Tag: indivisible

If At First You Don’t Secede …

So we did it once, secession that is, but the next time did not go so well for those who just wanted to live life THEIR way .. of course that time “slavery” was the excuse for not letting those 7 states go, EVEN THOUGH the Union slave states kept their slaves in bondage until the end of the war against southern independence.

Once the war was won by the Union and the Radical Republicans, the military districts set up ensured Reconstruction punished those who believed in the “consent of the governed” to put that ideal to rest and believe in “one nation indivisible”. It didn’t take, even after 100 years of economic hardship in the South, there is still injustice in the air.

Fast forward to 2021 and what have we learned? That a vast majority of Americans prefer safety to freedom. There is a lot of learning (and un-learning) to do in the years to come.

Tom Woods clarifies how wrong the state-educated Americans get the first secession of the thirteen colonies from the British Empire:

In school, we were told this: “No taxation without representation.”

Zzzzzzzz.

The real principles were more like the following.

(1) No legislation without representation.

The colonists insisted that they could be governed only by the colonial legislatures. This is the principle of self-government.

This is why a Supreme Court ordering localities around is anti-American in the truest sense. It operates according to the opposite principle from the one the American colonists stood for.

(2) Contrary to the modern Western view of the state that it must be considered one and indivisible, the colonists believed that a smaller unit may withdraw from a larger one. Today we are supposed to consider this unthinkable.

(3) The colonists’ view of the (unwritten) British constitution was that Parliament could legislate only in those areas that had traditionally been within the purview of the British government. Customary practice was the test of constitutionality. The Parliament’s view, on the other hand, was in effect that the will and act of Parliament sufficed to make its measures constitutional.

So the colonists insisted on strict construction, if you will, while the British held to more of a “living, breathing” view of the Constitution. Sound familiar?

I think these are key .. because we all know the taxes AFTER the war for independence were higher than before the war (thank you George Washington and Alexander Hamilton). NO legislation without REAL representation .. and I don’t just mean voting!

.. and this whole Pledge of Allegiance propaganda that implies one nation, indivisible .. well that could only have been written by a socialist (here is looking at you Francis Bellamy). Only empires, communist states and democracies want the largest territories to be able to tax the people from, as when you run out of other people’s money, well then that is the end of that road.

As far as Tom’s point #3, well I align more with Lysander Spooner:

I don’t care how limited you make a constitution, at the end of the day it is still a piece of paper.

Now beyond this I call attention to Peter R. Quinones’ latest:

… What did affect me was watching people just roll over and take everything that not only the State was doing to them when it came to COVID-hysteria, but how people also backed down from neighbors who turned into COVID-Karens and COVID-Kyles. THAT made me re-think just about everything.

Up until then I thought there was a chance that in my lifetime 5-8% of people would get on board with drastically reducing the size and reach of the federal government. Now, I no longer believe that’s possible… using the same tactics as before. Society has proven that it wants to be told what to do when it comes to pretty much every single action in their lives. And libertarians are the people “diligently plotting to take over the world and leave you alone.” Barf!

I’ve come to realize that any message about increases in individual liberty and contractions to government must be accompanied by an equally powerful message of personal responsibility. Does anyone reading this believe that the majority of the population wants to take responsibility for their lives? I don’t. Then maybe this message of personal liberty and responsibility needs be accompanied with a detailed plan on how to achieve that. I know, I know, we don’t tell people how to live their lives. However, if you don’t educate them someone else will, and that someone else will most likely be the State. Do you trust the State to actually help people with this goal? ..

I don’t trust the state, no way, no how.

After the past 16 months, if you still do, I recommend you get some counseling!

So the path forward  includes the hard work of showing how keeping people on the government handouts is a recipe for life long servitude. It should not be a surprise how the 1960s Great Society blew up the black culture in the US .. how many black families have fathers in the home today? Not as many as they did in the 1950s.

Well, it is apparent this last go around that the US government wants even more dependent people sucked in to the state’s freedom prison. Do know that boxcars are at the end of every one of these utopian totalitarianism wet dreams. People need to understand this with their head and THEN believe it with their hearts.

I am sorry to say that churches don’t even give hope in this present trajectory, just like the 1st century Pharisees and Sadducees gave no real hope to the people, just more of the same as they allied with the state at every turn.

