Is an American Confederation in our Future?

(Written a few weeks before the Nov. 6th election)

I am anticipating that if Obama is somehow re-elected, his reign will be short-lived.

The train of executive abuses and excesses already perpetrated by this imperial president will not be tolerated for much longer.

Faced with the awful reality of an unbridled neo-Marxist at the helm, and at the insistence of millions of irate, fearful and demoralized citizens, I anticipate that Congress will be compelled to impeach and possibly remove him from office. Of course, this assumes that there is a sufficient number of "blue dog" Democrats in the Senate who value their country's future over Progressive ideology. On the otherhand, if Obama doesn't moderate, and if Congress fails to constitutionally remedy the situation, then other forms of resistance will be inevitable.

But, let's say Obama is impeached, but, which is more than likely, the Senate fails to convict and remove? What then?

There is precious little doubt in my mind that many millions of patriots will take to the streets and, eventually, massive marches on DC to curb federal overreach and profligacy will ensue. And if that too fails to rid us of the Obama and Progressive tyranny, then millions will likely resort to outright civil disobedience, and in State Houses the push for nullification and secession will be on the upswing.

The spark? The unbridled Progressive assault on the 2nd Amendment, the bedrock core of the Bill of Rights. Even a patriotic military takeover is not out of the question. And, of course, there is always the specter of a second American Revolution.

Frankly, to prevent the total collapse of the nation, I believe the people will insist upon impeachment and removal. We will be momentarily shaken by this unsettling development, but we will survive intact and, more importantly, we will be on the road to constitutional and economic recovery.

Clearly, this is a critical juncture in our nation's history, probably the most critical since Valley Forge. In the final analysis, we either restore constitutional order nationwide, or the union fractures, and rightly so. And given the deep and likely irreparable ideological divide which already exists in these "united States", perhaps the formation of confederacy of socialist republics on one side and of constitutional republics on the other will be irresistible.

Even without Obama and Progressive tyranny acting as a catalyst for such a dissolution, isn't this reordering of our political system inevitable anyway? I think so, and I think history is on my side.

When our learned and perceptive founders delved into political history to guide them in fashioning an efficacious system of governance grounded in republicanism, they essentially agreed that a republic is successful only when the polity is virtuous, yes, but also when the republic is manageable both in size and population. They well-understood this republic was an "experiment". And while they hoped the experiment would succeed, they were not delusional.

They understood that a large and excessively diverse & corrupted electorate would inevitably undermine republican principles and lead to authoritarianism and centralization, this in an effort to effectively govern; that, historically, the natural inclination of government was to expand its power and control. This, of course, would mean a unitary system of governance which would rely upon a one-size-fits-all formula, a formula which would prove to be inefficient, arbitrary and heavy-handed, and which would, inevitably, lead to tyranny, resistance and dissolution.

One way or the other, patriots will get through tumult IF we remain rigidly united and faithfully determined to safeguard our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Some Advice to "Secession Petitioners"

Historically, short of revolution or rebellion, secession is the ultimate practical check on centralization.

No branch of the federal government is empowered to decide upon the merits of a State's inherent right to secede. By its very nature, secession is an anti-federal act not requiring federal sanction.

Petitioning the federal government for permission to secede is self-contradictory and has no basis in English common law or American constitutional history. Secession/rescission/withdrawal is a unilateral action and is not dependent upon mutual agreement between the parties to that contract.

When one enters into a contract and the other party violates that contract, does one request permission of the offending party to withdraw from that contract already violated? Of course not. All compacts are subject to the equitable remedy of rescission in the event of a breach of contract. It's really common sense, basic contract law. It's that straightforward.

At its inception, the US of A was a voluntary compact (contract) of sovereign States, each retaining the inherent authority to rescind its contractual relationship with the federal government, the other party to that contract, should the latter violate the terms of that contract/compact. That contractual relationship hasn't changed, though the misnamed "civil war" may have led us to believe otherwise. (By the way, "civil war" means that two or more factions are militarily struggling over control of the central government; however, in America's so-called "civil war", the South was defending its sovereign territory, not entertaining the capture and control of the central government in DC.)

Force of arms alone by a revisionist, self-contradictory, union-at-any-price nationalist, that being our heretofore venerated Abe Lincoln, cannot--and did not--invalidate a State's inherent right to secede, or to otherwise rescind its ratificaton of this contract, no more than the federal government can legally or constitutionally annul the People's right to rebel in the face of tyranny.

