The topic of the breakup of the United States bounces around every once in a while. Often it’s a comic subject – as last year, when a Russian tycoon predicted we’d break up into six countries each aligned, conveniently, with a European or Asian power (or Latin-American “power”).
It’s been rattling about lately because of the newfound acceptance of what used to be Big-L Libertarian rhetoric, since the rise of Ron Paul. To a big-L libetarian, naturally, liberty comes before government.
We’ll come back to that.
Erik Black at the MinnPost has been writing a series of posts on “understanding tentherism”, which has been a useful, challenging exercise (and which deserves a more-detailed set of answers, but I haven’t had the time what with having to keep Minnesota safe from Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota and all). There was, naturally, no commensurate hand-wringing in 2004 over the wave of lefties who called for breaking the Blue states off to join Canada, but then apparently the left has a sense of humor about their own wackos that they don’t share with the right’s.
But I digress. Black says:
The more I obsess on it, the more convinced I am that Tentherism is the key to the biggest ideological divide in American political culture. It takes the perpetual argument about how big the government should be and how much it should do, and attaches to the adoration of the founders and the framers and the belief in the Constitution as our secular/sacred text.
Which is an interesting assertion, and one I’ll address in a future post.
But long story short, I think Black has things backwards. We’ll come back to that in a bit.
Black notes with the sort of shock that the left always shows when the subject comes up – feigned or real – that some conservatives are actually engaging in edgy rhetoric about the subject that must never be mentioned…:
Yes, secession.
If you think the civil war talk is crazy, did you notice that a sitting congressman, who is a candidate for governor of Tennessee, said last week that he hoped the next couple of election cycles would come out right “so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government?”
Hard to take that as anything less than an assertion that states have a right to secede and that if things keep going the way they are going, some states might exercise that right.
Monday that Tennessee guv candidate, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, said that if he is elected Tennessee will not secede from the union, although there was no takeback of the assertion that it could.
“Could” Tennessee, or any state, secede? We fought a war at least in part over the question once upon a time – but that’s really neither an answer nor the subject that interests me.
Black says “tentherism” is the key to our current political divide. I say it’s a byproduct of the real key.
And the real key to “the divide” in America today is one’s answer to these two questions.
First: To what does an American truly pledge his/her allegiance? To…:
A) America the physical entity with four million square miles of land, and its government with its capitol and it’s branches and bureaucracies and fifty sub-governments with their sub-branches and sub-bureaucracies?
B) Or is it to the one thing that created America – the idea of liberty, that we are all created equal, that we are a nation under a creator that endowed us with inalienable rights which no government has the legitimate power to take away?
How you answer that is “the key” to the divide. Is America the ideal of liberty? Or is it a government?
That’s the easy question, of course; plenty of people – especially those who see themselves as principled liberals or Liberals – will answer “B” almost by reflex.
Of course, there are not a few people out there who are solid “A”s – Pete Stark’s “the Constitution is irrelevant, and the Fed can pretty much do what it wants” outburst is the A-list version, but he’s hardly the only “government uber alles” activist among America’s suit class.
Still, Stark and his ilk are basically cartoons.
But there’s a second question.
If our government decayed to the point where it could realistically be said to have rejected the ideals that this country is ostensibly built around, and there is no realistic electoral or legal remedy, is it a citizen’s duty to…:
A) Suck it up and go along with it, because it’s our government, dammit, or…
B) Find a place and/or a means to re-instate those ideals, even if it means starting a new country that actually does enshrine what America really means?
That’s where the question gets interesting.
I’m imagining certain peoples’ answers even as I write this.
So if the United States’ federal government ever abrogated the Constitution to an extent that was utterly, unmistakably a thumb in the eye of the notion of the “government of, by and for the people” – say, if presidents stopped handing over power peacefully, or if one branch of government shut down one of the others – would the states (forget the people for a moment) have a duty to stay in the country if they had a better idea?
