History is rhyming again, to borrow a phrase of Mark Twain’s. Poland is coming under increasing pressure by the European Union to conform to the superstate’s will; this is exactly the situation the South found herself in vis-à-vis the federal government in Washington City in the 18th and 19th centuries. The central question in both cases is this: Who has primacy in a federation of nation-states? The superstate created by those nations to coordinate various policies amongst them, or the nations themselves?
We will return to this question shortly, but first let us see what is afoot in Europe. Dr Srdja Trifkovic summarizes the Polish situation for us:
On Oct. 7 Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that EU law does not have primacy over national legislation. The case was brought before the Tribunal last March by Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Morawiecki’s new system of appointing judges, established in 2018, violated EU law. The Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw specifically ruled that the legitimacy of judges already appointed under the new rules could not be challenged using EU law.
The decision of Poland’s highest court is a major and unprecedented challenge to the EU’s acquis communautaire. This French term refers to the cumulative body of European Community laws and forms the foundation of the EU legal order. All official EU sources assert that member states and their citizens must obey the acquis.
“EU law has primacy over national law, including constitutional provisions,” the European Commission insisted in response. “All rulings by the European Court of Justice are binding on all member states’ authorities, including national courts,” the statement continued, warning that the Commission would “not hesitate to make use of its powers under the Treaties to safeguard the uniform application and integrity of Union law.”
. . .
Poland will likely stand firm on this issue because it directly concerns its national sovereignty. It is considered as important as the rejection of mandatory migrant relocation quotas by the Visegrad Four nations (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) in 2018.
Warsaw does not dispute that EU laws take precedence in some specific areas covered by individual treaties signed and ratified by all EU member states. They dispute, however, the ECJ’s assertion that EU laws trump national constitutions, pointing out that this principle is not contained in any treaties.
The Southern view in matters like this is very much aligned with the Polish position: The nation is supreme over the superstate.
Not long into the era of government under the Philadelphia charter which began in 1788, the South began to confront actions of the federal government that the new constitution did not allow. Her response was that those laws, having no basis in the provisions of the constitution, were null and void and should not be obeyed. Furthermore, since the States created the federal government, each State, and not the latter, was the final arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not.
Their principles were clearly set forth in 1798, first in the Kentucky General Assembly:
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 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 parties 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.
The General Assembly of Virginia shortly thereafter concurred, writing,
That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
These principles have largely been suppressed since the Northern victory in the War between the States in 1865. The result has been catastrophic for the South – the erasure of her native culture and its replacement with the liberal ideology that continues to drag her down into ever lower depths of toxic cultural experiments: mass industrialism, mammon worship, gender confusion, redefining marriage, easy divorce, destruction of hierarchy, etc.
Thus it is that we at the South plead with the people of Poland: Do not yield your sovereignty to Brussels! Resist the EU apparatus with all that you have. The money enticements are strong, but do not let Brussels tempt you with them. Money is not infinite; only God is infinite. He can provide what you need through the Mother of God and all the Saints. If you give in, if you cede your sovereignty to the EU, you will become like us at the South – hollow, bereft of your ancient folkways, seeing them only in a museum or a YouTube video, while you march to a tune dictated to you by distant outsiders who despise you, leaving you little creative initiative of your own, crushed by page after page of innervating regulations.
Ten years before the resolution mentioned above, the State of Virginia wrote a ratification statement upon giving her assent to be part of the union created by the Philadelphia constitution. The relevant part is as follows:
We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO in the name and on behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will. . . .
We here in Dixie do sincerely hope that the Polish people will heed those words of our Southern forefathers and be ready to resume their sovereignty from the European Union if it insists on actions that violate the EU Constitution. Deo vindice!