Note: if secession were treasonous, which some maintained it was, why then were not southern leaders dragged into court following the North's successful invasion of the Confederate States of America? Easy. Because the North didn't want to lose in court what they thought they had won on the battlefield.

Perpetual union at any price was never contemplated or embraced by the Founders. Rebellion, secession, nullification, civil disobedience remain essential elements of America's republican fabric, and the threat or application of force on the part of the federal government cannot eradicate those foundational, inherent and unalienable rights of a free people.

When ratifying the Constitution, and only to the extent that it delegated certain of its sovereign powers to the federal government, not once did any State surrender its sovereignty. All powers voluntarily granted by the States to the federal government were very limited and very specific. All other powers not delegated remained with the States. The 10th Amendment enshrined that principle in the Constitution and, in so doing, reasserted the foundational principle that the federal government cannot unilaterally redefine the limits of its powers.  To join the union, the States were not compelled to surrender anything, much less their sovereignty.

And remember, we not only seceded from England, but also, one by one, from the Articles of Confederation (which was said to be "perpetual") in order to form the current union of States, a union which was initially comprised of but 9 States, the remaining 3 sovereign States freely opting to remain outside the union until well after the Constitution's adoption. This "MORE perfect union"--MORE perfect, NOT perfect--was not intended or expected to exist in perpetuity, but, like the Articles of Confederation, only until such time that the compact outlived its usefulness. Our Founders, studious historians, were not stupid men and well understood the corruptibility of men and all that man may devise.  While our Founders  hoped the union would be strong, free and productive, they did not view secession and dissolution as ill-conceived, treasonous or unanticipated. We've just been brainwashed into believing that secession and dissolution are vile, wrong, corrupt and treasonous. Not so at all. If that were true, then our Founders were charlatans and short-sighted fools. They weren't.

All that said, as a first step I recommend that States opt for nullification, the "rightful remedy" as Jefferson described it, to resist unconstitutional acts by the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Chief Executive and their myriad bureaucracies which now comprise the unofficial fourth branch of government. And to render nullification more efficacious, States should enact punitive laws to prohibit the enforcement of those federal acts nullified by the State. This is called "interposition", or a State's insinuating itself between intrusive federal authority and the citizens of the State. Interposition would actually require the arrest, trial and imprisonment of any State OR federal agent who attempts to enforce a nullified federal act. Of course, implicit in nullification is the threat of secession should the invasive federal government fail to retreat to contractual parameters. But, again, secession is not by its nature treasonous or unavoidably violent. Not at all.

Finally, while I sincerely appreciate the wave of secessionist sentiment sweeping the country, secession, a serious constitutional matter, requires a majority of a State's residents to support the act. Anything less than a majority constitutes a protest and nothing more. And even with a majority expressing its support for secession, the people's State representatives must be won over as well, this if the label of  "insurrection" is to be avoided and Art I Sec 8 Para 15 be invoked. Note: per Art IV Sec 4 of the Constitution, "on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)", the feds can be asked to intervene, whether that intervention is morally repugnant or not. Secession is a political act, not merely a feel-good act. Thus, on the subject of secession, both the people of a State and their duly elected State representatives must be one.

So, to the near one million well-intentioned petitioners around the country, this: without a majority within a State as well as State legislative support, secession is an impossibility. Great PR--maybe--but nothing more.

"The source of Lincoln's power was his willingness to exercise power not grounded in the orginal Constitution but in in his creative abilities to undermine the Constitution while rhetorically defending it."  Donald Livingston, "Rethinking the American Union..."

"The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The people alone, as we have already seen, hold the power to alter their constitution." William Rawles (1825)

What's Next is Up to Us!

Shattered by the disastrous presidential election outcome, at midnight last night I quietly and somberly lowered the American flag and replaced it with a defiant “Don’t Tread on Me” banner which will remain aloft for as long as alien ideologues occupy this nation’s capital.

Pollyannas take careful note: at best, the Republic is now in limbo. Not quite dead and buried yet, but not quite alive either. More accurately, it’s on life-support. So, on that score let’s stop deluding ourselves. If we are to restore constitutional governance, American exceptionalism and economic productivity we must all unite and fearlessly commit ourselves to patriotic a-c-t-i-o-n. No more excuses. No more waiting for it to take care of itself. No more whining. No more preaching to the choir. It’s too late for anything but active and constructive engagement.

