Much like early-19th-century South Carolinians, leftist protesters in Minnesota appear determined to nullify federal law.
Unlike their antebellum ancestors, today’s nullifiers enjoy substantial support from well-heeled liberals.
For instance, on Thursday’s episode of CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the smug, wealthy, lanky, lunatic, and soon-to-be-retired host took up the nullifiers’ cause by smearing agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “masked, armed goons victimizing” the people of Minnesota.
Colbert, of course, long ago sold his soul in a quest to destroy President Donald Trump at all costs.
That quest explains why the comedian-turned-propagandist’s late-night show has hemorrhaged money. It also explains why, in July, CBS had to cancel Colbert’s show, effective when the current season ends in May.
Nonetheless, the host’s slanderous anti-ICE comments showed that he has learned nothing.
“This morning, with Minnesota under siege by masked, armed goons victimizing American citizens, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act,” Colbert said in a video posted to YouTube.
The Insurrection Act of 1807 authorizes the president to use U.S. military forces to prevent “obstruction to the laws.” A coordinated attempt to nullify federal immigration law by force would certainly qualify as “obstruction.”
Colbert, however, seems to think that Trump, not the anti-ICE nullifiers in Minnesota, must yield.
“Well,” the sarcastic host added, “that’ll calm everybody down. I’m sure Minnesotans will just love that. That’s why all the protesters’ signs say ‘ICE go home – then come back in a tank!’”
No doubt the anti-ICE nullifiers will dislike it if Trump sends the military to Minnesota. So did the original South Carolina nullifiers when President Andrew Jackson threatened to use the Army to enforce the federal tariff laws they despised.
“They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws,” Jackson wrote of the nullifiers in a Dec. 1832 proclamation, “and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion, but be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is TREASON.”
Faced with the prospect of Jackson’s wrath, South Carolina’s nullifiers eventually backed down. So, too, must the anti-ICE protesters who actively interfere in ICE operations.
Indeed, the proper approach from the anti-ICE crowd would involve using persuasion to change immigration laws.
They cannot do that, however, because it would mean codifying open borders, which no sane person supports. Thus, they try to physically impede the laws’ execution.
Meanwhile, smug and affluent liberals like Colbert, who would never place themselves in harm’s way, encourage the protesters’ lawlessness.
Liberals know that ICE exists to enforce laws enacted by the people’s representatives. But they do not care, as long as they can cause trouble for Trump while looking good to fellow liberals.
Moreover, encouraging the nullification of federal laws alienates more than half the country that voted for those laws’ enforcement. And that hardly seems like a recipe for financial success.
Small wonder that CBS, still motivated at least partially by profits, told Colbert to take a hike.
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