New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg on Georgia’s secession hopes
May 8, 2009 at 6:39 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsIn the closing days of the most recent legislative session, the Georgia Senate overwhelmingly passed SR 632, one of those states’ rights resolutions that seem to be all the rage these days. Most of the local media ignored the legislation, mainly because there were more important things to cover. Things that matter.
The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg caught wind of SR 632 and has opined on his blog:
My most recent Comment was a series of small jokes riffing on a big joke, namely a moronic suggestion by the governor of Texas that his state might secede from the Union on account of the tyranny of slightly higher marginal tax rates for the rich. It was a thin reed to build a whole piece on, but it was all I had.
I should have looked harder. I’m usually a careful reader of Talking Points Memo, but I had somehow missed Brian Beutler’s April 16th post, in which he brings the startling intelligence that the Georgia state senate, by a 43-1 vote, has passed a resolution that mixes three parts inanity and one part prospective treason into a Kompletely Krazy Kocktail of militia-minded moonshine and wacko white lightning—a resolution that not only endorses defiance of federal law but also threatens anarchy and revolution.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Hertzberg also says this about the resolution:
“The resolution is written in a mock eighteenth-century style, ornate and pompous. Just two of its twenty sentences account for more than 1,200 of its 2,200 words. But the substance is even nuttier than the style.”
In truth, it’s not a “mock eighteenth-century style.” It’s a genuine one. The overwhelming majority of the resolution is just an extended quote of Thomas Jefferson’s 1798 Kentucky resolution, written in response to the Alien & Sedition Acts, and specifically cited at the top of SR632.
The Jefferson quote ends at “Be it further resolved that any Act by the Congress…” Interestingly, whereas the Jefferson text appears to only concern the nullification of those specific federal acts that exceed Constitutional authority, the added text at the bottom takes it further, and suggests that an overstepping of federal authority constitutes a complete nullification of the Constitution itself. And that’s the part that’s most aggravating to see them pass.
I’d really like to know where this latter text originated. Georgia copied it from New Hampshire (as they copied the whole resolution), and I can’t find any source that NH could have cribbed it from. It doesn’t sound as authentically antiquated as the Jefferson text, and it may have simply originated with a New Hampshire legislator, but the extreme remedy it proposes is not just unsettling, but legislatively silly.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Loren,
I’ve tried to find the origin of the language. It first caught my eye during the legislative session, and seemed like such a copy-and-paste job that I googled parts of the language. One result was the League of the South Party. A spokesman from the Georgia chapter told me the Party saw other states adopting the language and provided it on their site as a template for Legislatures. But the Party didn’t write it.
Also, thanks for your insight on the Georgia Confederate Heritage and History Month. Your AJC column on the topic was very good.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I try not to take this stuff seriously. I get the media’s reluctance to cover the next of a million Bobby Franklin bills. Maybe it’s seen as legitimizing the cause, or maybe it’s seen as being a waste of time on par with the bill itself. I can see how it doesn’t get covered.
But it does irk me that instead of responding to Big Important Issues Which Threaten to Cause Our State to Collapse if They Remain Unadressed, these people choose to write bullshit resolutions like this. Or to buy 300,000 tea bags they have no intention of brewing to protest wasteful spending. Or to spend half an hour on a national radio show with millions of listeners chatting with Sean Hannity about what kind of mustard the president puts on his sandwich.
Our state’s future is in the hands of people who either don’t understand the seriousness of our problems, or who don’t give a flying fuck about solving them.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
As stupid as this legislation is, I wonder if anyone is making fun of New Hampshire? I thinkt hat would be an interesting study.