That is from the title of Victor Davis Hanson’s column on the State of Minnesota:
Something similar [to the lead-up to the Civil War] is emerging over Minnesota, the South Carolina of our age.
Once sanctuary states, cities and counties had established the precedent that, with impunity, they could nullify federal immigration law, what followed was a logical and growing descent into the current open defiance of the federal government.
How odd that self-described progressives are now acting out the visions of prior kindred nullificationists and neo-Confederates, from John C. Calhoun to George Wallace.
Is it really that odd? It seems to me that there is a persistent thread of nullification that runs through the history of the Democratic Party. Federal law is fine, Democrats think, as long as we control the federal government.
Some believe that if Minnesota wants to protect its approximately 1,300 jailed illegal alien murderers, rapists and assorted felons, so be it — and ICE should leave such a dysfunctional and dystopian state to its own self-destructive path.
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If Minnesota further wants to be a state like 1861 South Carolina that openly defies the federal government, then also so be it.But it should accordingly not expect federal funding for its pick-and-choose approach to federal law and property.
In my opinion, the federal government would be fully justified in cutting off all funding to Minnesota for Medicaid, education, highways, and any other program under which federal dollars are allocated.
Meanwhile, Minnesota elected officials like Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Attorney General Keith Ellison are actively encouraging Minnesotans to obstruct federal officers from enforcing federal laws — despite the mounting violence that follows their collective prompts.
For them, screaming for ICE “to get the f–k out of Minnesota” is more than mere braggadocio.
It is a reminder that the Democratic Party wants a safe place for illegal immigration, the fuel of a future dependent constituency — as the architecture of the recent massive Somali frauds attests.
All true.
They also believe that the more turmoil, the more violence, the more resistance and the more a general sense of chaos and unrest swirl around Trump, the more they can drive down his popularity before the midterms.
That’s true, too. It certainly has worked in Minnesota, but I haven’t seen evidence that left-wing violence in Minnesota has hurt Trump in other states.
For now, Walz, Frey and Ellison are upping the rhetoric, fanning the violence and talking openly about how best to nullify federal law and impede federal enforcement.
They are convinced that they have galvanized national opposition to the hated Trump, smothered the Somali fraud scandal…
That clearly is one of their objectives, but new indictments arising out of different federal programs are coming soon.
…and stopped ICE deportations of their constituents.
In all of those assumptions, they have little idea they are following the Confederate script to the letter.
Here I disagree with Victor. I think Minnesota’s Democratic leaders are perfectly well aware that they are playing the role that South Carolina did during the nullification crisis, and beyond. Tim Walz has talked about calling up the National Guard, implying that it would fight ICE (in the event, he did call up the Guard but didn’t order it to attack ICE agents). He has mused about “being at war with our federal government.” And he has even referred to Fort Sumter, albeit incoherently, as a historical precedent that Minnesota is following.
I think that what Walz, Jacob Frey, Amy Klobuchar and the rest have in mind is semi-secession: as long as Republicans control the national government, Minnesota will be a law unto itself, accepting dollars from Washington but obeying only those laws with which they agree. When the Democrats are back in charge, their semi-secession will end, at least temporarily.
No doubt the least baleful way for this crisis to end is for Republicans to win the elections for governor and the Minnesota legislature in November.