For purposes of this discussion, let’s stipulate that Barack Obama, as bad as he is, isn’t the greatest threat to liberty that ever existed – he’s not – and that the inroads the government has made on individual liberty and the states’ enumerated powers aren’t anywhere near the threshold needed to justify something as radical as secession, even if you do believe in the legitimacy of secession.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”
I think the words to the Republic for which it stands, and indivisible, pretty much says it all.
We have courts to decide the other issues, as established by the Constitution. If you really support the Constitution and the principles behind it, you support the courts making that determination, and do not advocate secession.
From my recent ‘day in history series:
<b."1861 American Civil War: the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution is passed by the U.S. Congress stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery."
The Pledge of Allegiance is not legally binding. Either are Congressional resolutions.
And you ignored my question; what if we DON’T have liberty and justice? What if the court system is dissolved by the Feds to get rid of the procedural speedbump?
What if “the courts” cease to uphold the Constitution?
THAT is the question: what if America ceases to be the America of the founders’ ideals – liberty, the rule of laws rather than men – and becomes just another authoritarian cesspool?
By the way – that graf about predicting what peoples’ answers would be? I got yours almost to the word! 🙂
“We have courts to decide the other issues, as established by the Constitution. If you really support the Constitution and the principles behind it, you support the courts making that determination, and do not advocate secession.”
Sorry, but no. SCOTUS is not the final arbiter on what the Constitution means. Scott v. Sanford settled that.
Of course, in that case, it was the electorate who stood up and said no, we are not going to allow the unlimited expansion of the evil of slavery, no matter what Justice Taney thinks. And then it was the advocates of said evil who attempted to secede. And then decided to start a war when not enough of the slave-holding states joined them.
We may see the sons of freedom attempt a secession. But I think it more likely that the sons of freedom will make a concerted effort to bring the government to heel, at which point we’ll see the left resort to violence.
I think it more likely that the sons of freedom will make a concerted effort to bring the government to heel, at which point we’ll see the left resort to violence.
I agree.
I got yours almost to the word!
I call foul. Guessing deegee would burble incoherently doesn’t make you prescient….
The left is going to resort to violence after campaigning for years for strict gun control? Ironic at the very least, suicidal at worst.
I’m in the “allegiance to principles” crowd, and I don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance without some serious modifications.
I’m wondering if any break up might be caused less by secession of individual or groups of States than the potential that it may arise from insurrection within the States themselves.
“at which point we’ll see the left resort to violence.”
If ever that becomes the case I predict that’ll be their doom.
“How you answer that is “the key” to the divide. Is America the ideal of liberty? Or is it a government?”
Without a doubt LIBERTY! WITHOUT LIBERTY THERE IS NO FREEDOM!
I think Black has this wrong:
If you think the civil war talk is crazy, did you notice that a sitting congressman, who is a candidate for governor of Tennessee, said last week that he hoped the next couple of election cycles would come out right “so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government?”
Hard to take that as anything less than an assertion that states have a right to secede and that if things keep going the way they are going, some states might exercise that right.
The congressman might have been saying something he didn’t mean but would gain him some advantage with a constituency (yes, politicians do these things). He might have been trying to push the rhetoric to a more heated level in order to call attention to some perceived grievance.
Any discussion of the 10th amendment must begin with the acknowledgment that the states preceded the federal government and were the creator of the federal government. They have a stronger claim to natural sovereignty, to being a nation in the Old World sense of the word, than the federal government, Black’s nattering about federal powers exercised in the Alien and Sedition Act notwithstanding.
Is secession possible in legal terms? Hard to say. Texas V White said that the confederate states never really left the Union. On the other hand, the states that had passed secession laws had to be “readmitted” to end reconstruction, and Texas V White was victor’s justice.
Is secession possible in practical terms? Anything is possible in the long run, but it’s grandstanding now. The feds have more control over state militias than do governors.
Darn that was good Terry; I like your take.
