State legislators in 2011 attended a WallBuilders conference in Texas for “pro-family” lawmakers. According to Rep. Lewis Moore, R-Arcadia, the idea for a States’ Rights Committee emerged from that gathering. Moore, who will chair the panel, said he approached House Speaker T. W. Shannon, R-Lawton, following the conference.
“I asked the [then] speaker-elect if we could put the States’ Rights Committee together,” Moore said. “When it came time, he entrusted me with it.”
Moore said the committee will be “nothing crazy.” The goal, he said, is to stop federal government encroachment into areas where it shouldn’t be happening.
“We’re not going to secede,” he joked. “The federal government gives us a lot of money, about half of what we spend in Oklahoma, but there is always a condition. Those conditions allow them to encroach on our state’s sovereign rights.”
Shannon, who also attended the Barton conference, told Oklahoma Gazette that he created the committee to ensure and reassert Oklahoma sovereignty.
“It is essential, as elected officials, that we look into any federal mandate and determine whether or not it is beneficial to the people of Oklahoma or if it infringes on the rights of state and local governments and individual citizens,” said the speaker.
‘Tinfoil-hat wing’
The committee has its skeptics. Among them is Brittany Novotny, an Oklahoma City civil rights attorney.
“T.W. Shannon’s creation of a States’ Rights Committee is a good signal that this year, the
biggest battle in Oklahoma won’t be between Democrats and the GOP.
Rather, it will be the ongoing battle between the business wing of the
GOP and the tinfoil-hat wing.”
Novotny said she worries about the ability of Oklahoma businesses to work across state lines.
“Businesses
are generally in favor of having more uniformity across state
boundaries,” she said, “because that allows more predictability in their
business and ease of interstate commerce.”
Others are concerned that the idea for it stemmed from a WallBuilders conference.
Barton, whom critics have roundly assailed for not being a credible
historian, suffered a public humiliation in August 2012 when Christian
publishing house Thomas Nelson pulled his book, The Jefferson Lies, from
publication due to multiple inaccuracies. The company told National
Public Radio it had ceased publication because “basic truths just were
not there.”
Brad
Raley, an assistant professor of history at the University of Oklahoma,
said his concerns with Barton are not about credentials. “Legitimate
historians don’t all have Ph.D. after their name,” he said. “My issue
with Barton is not his training but his product. It isn’t history. It is
partisan propaganda.”
Raley said Barton’s methodology as a historian is suspect.
“He
clearly approaches the past with his conclusions already decided and
then examines the documents,” he said. “Trained historians take the
opposite approach.
They
ask informed questions about the past and then examine the documents.
Also, he is — perhaps out of necessity — offensively selective in which
documents or facts he includes. That allows him to insist on that
pre-ordained conclusion but does not accurately or fairly reflect the
past.”
Shannon said he believed “opinions vary on Barton as a historian.”
The
speaker said Barton had very little to do with the idea that led to the
committee, although he likes Barton’s views on the foundations of
America.
“I have not
read Barton’s book and have no opinion,” Shannon said. “Regardless, the
need for our state to focus on our sovereignty is crucial to the future
prosperity of Oklahomans. My creation of this committee is in response
to concerns voiced by my fellow representatives and citizens of
Oklahoma.”
