Tuesday, July 21, 2009

State Sovereignty

Now that the Federal Leviathan is approaching the monstrous point of no return as it gobbles up and consumes everything in its juggernaut path - even as it is simultaneously going bankrupt - it seems that many of the states in the Union are waking up and once more asserting the historical and legal truths that:

1) the federal government did not create the states, but vice versa,
2) the federal government is the servant of the states, not the master
3) the federal government does not represent the people in the aggregate, but rather by delegation of authority from the people represented by the states through the Constitution,
4) the federal government's power is strictly limited and enumerated by the Constitution,
5) the federal government is, in many cases, operating entirely outside of the law - often through a collusion of the branches, sometimes empowered by the major political parties
6) sovereignty resides with the states, who delegate limited powers to the federal government in certain specific matters (enumerated by the Constitution),
7) the current federalist model is too expensive and too unresponsive to the people.

One of the stumbling blocks standing in the way of curtailing the monster is the mythology that includes the "one nation, indivisible," the outlandish untruth that the federal government created the states and that federal law supersedes state law, and that the states are subservient entities to a superior federal government - all shameless lies told to the American people by Abraham Lincoln in order to justify his illegal aggression against the seceded South for the purpose of conquering and colonizing the states - which incidentally includes all states, north and south.

Not only was there no "civil war," there was no winner - unless one wants to count the bloated federal bureaucracy. The losers of the war were the states and the people, north and south. That's the wrong that the Tenth Amendment movement is trying to right.

All of the states today, who are bearing the brunt of this historical and political falsehood, are now starting to tell the truth - an inconvenient truth for Big Government, for federal hangers-on, and for academicians who have made a career out of divinizing the dishonest and, in the interest of honesty, war criminal president who set in motion the current malaise and the contemporary consequences of the out-of-control federal monster that is threatening the union with ruination.

Will it be a little too late? Can the American people give up their notion that, when it comes to government, "bigger is better"? Will the defenders of Lincoln finally admit what this reprobate has done to our country? Can the union be saved?

Personally, I think the monster is too big. I believe it will break up as the Soviet empire did. I believe the only way to avoid this fate lies in the states asserting their sovereignty, and in the hope that the federal government will yield back to the states and not simply send in the tanks and warplanes. Hopefully, if American soldiers are ever again ordered to invade fellow Americans, commanded to lay waste homes, businesses, and churches in a rampage of rape and pillage - they will simply refuse such immoral orders and join the militias of their own states.

But just maybe if the state sovereignty movement gains enough steam, such violence can be completely averted, and peace and prosperity will once again be the hallmarks of a decentralized, freedom-loving, constitutional America. Maybe we can have our liberty by wielding the pen this time instead of the sword. The Soviet Union was disbanded peaceably. If the Russians could do it, how can we say the Americans can't?

In short, to restore the republic, we must first restore the republics.

2 comments:

Fr. Jon M. Ellingworth said...

Replace "federal government" with "synod" and "states" with "congregations" and the parallels are quite striking.

solarblogger said...

I think lurking somewhere in the minds of many is the idea that all decisions should be centralized because, "We absolutely can't allow for anything bad to happen anywhere!"

Personally, I would rather have fifty mediocre polities than one good one. That way, when things started to sour, I could always have somewhere to move. In the Reformation, the ruler of a territory decided on the state church. While it wasn't as good as true liberty, you could still vote with your feet.

Likewise, when you have only one polity, it is almost impossible to argue for improvements. "But who knows what would happen if we tried that! It would put 300 million people at risk!"