As the dissatisfactions of Americans with their national government grow, so does the likelihood of the breakup of the United States. I believe that most Americans can improve their well-being by ending the national government, that is, ending the Union. I believe that this goal should shape politics if politics is to do much good.
I don’t think Americans are going to be the first people in the modern era to initiate a large-scale anarchy. But Americans might conceivably move back to a federal form of government something like that under the Articles of Confederation. If so, the problem is how to proceed. Many Americans feel (and are) trapped and thwarted by government power.
I see two paths. Americans can do this either acting as individuals formed into a body politic of 300 million Americans or as 50 body politics organized by state. I think action by state has a better chance of success.
To act as one body, Americans would have to alter their Constitution. The divisions among Americans make this highly unlikely. Even if it were pursued, the results would be highly uncertain.
Yes, indeed. The key to success on a large scale is mobilization and activation. Individuals ranting and raving about wrongdoings are portrayed negatively in the public and only get a 10 second soundbyte on the evening news. They aren’t taken seriously and assisted in their dilemma. Why do so when they can be paraded about as a malicious Angry White Man or crazed Right Wing Fringer “bitterly clinging to their guns and religion” as the illustrious BHO would say. They don’t have much to say about their own dilemma because they are ignored by the larger system itself. Good luck trying to get your point across to a newsie. Even if you find a sympathetic ear, you can oh so easily have the entirety of your story demolished by editorial oversight. Far too many people with an ounce of power over something have an agenda to Lord it over everyone else. Just ask a Mall Cop.
Rozeff makes another good point that
A tax revolt that works from and through the state legislatures directly undermines the Union. It directly challenges the power of Congress to tax. That’s a far stronger political platform for restructuring the United States.
which is certainly true, but is a concept so far down the road to most Americans that they haven’t even thought that far ahead. Mostly, they are concerned with just trying to live their lives and minimize Government intrusion and tyranny into it, rather than proactively attempting to fix what is broken within it.
Outright secession is one political measure in a spectrum of possible actions by which one or more states stand up to the U.S. government. Nullification is another. Withdrawal from the banking system is another. A separate payments system at the state level is a fourth. Refusal to obey any of hundreds of U.S. directives is a fifth. The formation of alliances among states is another.
Rozeff makes some points of interest here and almost blows right by them. Secession is certainly an interesting topic of conversation these days. What with Governor Rick Perry making allusions to it (and being attributed to a lot more – wishful thinking on someone’s part) and more than just the local so-called rednecks (one of my local Border Patrol agents) riding around with ‘Secede’ stickers affixed to their vehicles. The topic has gotten to the level of interest in the mainstream that much of the opposition is scoffing at it as illegal. Well, we know what that means. As Gandhi stated, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.” Well if this is true, then the Secessionists are probably transversing from stage 2 to stage 3…
Nullification is another topic worthy of discussion. These United States are a collective of 50 individual States (as well as some Protectorates and other Holdings which aren’t quite “states”) which incorporated a Federal Government to oversee a very specific and limited set of Powers. The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights explicitly enumerate a finite list of Rights and privileges thereon. Now, the States authorized themselves an Out when it comes to laws that the Federal Government comes up with. Normally, the various states would be beholden to Federal laws, except whereby they are outside the scope of the explicitly delegated Powers of the Federal Government. Nullification is the Right of the state in question to nullify, or invalidate the Federal law because of it’s Unconstitutionality. This is a topic that most citizens don’t understand. However, it is something they really need to understand, because it goes to the heart of an overpowering and tyrannical Federal Government. When all legal means of redress are subverted, how does one seek satisfaction?
Next we have the topic of withdrawal from the banking system. This is yet again a difficult topic to discuss due to the vast majority of people’s misunderstanding of it. When you ask the man on the street about our banking system, he almost assuredly talks about saving and checking accounts. He thinks that the bank holds your money to loan to other people at higher interest so it makes money and can pay you smaller amounts of interest. This is a bald faced lie. Their are two types of banking prevalent to this conversation, Central Banking and Fractional Reserve Banking. The former is the macro system while the latter is the micro system. Central Banking in short, is ‘Money as Debt’ which is why we in America have a debt-based economy. It’s all about pushing debt around and debt management. You take on an amount of debt and pay it back with interest. That’s how money is made here. The problem with this is that the debt grows from interest and can never be paid back because their is not enough money in existence to pay it back. This eventually leads to bankruptcy of someone or something. On the large scale, the Federal Government doesn’t even print it’s own money! They buy it from the Federal Reserve through the issue of Bonds in the Bond Market. It is distributed in turn to the regional Federal Reserve branches and then to local banks in said regions.
Fractional Reserve Banking is where the real theft occurs. This is the kind of theft that the man on the street can wrap his head around because it doesn’t have an illustrious number of zeroes after it, boggling his mind. When I deposit $1,000 into a bank, they aren’t holding that money and loaning it to other people to make more money for me. Instead, through the miracle of Fractional Reserve Banking, they have just created more money out of thin air! Banking law allows the bank to loan out more money than they hold on deposit. That $1,000 in the vault means they get to issue “Lines of Credit” to everybody to the ratio of 10 to 1. There are several cartoons on YouTube which eloquently explain this better than I could.
Rozeff’s last 3 arguments are perhaps beyond the scope of this article, and quite a bit more in depth as to their requirements.
In short, the impending tides of turbulence can bring on any number of effects if the citizenry of the nation unites under their respective States to do battle with the Monsters in the Swamp.
