Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We’re starting to see a neo-Confederate nullification movement among the contemporary Left in general, in particular the Democratic Party.
In other words, there are governors, like Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, or Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, or Gov. Tina Kotek in Oregon, who openly, literally, candidly say that federal immigration law shall not be enforced in their jurisdictions, their state, county, and local municipal jurisdiction.
They haven’t read Article VI of the Constitution. It says explicitly that in matters of the enforcement of federal authority and jurisdiction, which is the United States, it supersedes local law enforcement.
And they’re completely ignorant of history and where nullification of federal law leads to. We saw it under the Eisenhower administration when Little Rock refused to follow a court order to integrate its school system. The governor, Orval Faubus, defied the federal government. President Dwight Eisenhower had to nationalize the Arkansas National Guard and forcibly stop him.
The same thing happened in Mississippi under Gov. Ross Barnett, 1961.
1963, George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and said, “I will not allow federal troops to desegregate this university.” And they forced him to do that.
From 1855 to 1859, there was something called Bleeding Kansas. And that meant that groups that were pro-Southern or pro-Union sent settlers into the territory of Kansas to change the demography so each side would be able to force the United States to either admit it as a free or a slave state. But the point was that federal law died. Each side nullified it. And they began to carry on violence against one another.
John Brown, the infamous killer at Harpers Ferry, he executed five people in a raid on a Southern community. And there was tit-for-tat violence on both sides.
What we’re seeing now is open street violence in Portland. Antifa-like, or Antifa themselves, protesters pelt Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They point lasers at their eyes. They try to rush the facilities. And then, in extremis, they run over to the other side of the street for the sanctuary of local policemen.
In the Chicago area, when ICE agents are besieged and blockaded by cars and under threat, local police do not come to their aid. And it’s almost as if these governors and these mayors, it’s not almost if, it is that they are nullifying federal law in the best spirit of the neo-Confederacy.
They are saying that Los Angeles or California, or Chicago, or Illinois have their own unique cultures. And we do not want the federal government coming onto federal property, their own property, and enforcing federal law among us.
So, they are the successors to Jefferson Davis or John Calhoun, the segregationist, states’ rightist that tried to nullify the federal government.
And there’s a little twist to this story. They’re also very hypocritical. If someone were to follow their prompt in a red state or a red county or a red city and say, “Federal gun registration law does not apply here. Endangered species lists don’t apply here,” you know what the Left would do? They would go crazy: “You are Confederate nullificationists. Federal law will force you to register guns in a county in Utah.”
You can see what they would say if President Donald Trump said, “Well, this federal judge, he’s just a district judge. He’s not a circuit judge. He’s not a Supreme Court judge. He’s a political activist. He’s making up laws as he is going. He’s just trying to delay and hamstring my administration. I’m not gonna follow a federal writ.” He couldn’t do that. He’s doing that. The Left would go crazy. And yet, that is what they’re doing.
So, the next stage is even scarier because we’re not just seeing street thuggery, we are seeing officials, as in Los Angeles, that are helping to dox and identify ICE agents electronically and making apps and trying to help the illegal alien or the person, who is a criminal illegal alien, escape deportation efforts of ICE.
And remember, contrary to what the Left says, the statistics show that about 80% or more of the people that ICE is arresting either have criminal records, they’re part of the 500,000 that the Biden administration let in, or they have preexisting deportation orders they’ve ignored.
And yet our own state, local, and city officials are helping people who are breaking federal law and opposing, sometimes quasi-violently, or condoning the violence of federal enforcements, agents who are trying to enforce federal law.
This has a neo-Confederate pedigree. And we know where Bleeding Kansas led to. Once you nullify federal law and once you glorify violence—and by the way, the Left has glorified almost every major left-wing assassin, whether it was James Hodgkinson that tried to take out the House leadership, or Tyler Robinson, who took out Charlie Kirk, or Luigi Mangione, who killed the CEO of UnitedHealth, or Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh, who tried to kill Donald Trump on two occasions.
When you have glorification of that type of violence and political assassination, we know where it’s going to lead. It leads from Bleeding Kansas to Harpers Ferry to Fort Sumter. And they’re playing with fire. And it’s very dangerous for the republic. And it’s time for the Left to stop.
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