Secession rises as a real political alternative should Obama's socialist revolution come to reality!
Article discusses how secession helped to create our present Constitution and today's need to re-evalute this political option. by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Alexis d'Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America "The Anglo-Americans are the first nation who, having been exposed to this formidable alternative, have been happy enough to escape the demonization of absolute power. They have been allowed by their circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and especially by their morals, to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the people." Published in 1835, d'Tocqueville's work expresses his appreciation for a nation not yet fifty years old.
In his work, d'Tocqueville discusses a central challenge which faced the American government from its inception; the competition between individual liberty and equality. If liberty is present, equality in terms of material wealth or even political potency can never exist as each individual is given different talents and circumstances. But the more the whole moves to impose equality, the more liberty must suffer.
The present day debate over Obamacare is the present day illustration of the competition described by d'Tocqueville. Here, ostensibly equality of access to health care is a massive assault on individual liberty. Besides the fact that the central federal government would control between 15 and 20 percent of the nation's economy, it would also be in a position to control who can access health care, and establish priorities for who would receive how much health care. Even more of the individual productivity of each person would be forcibly absorbed by the government in the form of taxation.
Property rights have long been the test of real liberty. The ability to own property, to consume based solely on monetary wealth is in many ways proof of the freedom of a society. Therefore, an ever increasing confiscation of personal earnings and wealth by the federal government is one of the clearest signs of tyranny by a government.
The literal Founding Fathers of this nation knew the competition of which d'Tocqueville later wrote. On July 9, 1778, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation as the governing document for the United States of America. By design, the articles created a weak central government, leaving the real political power in the separate and sovereign states. In less than a decade the impotence of the Articles had caused sufficient troubles across the thirteen states that a convention was called to draft amendments to the Articles so as to address the most significant problems. But the delegates to the convention quickly realized the impossibility of the task and determined to draft an entire new constitution.
The result of this constitutional convention convened May to September, 1787 creating a new constitution with considerably more power vested in a federal government. In order to resolve the issues which had originally brought the delegates together, the central government was given the power to tax, and the power to regulate commerce between the respective states. But, the Constitution was seen as the document which transferred a degree of sovereignty from the respective states to the central government.
Now, a process had to be agreed upon as to how this new constitution would be adopted. A motion was made to allow the people if the United States, in one mass referendum, to vote on the Constitution. The motion did not receive even a second and was discarded. In the end, the choice would be left to the people in each state, through state referendums. The people of the states were thus left with three choices; they could remain under the Articles of Confederation, or they could secede from the Articles and either join the new the union, or remain independent.
Secession, the ultimate measure of sovereignty, was thus used by the 13 respective states to withdraw from union governed by the Articles. Each state than could consider its own course. While the right of secession was not mentioned in the new Constitution, the Tenth Amendment preserved the right of secession by reserving to the states and the people respectively those powers not addressed in the Constitution.
So, secession has already been successfully used when the people of the respective states determined that the central government was not acting in a way which best preserved and facilitated life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Secession is the ultimate right of the governed, and when available as a political choice, a real restraint on both the power of the central government and on the impulses of political majority. It protects the minority by recognizing an ever present escape mechanism should one or more states determine that the policies being adopted and imposed by the central government are contrary to the welfare of their citizens.
Most recently, the federal failure to execute its Constitutional responsibility to guard and control the nation's international borders, and its further refusal to accept fully the cost for the resulting needs of the tens of millions of illegal immigrants which have been allowed into the nation because of the sole failure of the federal government would never have occurred if states would have resorted to the right of secession in protest to the failure of the federal government.
As America continues to contemplate its future in the twenty-first century, I would submit that a re-evaluation of the inalienable right of secession could be useful in devising an American future which reflects the true values of the people of the respective states which comprise the union.
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Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2010-03-06 09:25:30
Hi Mark,
Are you actively working to bring about the secession of your state? Could you describe the constructive political actions you are taking in your community to cause this to become a reality in your state?
I'm trying to figure out if you are an individual who is pursuing this radical surgery or if you are part of a radical surgery advocacy group who stands in front of the hospital chanting and preaching for others to choose radical surgery because you think it is good practice but not because it is actually necessary or the correct choice for your state.
