Unsolicited Punditry #7

Feel the Need, the need to Secede?


It has been coming to my mind more and more as of late, that the central government has grown out of control and has become a cancerous mass of politics. What used to be the binding glue of commonality between the states has evolved into an oppression of power run amok in our name’s sake. The people seem to have less and less of a voice as those who are in power are securing it more firmly than ever by creating a protective wall of courtiers in the government bureaucracy who wish only to continue their sense of entitlement to their current way of life. Our suffering does not matter as long as they maintain power. What used to be only a sensation only felt by radical fringes is becoming a creeping note of unease in the populace as a whole.

When Governor Rick Perry, stood on the steps of the Austin, Texas City Hall and reminded people that Texas may at some point feel the need to secede from the union, it was like a loud warning bell. Trust me, although people are trying to shout down this statement as the act of a crazed right wing radical, it is far from true. Governor Perry is putting into speech for the first time, from a respected office, a feeling that has long since been growing. After all, how long had secession fever grown in Colonial America with our founders wishing to shake off the shackles of Mother England? How many decades of the Anti-Bellum period of the US were there fights over who has the final say of how we live our lives in the form of states rights?

We have now entered our own second Anti-Bellum phase I suspect, where the stresses build and the players choose sides. The War on Terror not withstanding. We are seeing our economy collapse, with possible hyper-inflation to come. States rights having been trampled, realistically speaking, since 1865. The speed and severity of this trampling only increasing as time wears on. People who were once willing to get along with what was happening because it did not affect them, or, because they had had their senses dulled by the opiate of the masses purveyed by the media, are waking up.

What are they waking up to? Simply put? The end of their life as they know it. A consolidated central government that has franchised itself over states rights, forming a homogenous whole. You will no longer be able to “vote with your feet” to another state, for the laws there will be the same. You may be able to emigrate to another nation, but then the question becomes, who is better? Unfortunately, there almost is none better, evening this insane state of creeping oppression. Yes, we face a soft constriction of our lives to the oppression and total power of the central government.

You may ask, ‘what is there to fear?’ from this creeping ‘consolidationism’. The fears are many actually. If you disagree with a law that legalizes homosexual marriage or drug use or prayer in school, you will have no where to go. You cannot change states, you would have to become an expatriate because of this franchising of the American Way ™ over the whole land instead of allowing the 10th Amendment to take affect in it’s proper place. And of course, with a remote and insulated central government, you have very little avenue to redress your grievances. Much better paying and organized interests will be able to bury your voice without worry of reprisal. Your local authorities will be bound by central law.

That leaves the final response of the states, secession, as the only line of defense. You don’t like the way the federal government is oppressing your rights in violation of the constitution, you have to, as a population of a state, fight to leave the union. Unfortunately, precedent is not on your side, as the confederacy has shown. Although the factors then do not mirror the troubles and factors now. Secession is the final protest and threat of a state to the federal government: Change course or we will leave you, by force if necessary. I do believe we are rapidly coming to that point in some parts of this country, but we are not there yet.

To combat secession fever, the consolidationists will employ many tools to try and quash this natural flow towards the dissolution of the union. The first is already in play en masse: mockery. Yes, the traditional media outlets are in full discredit mode. They are mocking those who have the audacity to foist such statements. They are smearing character of those who even mumble such words as being treasonous, or lunatics devoid of all rational thought. They will get louder and louder as time goes by too till it is either clear that words alone will not stop people from saying it. This is the point when government will start criminalizing these words and crack down on those who push for redress of grievances in an effort to head off secession fever, at the cost of consolidated power. This will be the equivalent of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry or the Bleeding Kansas affair. They will push tensions even higher and more acutely drawing lines between friends and kin.

The question remains what would be the tipping point. That was given to me tonight by Jason Lewis in one of his monologues. The central government could dissolve any state legislature by declaring a state a disaster area and declare martial law. This I think is the key point. Trying to silence leaders of the rhetorical revolution will fail as it often causes a “hydra” like effect. For every one head cut off, two will rise. Same will most likely hold true if human character remains the same. But dissolving state governments with military force I think will be the point that goes to far. Of course a crisis of some sort will have to be manufactured or exaggerated. The willing accomplices in the major media will be all too happy to do this. They are the consolidationist’s mouthpiece. Like Pulitzer and Hearst before, they can manufacture a war out of pictures and their own elaborate exaggerations. The media are nothing if not experts at wagging the dog.

So here we sit, staring at the opening symptoms of what could ultimately become our next Civil War. What worries me the most is that instead of mirroring the American Revolution or Civil War, it will take its inspiration more from the French Revolution. When classes turned on each other with frightening ferocity, and the guillotine’s reign of terror fell heavy on all. Can we dodge such a result? Absolutely, but not until the American people stand up and take back the electoral process and political parties from the consolidationists and socialist radicals who wish to make us in Europe’s or even Asia’s image.

Those who stand on the founding principles need to fight to get back into the system they have neglected for other duties or desires. Those who see this attempt to pave over the constitution with consolidationist clap-trap need to be opposed at every turn. Their arguments debunked at even the local level. The fraud of benevolent socialism must be exposed for what it is. Run for local office, get involved in party politics, or if your party is abandoned to the consolidationist goals, join a new party willing to fight them.

If we do not stand up for what is right now, when will we ever be able to?