the Constitution to the federal government belong to the states, and that the Bill or Rights belongs to the people of the states, regardless of how many cowed GOP congressman or leftwing Democrats are lobbied by grief pimps into surrendering those rights on behalf of all of us.

I’ve supported New York’s right to vote for same sex marriage; I’ve supported California’s Constitutional amendment defining marriage in a traditional way; I’ve supported the federal government, for purposes of conducting its own business, to define marriage; I’ve supported Colorado’s right to legalize marijuana (and blasted Scalia for his reasoning in Raich); I’ve supported Oregon’s euthanasia provisions, provided no doctor is compelled to violate his oath; and I applaud any state whose Governor stands up for the Bill of Rights against the forced homogeneity demanded by the federal government on its desire to neuter the Second Amendment.

If Holder wants to send federal agencies into Kansas to do battle with the state’s law enforcement apparatus, that’s his call. But it is the call of the citizens of Kansas to determine whether or not they will allow the feds to molest them in ways that they assert are unconstitutional. Holder’s fight is one that suggests that he believes that the federal government has supreme authority over the states in every regard. That’s not what our Constitution allows.

It’s time we revisit that bit of our history and have, as they say, a “national conversation.” One that I hope doesn’t begin with a shot heard round the country.

(thanks to Geoff B)