Six years ago I posted The Inevitability of Secession which laid out how it seemed that the wheels were fixin' to come off the Republic. Donald Trump - despite the insanity suffered by the left - gave a 4 year breather for this, by directly addressing the legitimate grievances of those most likely to leave the Union. Now with the Democrats back in the White House and Congress - and the insanity not one whit less than before - it looks like we're maybe going to accelerate into a great national divorce.
As with all divorces, it will be very, very messy. I have some thoughts on that for a later post but for now this looks pretty prescient.
(Originally posted 20 March 2015)
The inevitability of secession, part 1: Introduction
Chief Justice Salmon Chase was wrong. In Texas v. White (1869), he wrote the majority opinion on secession:
Chase was an interesting bird. He founded the Free Soil movement - "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men". It was an unabashedly abolitionist party, and reflected what was very probably the real cause of the American War of Southern Independence (the "Civil War" to you Yankees).
And Chase wasn't just one of the chief proponents of the political position, he was Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. One of the charges leveled at the post war Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals was that it was "Victor's Justice"; America had an 80 year history of Victor's Justice, dating back to Texas v. White.
And so secession was ruled illegal.
The problem, of course, is that it was only illegal because "Honest Abe" Lincoln determined that it was better that 10% of the military age population be killed or wounded in battle than a set of States should choose to leave the Republic. For a while, it worked.
For a while, the Fed.Gov demonstrated that it could deliver - more growth, more prosperity, freedom increasing through the 1960s. In 1969, the Fed.Gov landed a man on the moon. It was the high water mark of government legitimacy.
What we've seen since then is an intentional fracturing of the Republic, based on race, gender, and class. Political careers have been made for those who have done this - Al Sharpton is a particularly loathsome example of this, but he is by no means alone. Barack Obama may be the most successful of these, parlaying racial themes of guilt and offered redemption into two terms in the White House during which he has thoroughly politicized the Federal Agencies. Eric Holder was the chield law enforcement official in the land but ran the Department of Justice along racial grievance lines. If you have any doubts about this, read up on the New Black Panther Party, George Zimmerman, and Ferguson MO.
Obama reflected a small but well organized segment of society determined to fundamentally reshape society. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't turned out to be popular with much of society who overwhelmingly voted Democrats out of House and Senate seats - historical defeats for Obama's Democratic Party. The voters gave significant majorities to the Republican Party in both houses of Congress, because GOP candidates ran on a platform of overturning Obama's overreach on health care, immigration, and general weakening of the USA on the international stage.
So how's that working out for GOP voters?
But it doesn't really matter: it's clear that the citizens of this Republic will not vote themselves out of this mess. The Establishment is united - across both Parties - against the population which holds them in increasing contempt.
So if there's no way to vote in representatives who will represent the will of the People, what remains? It's hard to see any alternative to the country splitting into two or more parts that will eliminate the Washington D.C. Establishment as something that can impose unpopular laws on them.
Not everyone believes this will happen:
And so if reform is not possible, exit is the obvious result. The Republic has large parts what are tired of having a left wing ideology rammed down their throats - and an ideology that enriches Wall Street and the big banks, at that. These people have played the game the way it has been laid out, by the rules that were what everyone had been told were just - one man, one vote. And that vote clearly is a waste of time.
The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to 'be perpetual.' And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained 'to form a more perfect Union.' It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?Except the Republic did not date its governing principles to the Articles of Confederation, which were clearly a failure - a failure clear at the time, in fact. Instead, it dated to the Constitution. That was ratified by all original thirteen States, and it is clear that it would not have been ratified if the States hadn't thought that they couldn't leave if they had needed to. Indeed, the ending of the Articles of Confederation were essentially an act of secession.
Chase was an interesting bird. He founded the Free Soil movement - "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men". It was an unabashedly abolitionist party, and reflected what was very probably the real cause of the American War of Southern Independence (the "Civil War" to you Yankees).