Grassroots one person at a time, keeping any groups very small and be on the lookout for infiltration from the state .. you can never be too careful with your circle of “friends”.

May this 4th of July inspire you toward the next real secession event here in the USA.

-SF1

America: Identity Crisis .. Did It Ever Really Have One Identity?

We have civil unions and then we have civil wars, am I right? What was one becomes two (or more) when trust is lost, fear of overt conflict (keeping the peace), lack of commitment, and avoidance of accountability which in fact are four of the “five dysfunctions of a team” in the book of the same name.

When talking about America, well first one has to understand that the whole TWO continents of North and South America were considered “America”.  But if we narrow this down to the British colonies in America, we still have to ensure that we are talking to just the thirteen colonies that decided to seek independence from a colonizing empire.

Once you understand this, only then can you see the birth of this republic was one that had thirteen different personalities! Thirteen sovereign entities decided to “federate” (join forces on a temporary basis) to push out or wear down the colonizing effort England had on these territories.

Each of the thirteen entities decided what government to have themselves first and joined at their own volition into a joint effort against the British.

What got me thinking about this was an article from Abbeville Institute which has been addressing this topic all year and since its inception in 2002. In this article they point out several important factors into the current identity crisis we are having in the United States of America:

Since our conferences in 2018 were on the coming apart of American national identity, it’s appropriate to the end the year with some reflections on that topic. After 15 states peacefully seceding from the Soviet Union in 1991, John Updike famously asked, “without the cold war what is the point of being an American?” A good question. Is American identity based on a historic self-sustaining culture, or has it been held together by the constant centralization demanded by War: the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria? War, Randolph Bourne said, is the “health of the state.”

War unifies, rightfully or wrongfully, since those who are not caught up in the patriotic spirit are indeed marginalized in this country. In other countries, that are more collectivist like socialistic, marxist or communist states, this can easily get you killed! What if our whole identity was held together by having a common enemy for 140 years, as I would add the war on the American Indians in the late 1880s as part of this?

What about the time before civil union led to civil war?

The Jeffersonian America that existed from 1776 to 1860 was not a unitary state “one and indivisible” as it was said to be after 1865. Just as the European Union is a federation of nations and not itself a nation, so the pre-Lincolnian America was a federation of sovereign states and not itself a nation state. The closest thing to a “national” identity were state and regional identities. Tocqueville said that in federating the states had not forfeited their distinct “nationality.” Everyone understood this.

People identified to their community and to their state:

An early 19th century New England poem reads:

Amy Kitteridge is my name,
Salem is my dwelling place
New England is my Nation
And Christ is my salvation.

After the civil war where the eleven states were terrorized back into the “civil union”, the effort was made to cement this union more permanently so that this would not happen again:

the America that emerged after the Union victory in 1865 did claim to be a unitary nation state “one and indivisible” from which secession would be unthinkable.

We are now, after the distractions of many wars and many enemies, face to face knowing in our heart that we are united in name only. What is to become of the “united” States?

the conflict between Red and Blue states is here to stay for the foreseeable future. A recent Reuters poll found that nearly a third of Americans believe some sort of civil war will occur within five years, and some security analysts issued similar warnings.

This does not bode well, however, we can learn from history.  The USSR dissolved into 15 republics, and our own history tells us of better times when the culture extremes were tempered with state and local sovereignty:

The only part of our tradition that has anything to say about these disunited Red and Blue states, and the mosaic of conflicting cultures that are drifting toward violence, is the founding Jeffersonian tradition (1776 to 1860) which worked quite well without being a unitary nation state. It was able to check the growth of central power because it was grounded in state and local sovereignty not the fantasy of “national” sovereignty. What is needed today is political devolution, division, and separation, not more unification and centralization. How to do this in a civil and peaceful way, in a country still under the spell of “indivisibility,” is a much needed national debate.

Unfortunately, at this time, it seems that dialog is not even possible as polarized as the factions in this nation are. To peacefully seek our own separate ways and yet hope for each entity to go in peace and prosperity is a very mature attitude. Can today’s society act mature? That is a tough question to answer. Maybe this nation has to go through some major trials and culture storms in order to emerge on the other end a bit more humble.

Time will tell.

-SF1