Ugliness Is Not New

In Mike Lux's article “Calhoun Conservatism Raises Its Ugly Head” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/calhoun-conservatism-rais_b_283480.html) he points out that what we are seeing today in the behavior and attitudes of modern conservatives, like the outburst from Congressman Joe Wilson in nothing new. Lux rolls the clock back on politics in America and takes his readers back in time to 1780 where men like John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, debated the state rights over the federal government.
Calhoun argued that states should have the right to come and go into and out of the Union as they pleased. Calhoun also debated states rights to nullify any laws with which they disagreed. This well known Congress man from South Carolina was violently opposed to the concept of democracy and augured that civil liberties should be at the discretion of the states and was ready to start a Civil War to defend his position.
I would recommend the class read this article. It follows and reinforces key learning objectives of the course. The article reminds us that the outburst by Joe Wilson was not the worst thing that a congressman from South Carolina has done on the floor of the Senate. This article left me wandering - are we the United, States of America?

Read the article here.