Obviously, the “experts” grossly underestimated Obama’s well-organized political machine as well as the commitment of Obama’s utopian drones who, having bought into his false promises of  bread and circuses, mindlessly turned out in unanticipated numbers to sweep the Obama thugocracy back into power.

I could say we all get what we deserve in a democracy. Problem is I, like nearly 50 million other Americans, didn’t vote for four more years of corruption, mendacity and imperial rule. AND, of course, we are not a democracy. Our Founders fashioned a republic. Yet again, what the election does underscore is that the ballot box cannot always be counted upon to remedy our ills. (Gaza comes quickly to mind.)

Surviving four years of Obama was enormously challenging and draining. But, unless he genuinely moderates-- and there’s zero likelihood of that—patriots’ and the union surviving four more years of his “fundamentally transforming the US of A” is quite simply a bridge too far.

Today, our enemies, both foreign and domestic, are rejoicing. Iran, undeterred now, remains on course to developing its nuclear arms program, Russia eagerly awaits Obama's promise to be more “flexible”, however imperiled our national security will end up being. Draconian and debilitating cutbacks in our defense apparatus remains a clear and present danger. The shutting down of Catholic health facilities is more likely than ever before, further degrading our healthcare system. A Middle East cataclysm is now a near certainty. Nationalized heathcare is on course to rob us of life, income and liberty. The corrosiveness of crony capitalism and unionism will now be epidemic; class warfare will continue to be stoked by the Progressive neo-Marxists further eroding the bonds which hold this country together; the globalist agenda (Agenda 21, etc) will be fast-tracked; EPA invasiveness will be unchecked. Dependency on foreign oil will remain a costly burden on productivity. In increasing numbers, businesses will be compelled to close or to relocate overseas. As Obama promised, utility costs will “skyrocket”. Unemployment and commodity prices will continue to soar, ensnaring both drones and patriots alike. Gargantuan budget deficits will continue, and an already unsustainable national debt will further explode. Liberal political activists will replace conservative justices at all levels and the relevance of the constitution will be further diminished. And as in all tyrannies, federal gun control efforts will be redoubled. Hard to find a silver lining here, folks, but it's nothing any of us didn't anticipate.

So, what are we to do? What is our duty to family, community and country?

Short of open rebellion (for now), and barring a military coup d’etat to rescue the republic, the States, particularly those which are dominated by conservatives and traditionalists, should be immediately enjoined to earnestly and fearlessly nullify ALL federal usurpations, inclusive of judicial rulings and executive orders which do not clearly comport with the US Constitution or which otherwise violate the bedrock doctrines of balance of power and state sovereignty. And if that remedial action fails, what then? Civil disobedience and, without hesitation, secession.

The terrible price the robotic starry-eyed drones are willing to pay for their bread and circuses is NOT the price patriots are willing to pay. At least not this patriot.

Compromise and accommodation with a soulless alien ideology is no longer tolerable nor useful—not when our individual liberties are at stake.

Let the power elite be on notice. Patriots are uniting to defend their unalienable God-given rights!

Don’t Tread on Me!

Revisiting Secession: A Constitutional Check on Federal Tyranny

Regarding the nature of this hallowed union of States, Americans must never, ever forget how the Founders viewed this union and the States which comprise it.  

We must get past the adolescent, uninformed, politically correct and self-destructive notion that this union is inviolably indissoluble. This union is not indivisible and never has been.  To believe otherwise defies logic, commonsense and flies in the face of our founders’ understanding. Despite the relentless brainwashing over the years, a little honest research—without the blinders—is all that is required for readers to clearly understand the unassailability of a State’s right to secede.

From its inception, the united States of America has been a voluntary association of sovereign States. In truth, no States were coerced to become members of that association. The union is a contractual association, a compact of independent States, any of which may secede from that association should the other party to that contract, that being the federal government, fails to uphold its contractual obligations.  To wit,  as a condition of their ratifying the US Constitution, Virginia, Maryland and Rhode Island explicitly reserved their right to secede, and no objections from the Founders were raised. And, in accordance with the 10^th Amendment, because the Constitution does not prohibit secession, that power, like all other powers not specifically delegated to the federal government is reserved to the States.