If you think it is necessary and correct for your state to leave the union I think it is important to understand your plan for causing that to happen. What should your neighbors do tomorrow? How about in the upcoming GOP caucus and assembly or primary? How about between the primary and the November election. What is the most constructive, productive path towards secession?
Secession has consequences for individuals. Will your family be able to visit you easily? Will your children be free to seek prosperity in other states? What currency would the new country use? What would happen to your current wealth after secession? If your state doesn't have a sea port it would be wise to start trade negotiations with neighboring states that have ports. Will food be available after secession? How self-sufficient is your state? How many productive jobs would flee your state prior to secession? How would your state deal with immigration from other states? How will your borders be protected? By whom? From whom?
If you are actively pursing this in your state could you describe how you are addressing these issues when your neighbors inquire about joining your well laid out plan?
I've been reading a lot about secession lately but so far no single author has touched on anything constructive, productive, useful or even particularly interesting. Most appear to be passionate chanters and sign wavers with no plan and no consideration for anything beyond the adrenalin rush they get when lost in chant. They are typical Americans in that they think their passion, fear and faith can affect and attract others. They act as though they believe that when enough others share their fervor these desires will manifest in the real world without ever having to actually do anything constructive at all...just like the folks who will not be participating in the D or R caucus or primary in their states.
Answer to above. Secession is not presently generally accepted as a political alternative within the United States. I believe secession is a right, and possibly even a responsibility which could be the most effective weapon in ending federal dictates. Were secession recognized as a legal, practical, and politilcally acceptable alternative, the central government would be much more restrained in its attempts to socially engineer the American people.
It appears to me that everyday Americans feel that they have lost the ear of the politicos. The responsible are now the prey. The entitled, consumers of entitlements, having reached a critical mass and are now the main focus of the political class. The politicos pay lip service only on all levels local, state and federal to individual rights. Not so silent socialist anymore, Rinos and Cinos control the political process.
America is a society made up of complex mix of individual's and opportunists, capitalism is after all an economic system based on opportunism. Americans go about their daily lives uninvolved in government while at the same time hanging their citizenship hat on the Bill of Rights tree at the front door. They don't wear the hat around on a day today basis but they know where it is. That is the significance of the Tea Parties and the influence of a Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush only to name a few and the insignificance of political parties in relationship to individual rights.
My political awaking came as a result of a conversation at the age of 15. The conversation was with a very intelligent former original suffragette and a former Cleveland prosecutor , I say former because she was retired in her eighties. She made the statement that the “individual's rights must be subservient to the public as a whole”. I asked her where in the world does it say that in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Well of course the argument was on. My point is I guess that viewed through the lens of individual freedoms, Socialism is wrong headed and has no justification in practice.
American's in ever growing numbers are grabbing that hat as they go out the door. The existence of the Bill of Rights is a moral authority that exist no where else. The second amendment also ensures that these individual's are, if they choose to be well armed.
It is always important most of all to know your enemy. Progressives have been sucking the life out of our system for a hundred years in the name of fairness and equality, neither of which they believe in. If it takes secession to preserve individual freedoms. So be it and We don't need no stinking plans. They are always discarded after day one.
With all due respect in terms of your answer above to JFE, I am wondering where the actual answer is. He asked a great number of legitimate questions about a clear plan for secessionist states and governments and in a very political manner, you did not answer a single one of them.
I ask JFE to correct me if I'm wrong but it seems as if the central question of the comment is if you are one of the typical radical secession flag-wavers who stand in front of government buildings (or wherever) with signs chanting about the merits of secession who can never present any kind of cohesive plan or strategy for the nations that these states that secede become after they remove themselves from the central nation of America.
JFE asked a great many specific questions about how these states would make it all better and these are questions that I have asked a number of these people a great number of times. And as is the case here, I have never been given even one simple answer...not one. Only more rhetoric about how secession would take away power from the central government. But what would they do with the power?
It is really very basic. How would secession solve the problems that our nation is faced with now? And please don't give the tired answer that it would "take away power from the central gov't." The question is HOW, not WHAT.
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