Better Late Than Never, Ron Paul

After spending decades in Congress to accomplish little more than to legitimize its rampant unlawful activity, Ron Paul finally has seen the light and observed that states can and will take matters into their own hands to reclaim their sovereignty.

I'm glad Ron realizes that an unconstitutional law is void and should be treated as such by the states, regardless of whatever the self-interested federals say about it. I just wish he'd been beating this war drum for the past forty years rather than lending his support to the very institution the states must now rebel against (and participating in Congress is supporting it, even if one opposes every piece of legislation it produces).

As an aside, it's likely that the stewards of official discourse will chastise Ron Paul in part by citing the Constitution's Supremacy Clause in Article VI, which supposedly gives the federal government absolute power over the states to do as it wishes. Wrong. The Clause reads as follows:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

So only a law made pursuant to the Constitution or under the United States' lawful authority is entitled to supremacy. On this basis it is easy to ascertain that most of the federal laws straddling us are unlawful and unworthy of obedience, for they have no basis in the sparse enumerated powers listed in Article I, Section 8, and they also usurp police-power functions reserved to the states via the Tenth Amendment.

Additionally, if someone is going to rely on the Constitution as the supreme law, he must admit that any action by the federal government contradicting the Constitution is void. To argue that the federal government -- through its judges or otherwise -- may unilaterally decide what the Constitution means and force states to obey that determination is an act of treason, for it elevates the federal government over the supreme law that birthed it.