No amount of revisionist history, lawyerly contrivances, political obfuscation, or otherwise misguided case law can nullify that fundamental truth. The judiciary is not sovereign and supreme. The States and the People are, and that is the way our founders intended it to be.

Further, without the approval of a duly-elected State legislature or, should it be impossible to timely convene the legislature, an invitation of the Governor, may force of arms  be applied by either the federal government or sister States to quell rebellion within a particular State or to otherwise impose the union’s will on any member of that compact. Because a misapplication of military force against a State or States may have been perpetrated in the past can in no way render that action lawful or constitutional.

To be specific, Article IV, Sec 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides that “The US shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” As such, it provides that the federal government shall protect each of the States of the union “against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the governor (when the legislature cannot be timely convened) against domestic violence.”

Extremely important to note is the admonition of James Madison respecting this federal guarantee: in Federalist 43, he stated that the authority of the federal union “extends no further than to a guaranty of a republican form of government”...and that “whenever the States may choose to substitute other republican forms, they have a right to do so.”

Conveniently overlooked by”nationalists”, proponents of a supreme central government, is the fact that during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison, father of the Constitution, expressed his revulsion with the notion of the federal government's committing armed force against any State for any reason outside that limited purpose clearly provided for in Art IV, Sec 4,  asserting that “a Union of States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction,” saying that “the use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war” and, to the party being assailed, “would probably be considered as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it was bound [to the union}.”

Thus, again, the only instance when the States or the federal authority may use force of arms against a State is if that State violates Art 4 Sec 4 of the Constitution, a provision which mandates that all State governments be republican in design. And only if a foreign entity has seized control of that State’s republican apparatus, thus rendering the legislature something other than duly-elected and/or the governor something other than duly-authorized, may the States and/or the federal government apply military force to bring that State back into compliance with the Constitution.

That said, with the acquiescence of Congress, it is manifestly obvious that Pres. Lincoln, for whatever reason, political or otherwise, overreached his constitutional authority by committing armed forces against  the seceding Confederate States of America in 1861, plunging this nation into one of the bloodiest and costliest wars in its history. And only by force of arms and a gun to their heads did the victorious North illegally compel the vanquished southern States to officially repudiate their inherent constitutional right to secede--which begs the question that if the States did not have the residual and inherent power and right to secede then why would they be required to renounce that authority?

 Asserting that the union was somehow indivisible, a concocted notion entirely foreign to the Founders, Mr. Lincoln, with much patriotic fervor, political fanfare,  lofty rhetoric, and faulty argumentation, brazenly flouted the constitution with impunity by violating the sacred right of those 11 sovereign States to legally secede from this voluntary union.   In truth,  the Founders well-understood that this union of States was never intended to be any more perpetual, aka eternal, than the confederation of States which preceded it, and that the union's survival was solely dependent upon both parties to the compact fully upholding their obligations under that contract.         

It should be remembered that when any suggestion of calling forth military force against a State was brought up in the Constitutional or State Ratifying Conventions, the notion of indivisibility was unanimously rejected by both framers and ratifiers alike. Irresistible and unavoidable conclusion: by plunging the union into war with the Confederate States of America, our childhood hero, Abraham Lincoln, was in clear violation of the original meaning, intent and spirit of the Constitution. In short, Mr. Lincoln, was dead wrong and our history teachers and textbooks have routinely and thoughtlessly foisted the myth of indivisibility upon generations of gullible children.

                  
In all of my research over the years, there has been no evidence that the myopic notion of union at any price was ever conceived of or in any way embraced by the Founders. In fact, there's considerable evidence that the Founders viewed the very concept of indivisibility as dangerous. The States’ inherent right to secede, to interpose, to resist an overreaching central government remains as unmistakable, unambiguous  and unalienable today as it was in 1787.  

For future reference, let that truth sink in. To safeguard individual liberty, constitutional governance, and the sovereignty of the States, the immediate fiduciary agents of We the People, if our resistance to tyranny must necessarily entail secession, then that rightful form of redress and resistance must be fully embraced and fearlessly acted upon.

If the clear choice is liberty or union, can there be any doubt as to a free people's choice? Of course not. And the Founders knew that very well.