The Case for Disunion
12. Feb, 2009 
8 Comments
by Joe Schembrie, LewRockwell.com
The Establishment Media is hyping the dire prophecy of a Russian professor that the United States will have a bloody civil war and “disintegrate,” after which the secessionist regions will be absorbed by other nations. The Establishment Media Moral: we must patriotically embrace our federal government or face horrendous consequences.
Certainly a full-blown civil war would be hellish. With modern weapons the casualties could exceed all our other wars. The disruption of food production and distribution chains in our specialized economy could trigger famine. To be imperially dominated by other nations could well mean the loss of our civil liberties.
However, our political establishment is playing a rhetorical game when it strives to link secession and civil war. There won’t be a civil war if we the people support a constitutional amendment to allow the fifty states of the United States to peacefully become fifty independent nations through voluntary disunion.
And why should we do that? Because unlike Alexander Hamilton in his parlor-game speculations known as The Federalist Papers, we’ve had generations of firsthand experience with the defects of federal government. We see today that every alleged benefit that Hamilton hypothesized for federal government has been perverted in practice.
Hamilton proposed that a federal government would resist foreign domination. In reality, our politicians prostitute our superpower military at every sufferance. We fought one world war to make the world safe for Imperialism and another to make it safe for Communism. Today our politicians bow to Israel, tomorrow possibly China.
Hamilton’s strength-in-numbers argument failed during the Cold War, when our military stockpiled thousands of nuclear weapons yet still feared a first strike attack. What if, though, Massachusetts had seceded with only ten warheads? Wouldn’t the Soviets have refrained from attacking sovereign Massachusetts for fear of losing ten of their cities?
Disunion would protect the planet from thermonuclear destruction. By consolidating our vast arsenal of nuclear overkill under federal command, however, we equip a lone fallible human to destroy civilization – a power we would not want in the hands of the wisest saint, and wise saints aren’t elected President.
We witnessed the crippling weakness of centralized command in the 9-11 attacks, when the Commander-in-Chief was too busy hiding to bother with scrambling interceptors. And if it can’t protect its own headquarters from airline hijackers, what does a superpower military protect us from?
Moving to economics, Hamilton warned in The Federalist Papers that if the states remained independent, they would enact high tariffs that would cripple prosperity. A federal government, he asserted, would promote free trade. That myth, of course, didn’t survive the first session of Congress.
With Congress as battlefield, every state wages perpetual economic warfare against every other state. Our representatives legislate national tariffs (and regulations, subsidies, and import quotas) to benefit producers in their home states by afflicting consumers in other states, and then compete for “pork barrel” appropriations that loot the national treasury.
As one observer remarked, the attitude of the Michigan automakers in seeking a federal bailout is, “You won’t buy our crummy cars, so we’ll make you pay for them anyway.” Under federal subjugation, the citizens of forty-nine other states must endure such exploitation with little recourse except vengeful reciprocity.
Hamilton also claimed the national debt would encourage the wealthy to “Invest in America.” Instead, politicians “invest” in their patrons at the country’s expense. Raise taxes to pay off debt, and politicians borrow more. Hamilton called the national debt a “blessing,” but aren’t state and local debts “blessings” enough?
Today’s federal government infringes citizen rights far more than did the British Crown of Hamilton’s time. Hamilton’s fantasies about the benevolence of an all-powerful central government may be excused as historical naïveté, but today anyone who insists the federal leviathan is other than maliciously imperious is either blind or bribed.
How can anyone not recognize the monster is uncontrollable, when governors must resign over petty corruption but a President deceived us into war and bankrupted the nation yet stood divinely unimpeachable – as if the ancient pagan ritualism that equated kingship with godhood never went away.
An America of sovereign states, whose governments are more human-sized, will dismiss egomaniacs who proclaim that a citizen’s “glorious duty” is to sacrifice in “full measure” to the Federal Imperium. Let’s abolish the Cult of Federalism, before our wannabe-caesars can extract more of that kind of blood-drenched “glory” from us.
Today it is our corrupt federal government that drags us toward collapse. Disunion will help us become more secure and prosperous, and affirm the ideals of liberty for which the American Revolution was fought. To accomplish this won’t require civil war – just a constitutional amendment, and common sense.
Joe Schembrie is a writer who lives in Bellevue, Washington.
Copyright © 2009 LewRockwell.com
If you enjoyed this post:
Click Here to Get the Free Tenth Amendment Center Newsletter,
You need to go further back then 8 years to see where it all started to go wrong. Why not try the 30’s and the New deal? Thats when the flood gates opened and the downward spiral started.