And Chase wasn't just one of the chief proponents of the political position, he was Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. One of the charges leveled at the post war Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals was that it was "Victor's Justice"; America had an 80 year history of Victor's Justice, dating back to Texas v. White.
And so secession was ruled illegal.
The problem, of course, is that it was only illegal because "Honest Abe" Lincoln determined that it was better that 10% of the military age population be killed or wounded in battle than a set of States should choose to leave the Republic. For a while, it worked.
For a while, the Fed.Gov demonstrated that it could deliver - more growth, more prosperity, freedom increasing through the 1960s. In 1969, the Fed.Gov landed a man on the moon. It was the high water mark of government legitimacy.
What we've seen since then is an intentional fracturing of the Republic, based on race, gender, and class. Political careers have been made for those who have done this - Al Sharpton is a particularly loathsome example of this, but he is by no means alone. Barack Obama may be the most successful of these, parlaying racial themes of guilt and offered redemption into two terms in the White House during which he has thoroughly politicized the Federal Agencies. Eric Holder was the chield law enforcement official in the land but ran the Department of Justice along racial grievance lines. If you have any doubts about this, read up on the New Black Panther Party, George Zimmerman, and Ferguson MO.
Obama reflected a small but well organized segment of society determined to fundamentally reshape society. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't turned out to be popular with much of society who overwhelmingly voted Democrats out of House and Senate seats - historical defeats for Obama's Democratic Party. The voters gave significant majorities to the Republican Party in both houses of Congress, because GOP candidates ran on a platform of overturning Obama's overreach on health care, immigration, and general weakening of the USA on the international stage.
So how's that working out for GOP voters?
Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on Wednesday announced he is leaving the Republican Party.Can't really argue with any of that. And he's not the only one:
“I’ve made my decision — I’m out,” Beck said Wednesday on “The Glenn Beck Program,” his broadcast on TheBlaze.com. “I’m out of the Republican Party. I am not a Republican. I will not give a dime to the Republican Party. I’m out.”
The host said Republicans lost him with their inaction on both ObamaCare and illegal immigration.
“All this stuff that they said and they ran and they said they were doing all of these great things and they were going to stand against ObamaCare and illegal immigration — they set us up,” Beck added. “They set us up. Enough is enough. They’re torpedoing the Constitution and they’re doing it knowingly.”
Yes, Establishment GOP, you can teach us that you will always lie to us, stab us in the back, humiliate us and crush us; but if you teach us that, be aware we are learning another lesson, too. Not just that "The Establishment Will Always Crush You," but the lesson that There is no hope in any kind of conventional politics for those of us who want better than this Pile of Shit the two parties give us.And the mutterings have been going on for years:
1. Many inner-circle strategists in the Republican Party machine basically believe the game is over demographics wise. They’ve believed this for a long time. Call them the “We Are Doomed” Machiavellians, trying to make a barely-palatable lemonade out of some very nasty lemons.Salmon Chase had been a member of the Whig Party, which fractured under the strain of abolitionism. The Republican Party looks like it's headed for the same crack up.
2. Privately, personally, they probably agree with everything Richwine and all the rest have ever said. But it doesn’t matter, because, on the strategic time scale, we’ve already crossed the Rubicon.
3. Tactically, short-to-medium term, you could follow the Sailer Strategy and, maybe, squeeze out a few Revanchist wins for Republicans, but it would be counterproductive. The Cathedral (they don’t call it that, of course) would make easy hay of “the hateful white party” in due time, and it would go the way of the Know-Nothings in Boston – permanent obsolescence.
4. So, the best you can do, if you care at all about the long-term survival of anything like even a fake opposition party in out decadent democracy, is to embrace the Latin American / Texan model, an increasingly Brazil-esque society, but one in which, in some places, at some times, you can still get some Hispanics to feel fondly about and vote for the Republicans.
5. To do this, you must absolutely, positively, and, most importantly, preemptively cave to everything you think the Democrats could possibly leverage against you. Which, in practice, means being the volunteer auxiliary PC-enforcer on your own side. It also helps when you’ve got big business on your side.
