Live free, or die

Uncle Sam's ability to set the limits of his own power, obtained by forcing the States to abdicate their sovereignty at the point of a gun, may not last forever after all. From a resolution introduced into the New Hampshire legislature:

(Resolved) That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, -- delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress...

Unlike some on the 'net, I do not delight in imagining the breakup of the U.S. I can imagine few developments more disastrous both to us and to millions of others around the world. And yet, I do believe liberty is more important than some arbitrary Union, which is why my sympathies align with the Gray in the Late Unpleasantness. Individuals cannot hope to stand against federal power, unless they are among the privileged elite. One need only compare the stories of average taxpayers who truly make an honest mistake with, say, that of the new Secretary of the Treasury. The ONLY hope of holding the federal government accountable is for the States to act in concert to check the abuses of the agent they created. That's why reading this resolution made my day. Forty-nine more just like it would make my week. And if they actually take the sentiment to heart, standing up when Uncle Sam is wrong... well, I never said hope was dead. Yet.