Tom Woods - ThisIsCommonSense.org

“Everywhere you look, economics is despised,” writes Tom Woods in his Tuesday email letter.

You know what isn’t despised? A daily email letter.*

But I digress; back to economics.

“The gimme-free-stuff people hate it because they don’t like being told that there might be undesirable side effects from seizing other people’s things.”

Well, true enough. But turn it around: many people demand free stuff at least in part because they do not understand the bigger picture … which Mr. Woods ably provides in his daily podcast and on his weekly Contra Krugman podcast with economist Bob Murphy.

“Politicians hate it, because it imposes logical constraints on what political activity can accomplish.”

True, but, like many in the general public (from whence they come), politicians’ prior lack of economic knowledge also leads, in part, to their hubris.

“Even some folks in the business world hate it, because (1) they’d rather agitate for special privileges than hear the case for free markets, and (2) they’d rather have low interest rates than be warned about the causes of the business cycle.”

Yes, too true. But, again, business people are generally just people, most of whom haven’t even been exposed to something beyond boring and misleading textbook econ, if that. Mr. Woods knows that, since that’s what his mission is, exposing more folks to ideas beyond what he calls “the index card of allowable opinion.”

Well, I’m all about allowing the unallowable — if it’s right!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Historian Woods is now doing what I’ve been doing since 1999, providing a daily common-sense thought that is short and easy-to-read and dropped into your email box every weekday. Mine goes up online at ThisIsCommonSense.com; I don’t see his on his website … but I do see a lot of books and podcasts!

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As the federal government lurches further out of control, wildly grasping to increase control over our lives, an old and controversial method of reining in our central government gains popularity: State nullification of federal law.

A recent Rasmussen survey asked whether “states have the right to block any federal laws they disagree with on legal grounds,” and 38 percent of likely voters surveyed said “Yes.”

Cutting to the quick of the Commerce Clause, a new Kansas law — Senate Bill 102, the Second Amendment Protection Act, signed by Governor Sam Brownback last month — states that firearms manufactured and owned in Kansas that do not cross state lines are not subject to federal law.

Of course, the Supreme Court thinks otherwise. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court allowed the federal government to regulate darn near anything on the grounds that any conceivable act of consumption affects demand, and thus “commerce.” Goofy ruling? Yes. But by tradition it’s the Supreme Court justices who get the final word.

Yet even that has been denied by many constitutional theorists, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — “Mr. Constitution” himself — both of whom supported nullification, as recently explained by historian Tom Woods. No compact joined into by multiple parties may only be interpreted by one of the parties alone, unless specified to that effect. The Constitution doesn’t even mention judicial review, so the tradition of the Supreme Court’s final word is itself a matter of dispute.

Standing up for the status quo, Attorney General Eric Holder has written to Brownback against the new Kansas law, citing the Supremacy Clause. Problematic? Yes. But not easily dismissed.

Brownback has volleyed back.

At least we can expect the old issues of constitutional law to gain a new and lively hearing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.