This is not the first time the United States government has been in crisis. Secession has played a successful role before... by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Thursday, April 29, 2010
I will assume there is general agreement that the government of the United States is demonstrating functional failure. A basic responsibility of a national government is defense of its territory and people. September 11th and the tens of millions of illegal immigrants demonstrates the government's failure in its primary responsibility.
But the failure is broader and more complete than simply defending the nation!
Trillions in debt, five major states approaching bankruptcy, and financial crisis prove an inability of politicians to restrain their appetite for government spending, while lacking the will to pay for their initiatives with corresponding tax increases.
The recent failure in the housing mortgage industry demonstrates a complete collapse of responsible leadership at the federal and corporate levels. Continued desperate poverty in certain areas including the lower South, rampant drug use, and rising crime all indicate a collapsing society and a failure of national leadership.
Maybe the most telling symptom of the government's failure is the Democrats complete lack of respect for parliamentary rules for the passage of laws. Desperate to force passage of laws, which have no basis in popular sovereignty as measured by majority approval, Congress threatened to pass new law through a process known as reconciliation.
But this is not the first time the government has been overcome by the challenges of life. However, our nation and the federal government seem to be doing less well with failure. The first time the American national government failed, the new states (formerly colonies of Britain) sent representatives to amend and fix the Articles of Confederation. When that could not be accomplished, the delegates decided to create a completely new governing document, the Constitution. To implement the new Constitution the thirteen states had to secede from the Articles and enter the union through the new Constitution. The people of each state had to make the decision. In the case of Rhode Island, it took two years to rejoin her sister states! Secession had worked.
The next time the federal government broke was in 1860 after almost half a century of disagreement, compromise, court decisions, and selective enforcement of laws. Just as the federal government today decides arbitrarily to enforce or not enforce immigration laws, so the individual states in the mid- 19th century decided not to enforce the fugitive slave laws, allowed conspirators to plot and finance slave revolts.
After countless attempts to resolve the issues, thirteen states, five Indian tribes in Oklahoma, and the Arizona territory all decided to leave the union. Each of these groups of people decided independently to secede. In Maryland that debate was cut short by Federal occupation of the state and imprisonment of some state legislators. In Missouri a US Army captain organized German immigrants into battalions and regiments to occupy Missouri! And in Washington, the Lincoln administration took unconstitutional steps to shut news papers, and arrest people without Habeas Corpus.
The actions which Hannity, Limbaugh, O"Reilly, and Glenn Beck condemn daily are mere repeats of what they laud in 1860 thru 1865. Therefore, the conservative talk show hosts are no better then their liberal opponents in championing the Constitution. It's merely a question of convenience.
For the citizens of America and for her children not yet old enough to vote and participate in the political process, it is important to realize that democracy is not perfect, that it requires constant nurturing. Most importantly, a democratic republic rests on the concept of the law inviolate. The law must be paramount...what is enacted by an agreed to process must be observed.
What America faces today, it faces because it chose to ignore its domestic problems in order to meet the needs of a world which had shed its collective responsibilities. It's been almost a century since the United States was forced to enter international politics through a world war. For one hundred years the burden of policing a violent world shifted from the British, and to a lesser extent the colonial European powers to the United States. America's ruling elite, ignoring the warnings of George Washington, rushed into the breach.
A reprieve was possible when the Soviet Union collapsed, but bad timing and the election of a boy President, followed by Bush II, robbed America of its healing time as a nation. Globalists across the political spectrum tore at America, dreaming up new global challenges whether it is Islamo-faschism or global warming. And for different reasons, right and left ignored the hemorrhage at the American-Mexican border allowing tens of millions of illegal immigrants to occupy America.
In the previous times when the American government failed, secession was the choice selected first by the thirteen original states, and by a large section of the nation in the second instance.
While I believe it may be possible to correct the failings of the government, I also believe secession needs to be on the table to keep the national leaders focused on the price of failure. The interests of the American people, her present-day citizens, must be paramount and unchallenged as the principle responsibility of the national leaders. Secession insures that reality.
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