How playing fast and loose with nullification of Federal law may come to bite the left in the ass.

Libertarians, progressives, and liberals alike cheered when ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana for recreational use passed in Massachusetts, California, Maine and Nevada on November 8th. They joined Colorado, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon in a celebratory hot boxing of Florida’s mom’s minivan (who gave in to the peer pressure giving Medical a try in the voting booth).

Officially, legalization of marijuana is part of the official platforms of the Green Party and the Libertarian party, while the Democratic Party only calls for “a reasoned pathway to future legalization.”

Libertarians celebrate these actions as states taking back powers stolen unconstitutionally by the federal government. Progressives and more moderate liberals see it as social justice, as a way to end the drug war waged against minority communities and to starve the corporate prison system of non-violent drug offenders. They’re plenty happy with the results, but do they approve the process?

Though the president is sworn to execute the laws of the Nation, a certain amount of executive discretion has become accepted policy. After Colorado and Washington sparked their respective doobies in 2012, the Obama administration elected not to pursue a challenge to the new laws, so long as the states would effectively manage the distribution and regulation of marijuana. Progressives praised his wisdom, libertarians said, “stay out of it.” Conservatives rolled their eyes.

Similar executive discretion was used by Obama regarding deferred deportation (though as his diehard supporters love to point out, almost as point of pride, more illegals were deported under his watch than under George Bush).

With the left normalizing the practice of nullification of Federal law, and even worse, making it cool by getting everyone high in the process, what happens when the Vans is on the other foot?

We’ve already seen traces of the right’s attempt to get in on the game: Kim Davis’s quixotic battle against gay marriage in Kentucky, where a majority of the state does not support gay marriage. This nullification attempt happened at the county level, during a democratic presidency.

Although the president-elect has declared the gay marriage issue “over”, one wonder’s if he won’t hand states the same leniency Obama showed to defiant Colorado when the majority opinion there favored marijuana legalization.

In Kentucky too, the majority opinion is pro-life. What if the bluegrass state were to jump aboard the state’s rights train? What if they should shrug off the tyrannical yoke of the Majority who rules from faraway cities on the coast? With Republicans dominating the legislature, the executive, and a supreme court with a freshly chambered 9th justice, the more conservative states may be so bold. A president-elect with intentionally obfuscated views on the matter, offers little clarification.

The original nullifier boy band was Jefferson Davis and his ilk in the Confederacy; we all know how that went.

The left has more to lose playing the nullification game. While conservatives and libertarians welcome a shrunken federal government, with states pulling rank on national laws that defy the local majority, the social-authoritarianism of the left can not survive such a fate.

— —

If you enjoyed this follow me on twitter and check out:

Rage Against the [Outrage] Machine

Coming Out of the Temporal Closet

Why Delegitimizing Trump is a Bad Idea

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Voter ID laws are not Racist