Magdeburg and Liberty, Continued

As a postscript to my earlier post, I want to comment further on a modern application of Magdeburg - focusing for the time being on the political rather than the theological.

The confessors of Magdeburg were successfully able to assert their liberties over tyranny partly owing to the decentralized nature of the Holy Roman Empire.  We live in a very different world today.  Beginning with the aftermath of Napoleon in the 19th century, feudal Europe's patchwork of ministates and microstates have given way to a movement of unification and the nation state.  By the time of World War I, this nationalized political makeover of Europe was largely complete.  After the Great War, the advocates of unification saw an opportunity to create a transnational League of Nations - an experiment that failed spectacularly.

Post World War II, (specifically, in 1957), the nation states of Europe created a free-trade zone called the European Economic Community.  In 1993, two years after the fall of the Soviet Union, this centralization gave way to the European Union.  As Nigel Farage and other "Euroskeptics" pointed out, this Union quickly began to take on the character of a state - which undermines the sovereignty of the member nation-states themselves.  

The EU has a flag, an anthem, its own currency and bank, laws, taxes, a vast governmental bureaucracy, and power over even the local laws of the member states.  On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom's vote to leave the Union ("Brexit") became effective, as the UK became the first (and still only) state to withdraw from the Union.  If and when such an exit becomes impossible - wither de jure by explicit prohibition, or de facto by threat of invasion - the transformation of the Union (which began as a simple free trade zone and common market) into a state will be complete.  And at that point, the member states will no longer be states, but provinces.  Brexit was a huge blow to this evolution.  The retention of the word "state" in a union in which a member cannot leave is a kind of nostalgic legal fiction that serves as propaganda to convince the people that nothing has changed - similar to the idea that Imperial Rome was still a republic.

The states of the United States are currently in this situation.  

In mutual defense of their effort to maintain their independence and resist invasion, the thirteen American states formed a confederation in 1777 (which was ratified in 1781).  They retained their sovereignty while operating under the Articles of Confederation - being a free trade zone and common market, as well as a transnational treaty organization devoted to mutual defense.  Beginning with the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the thirteen original states that banded together in common cause of independence were recognized internationally as individual sovereign states.  

Bucking the mission to tweak and revise the Articles of Confederation, the convention charged with this task wrote a new constitution in 1787.  In the debate about accepting the new constitution, two factions emerged.  The pro-ratification faction took the ironic name "Federalists."  Ironic because federalism means the retention of sovereignty at the lower level as opposed to creating a national state.  Many of the so-called Federalists were, in fact, nationalists who wanted to reduce the states to provinces.  And yet, they "sold" the Constitution - over the objections of the so-called Antifederalists (who were, in fact, the true Federalists) by arguing that the states retained their sovereignty in the new Constitution.  Their published, anonymously-authored newspaper articles urging the ratification of the Constitution were later published under one volume and called "The Federalist Papers."

Three states: New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island ratified the Constitution with the explicit reservation that member states could exit the Union, that they were not giving up their sovereignty.  There was no objection to this explicit reservation of powers - and the Antifederalists even had this reservation of powers at the state level written into the Bill of Rights (the 10th Amendment).

Of course, by virtue of war and conquest, we now think of the United States not as a Union but rather as a nation.  Our states cannot leave the way the UK voted itself out of the EU.  We are now what the EU aspired to: a single unitary state that trumps all claims of local sovereignty. Any state or local law can be voided by the federal government.  Our "states" are powerless even to regulate marriage according to natural law and the will of the people.  Our "states" may not implement murder laws for those who are still in the womb.  Our "states" may not leave the "Union."  De jure, they retain statehood; de facto, they are reduced to provinces.  De jure, the United States are a Union; de facto, the United States is a nation.

Ironically, the provinces (not states) of Canada have retained the right to put independence on the ballot - similar to the way the people of the UK offered its voters a referendum on Brexit.  Also ironic is the colony of Puerto Rico, euphemistically called a "commonwealth" - regularly has referenda on independence from the United States, a power that the full "states" no longer enjoy.

It is important to note that every tyrant in history seeks a grand unification and the diminution of local governance in favor of the higher level - often accompanied by expansionism and aggression.  This was done in modern times by imperialists like Napoleon, by nationalists like Garibaldi and Bismarck, by fascists like Mussolini and Hitler, by Communists like Lenin and Stalin, and by those seeking a transnational superstate like the founders of the EU and the bitter opponents of Brexit.  Those who seek to squash the liberties of the people realize that local autonomy and sovereignty, that decentralization and the right to interpose and nullify laws that come from above, are a speedbump on their grand plan of bigger and bigger government for the sake of control.  All attempts to wrest control from the higher magistrate and restore local authority is the spirit of the Magdeburg resistance of 1550.

Brexit should send Magdeburg a Father's Day card.