With all due respect, Mitch, Fortney Stark is not a cartoon. Congressman-for-life Stark is a living, breathing argument for either term limits or the expulsion of California from the Union.
Britain preceded the states too. At some point, what is new is what matters.
While I realize that the pledge of allegiance is not binding you asked, ”
First: To what does an American truly pledge his/her allegiance?
The pledge of allegiance is how Americans truly pledge that.
Your hypothetical of no Courts, including SCOTUS is so hypothetical as to make the rest of your argument speculative, and frankly in the context of any current discussion on actual or threatened secession specious.
While a resolution is not binding, it is pretty clear what the Civil War was fought to establish – no secession.
Dog Gone said:
“so hypothetical as to make the rest of your argument speculative”
How do people generally spell “duh” in your language?
It is being discussed by modern secessionists as an impending legitimate event. It is not legitimate; further, it is Un-American.
In a discussion awhile back with my colleague ToE, I asked him what the legitimate circumstances would be, per the Constitution, for revolution, as distinguished from sedition in a court of law.
His answer – the only circumstance in which such an action would not be treason, and sedition, would be if the revolution succeeded and completely through out the Constution and the established U.S. government.
I think he was perfectly correct.
Sorry that should have read ‘throw out the Constution’.
It is being discussed by modern secessionists as an impending legitimate event.
a) On the far fringe. Much farther out than those who were yakking about splitting into “The United States of Canada” and “Jesusland” six years ago, although more seriously (as fringers are wont to be)
b) Irrelevant. I’m discussing a hypothetical case.
It is not legitimate; further, it is Un-American.
Intellectual inquiry is unamerican.
Behold the modern Left.
ToE was wrong, BTW, and in any case with all due respect to him his expertise in the field is, to be charitable, unestablished. Most sentient Americans threw out “My country right or wrong” decades ago.
And the terms of his speculation are 180 degrees removed from mine, in which the Constitution starts out thrown out in all but name. To accept that as a prerequisite requires one to assume that government just might not be the all-beneficent protector that the left thnks it is (whenever Democrats are in control).
Try to step outside that box for purposes of this discussion.
DG: “so hypothetical as to make the rest of your argument speculative”
Troy: How do people generally spell “duh” in your language?
DG: it’s supposed to be speculative.
I don’t think that your example of GB creating the colonies is as apt a comparison to the states creating the federal government as you do, Dog Gone. For one thing, the creation of the states from the colony was revolutionary act, while creating the Union with the 1789 constitution was collaborative act.
For another the states have never assumed that GB’s sovereignty was subordinate to their own.
And for yet another Texas V White left open a pathway for the dissolution of statehood by revolution or by consent of the states.
Some years ago, back when the Iraq War was going badly, I ran across a post on a liberal blog that advocated states governors refusing to release their national guardsmen for deployment in Iraq. I made a fairly innocuous comment that during desegregation Arkansas governor Orval Faubus had ordered his national guard to assist him in defying a supreme court order. Eisenhower responded by nationalizing the Arkansas National Guard. For making this observation I was immediately labeled a racist.
Maybe I had stumbled onto Journolist?
Maybe I’m unique, but when I think of states, I think of physical places and things: Arizona makes me think of the Grand Canyon, deserts, dry mountains and cacti; California makes me think of the Golden Gate and Hollywood. Even the names of states that I’ve never been to call up images of specific places and landmarks. Yet when I think of the Federal government I think of achievements, like winning the 2nd World War or landing on the moon. The only real, physical places I associate with the feds are post offices, army bases, and a few lifeless monuments in DC.
Secession isn’t un-American. What’s un-American is assuming that the government run out of Washington, DC ought to remain regardless of the adherence to the principles of the Magna Carta, 1688 Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and U.S. Constitution.
I think it more likely that the sons of freedom will make a concerted effort to bring the government to heel, at which point we’ll see the left resort to violence.
Could this be why it is dimonrats who are pushing for conscription? Whoever controls the army, controls the populace.