John C. Calhoun was the original “Tenther,” the current slang term for Americans fearful of the power of the federal government.

Calhoun, the famed 19th century South Carolina politician and namesake of Calhoun County, is viewed as the politician whose militant advocacy of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution eventually led to the South’s secession from the Union and the Civil War. Calhoun was vice president from 1825 until 1832 and was a U.S. senator for 16 years after that.

Calhoun County acquired its name in 1858 when its previous namesake, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, began to have doubts about (a.) slavery and (b.) secession. Sen. Calhoun had no such qualms; the 10th Amendment trumped preserving the Union.

For the record, the 10th Amendment reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

What that means has been subject to debate over the years. “To say that the 10th Amendment somehow empowers states or gives them state sovereignty is just reading way too much into the text,” Steven Schwinn, a law professor at John Marshall Law School, told CNN. “The 10th Amendment just can’t bear that weight.”

Others see it differently.

While slavery is no longer the issue, ideological descendents of Sen. Calhoun’s are raising fears that the federal government is intruding in the affairs that, they say, rightly belong to states. With the election of President Barack Obama, the movement picked up steam. As Tenth Amendment Center founder Michael Boldin recently told CNN, “These really important issues ... were supposed to be left close to home.”

Since 2009, at least 37 state legislatures have considered non-binding resolutions that assert a state’s powers over the federal government. At least eight states have passed them. The latest came in late January, when the Alabama Legislature passed and Gov. Bob Riley signed SJR27.

Among the whereases in the Alabama resolution is a significant claim: “[M]any federal laws are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment.”

Similar language is found in other states’ 10th Amendment bills. Oddly enough, a Web search revealed last week that most if not all of these bills used the exact wording, an ironic development considering the bills’ assertion that each state is different.

None, however, spell out which federal laws are violating the U.S. Constitution. That’s too bad, because it would be helpful to understand the motivations of the Alabama lawmakers who approved SJR27 by a voice vote.

Is it Medicare, the federal government health program covering 1-in-6 Alabamians?

Is it Social Security, the federal government program for retirees and others that covers 1-in-5 Alabamians?

It surely can’t be the programs that allow the state to collect $1.61 in federal dollars for every $1 Alabama contributes to the national treasury, can it? If it were, those lawmakers would have an even tougher time balancing the state’s budgets.

Must not be the $180 million in Race to the Top federal education bucks that Riley is working so hard for. Riley, by the way, signed SJR27 on Jan. 22, meaning the whole legislative process was accomplished in a little more than a week. Now that’s a fast track.

Ian Millhiser, a staffer with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, sees a contradiction in 10th Amendment resolutions, writing that the narrow constitutional view of these states’ rights advocates is “fundamentally authoritarian.”

He added, “Social Security, Medicare and health-care reform are all wildly popular, yet the [T]enther constitution would shackle our democracy and forbid Congress from enacting the same policies that the American people elected them to advance.”

Of course, maybe our questions are taking the Legislature’s resolution too seriously. Perhaps it’s just window-dressing, a bone tossed in the direction of Alabamians suddenly shocked by a growing and more active federal government.

Of course, that trend didn’t start with Obama, and those officeholders who have tried to head the other direction have found stiff resistance from the voters. It seems Alabamians aren’t the only ones who like to talk about smaller government while resisting curtailing its benefits.

Bob Davis is editor of The Anniston Star. Contact him at (256) 235-3540 or bdavis@annistonstar.com. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/EditorBobDavis.