Had our people kept the government in check like they should have we wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m not sure making 50 seperate nations would fix things. I also disagree with the premise that Bush tricked us into the war on terror. We were looking for revenge and Iraq was just one of the places we went for it. My brother-in-law served in Iraq and trust me we did not get the full picture from the media on what all Saddam was doing. He needed removed period. We just were not prepared as a nation for what it would take to do the job right. Do I think our current federal goverment should be disolved? Yes, but, we need to keep our constitution and as a people actually enforce it’s laws.
No doubt that we need to go back further than 8 years – we’ve had some major problems in this country for a long, long time.
Mike – you’re right that the people haven’t kept the government in check. But here we are, with an out of control beast of a federal government. What’s the options to make it in line with the constitution? Other than elections, do you see anything that can be done?
Let me start by urging everyone to write to all sponsors of 10th Amendment legislation to thank them for their efforts. They need to know they have the support of the people. I recently wrote OK Senator Brogdon and received this reply:
“I cherish my country as well. I have been overwhelmed with support like yours on the 10th Amendment resolution, and the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Please stay in the fight for freedom with me! I want to invite you to go to my website at http://www.randybrogdon.com and sign up for the Newsletter, read my Blog and Contribute to the cause of Liberty. We can take our nation back one state at a time.
Randy”
Second,
The usurpation of states rights by the Federal government has probably been happening in baby steps since the time the ink dried on the Constitution but really took off after the Civil War. The defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War weakened states rights and greatly enhanced the strength of the Federal government. No many cared at the time because the Federal government still mostly observed the Constitution’s enumerated powers and didn’t meddle where it wasn’t explicitly allowed to do so.
The Federal government started to reach beyond its enumerated powers, with the consent and/or ignorance of the public with the New Deal. Then, like now, people were scared and very worried about the uncertain economic times and looked to the Fed for a solution. The Supreme Court was more active back then and actually declared much of the New Deal unconstitutional but FDR threatened to pack the court with Leftists if they didn’t agree to the New Deal programs and the SCOTUS backed off. Johnson took another great leap forward with the Great Society programs and still not many people objected even though by then the Constitution was becoming, to Democrats, a quaint relic of a bygone era.
We certainly are not helped now by the fact that our public education system is run by big government supporting unions with an interest in promoting government as the solution to all problems. The NEA is openly hostile to all things Conservative.
Not many people are calling for disunion or the creation of 50 separate states but rather that the people be free to live within each of the 50 states as they decide and not as the rest of the country decides. The Fed needs to return to its limited role as protector of the 50 states.
Liberals/Socialists love a strong central government because it prevents us from escaping. If we had 50 strong states within the union each with its own tax infrastructure, regulations, laws, etc, then the states would be forced to compete for the most productive citizens which, would have the benefit of keeping taxes low and regulation to a minimum. Some states could decide to legalize gay marriage, or abortion and others would decide to keep both illegal. Perhaps people would decide to live in a high tax state for the benefit of being able to marry their gay partner. That’s fine by me. I like the idea of people living where their beliefs are dominant. There would be a lot less political warfare in DC if the states were free to decide for themselves, “they” being the body of their citizens, what is best for them. I for one don’t want some latte sipping, cable car rider in San Francisco telling me how I should live my life here in Arkansas. We live in two completely different worlds.
And let me conclude by saying that all “states rights” legislation ought to be written to protect not just the states but the citizens of the states as well who are being run over by an out of control Fed. The gentleman from NH interviewed by Glenn Beck mentioned the imposition on the states of unfunded mandates but said nothing about the imposition upon NH citizens of a national health care scheme. If the citizens of NH, or any state, wish to not participate in such a Marxist plan then it is the states, via the 9th and 10th Amendments, who are bound to protect their citizens from this encroachment. Perhaps it was the short nature of the interview but I’m led to believe that the gentleman from NH would support a federal mandate IF it were funded. That is selective submission, or state prostitution, “I’ll do it as long as you pay me”. The states ought to push back against any and all federal legislation that is clearly unconstitutional whether or not money comes with the deal.
We still need each other’s support, but we need to each keep our own control. We can trade and share as we choose. Of course, if we don’t take the feds’ mandate, we can’t get their $, but I don’t think that’s worth much anymore anyway. I think Mel Gibson’s character in “The Patriot” had the right idea. This is a worthy cause, but is it worth the sacrifice? I personally feel like it’s the only chance we have to save what’s left of our once great nation.
A return to Constitutional government is certainly preferable to complete disunion.
I think he over states the extent of free trade which was between the States not with the rest of the world.
Monorprise – While my first instinct is to agree with you about constitutional government vs disunion, I’m curious about the WHY. Why do you believe that this would be a better option for our liberty, our future?