But it doesn't really matter: it's clear that the citizens of this Republic will not vote themselves out of this mess. The Establishment is united - across both Parties - against the population which holds them in increasing contempt.
So if there's no way to vote in representatives who will represent the will of the People, what remains? It's hard to see any alternative to the country splitting into two or more parts that will eliminate the Washington D.C. Establishment as something that can impose unpopular laws on them.
Not everyone believes this will happen:
Secession was tried before in the US and it failed. If part of the US tries to secede, the Protestant-Hippie-Communist-Jesus types get offended and their blood lust knows no bounds. They were fine with the death of hundreds of thousands to prevent secession. Then they took property, installed new governments and destroyed local economies for the better part of a century.This time, it's hard to see a politician willing and able to sacrifice 10% of the military age population in a War of Secession. And so Chief Justice Chase's decision is more or less irrelevant. He had the legitimacy imposed by a victorious army at the point of the bayonet; the current Establishment doesn't have that and doesn't seem to be fixin' to get it anytime soon.
Secession in the US is only a long, drawn-out suicide.
And so if reform is not possible, exit is the obvious result. The Republic has large parts what are tired of having a left wing ideology rammed down their throats - and an ideology that enriches Wall Street and the big banks, at that. These people have played the game the way it has been laid out, by the rules that were what everyone had been told were just - one man, one vote. And that vote clearly is a waste of time.
Okay, then. But things will not continue as they have.
The right thing to do is often the hardest.
ReplyDeleteExit is impossible, and the idea is beyond retarded.
ReplyDeleteIn 1860, you had clearly defined geographic lines of fracture.
And even then VA lost 1/3 of its own territory, and the rest of the border states were similarly split and hamstrung.
You have nothing - absolutely nothing - as neatly and cleanly divided now.
Texas is going to wipe out Austin? Pfft. Sh'yeah.
Georgians will exterminate Atlanta? As if.
The rest of VA will obliterate the counties bordering on DC? Yeah, okay, pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
The whole country is purpling up nicely.
You simply can't have a secession when it would be the family on Main St. versus the couple around the corner, and the folks in Apt. 1B fighting with the guy in 3C.
Anything like Civil War 2.0 won't be North vs. South, or even city vs. country: it's going to be Bracken's Bosnia X Rwanda. Think Beirut, times 50 cities, and Hutus vs. Tutsis in 50 states. Even so-called "blue" states like NFY and Califrutopia are, at best, 60/40 propositions, and would be every bit as bloody an urban slaughter as you'd get if it was St. Louis versus the rest of Missouri, or Chicongo vs. Illinois. So who's going to secede from whom?
Nobody, that's who.
You might maybe could get North Dakota free and clear. Enjoy their balmy winters, kids. And make friends with Canada, fast. Otherwise it'll just become a reservation for white people, and the local Native Americans might take issue with that, just a bit.
Hawaii would go, for sure, but not towards you, but rather independence. Alaska too, although it'd be a toss up whether the next governor there was Anglo, Eskimo, or Siberian Russian. And Hawaii would be looking hard at becoming aligned or allied with Japan or China, in about 0.2 seconds, which probably wasn't in anyone's best interest beforehand, let alone afterwards, but Nature abhors a vacuum.
New Mexico would become Old Mexico in a heartbeat, and so would AZ, half of Califrutopia, southern Nevada, and more of Texas than you'd wish to part with willingly.
In short, fuggedaboudit.
The last time anyone had an escape plan this bad, Cleavon Little held a gun to his own head in Blazing Saddles. In a farce, it's funny; in real life, not so much.
You want to crack the mold, and think outside the box? Try the Free State project, but with a brain.
Dump 5M or so hard-core conservatives in California. You'd price the illegals out of the market, flip the state, the U.S. Congress too, vote the liberal @$$holes out by the metric f**kton, and the Democrats wouldn't win another presidential election this century, even if they shipped in cargo containers of ballots straight from China.
What've you got to lose? You're already bitching because Texas is turning into California. Why not turn California into Texas instead??
Imagine the shrieking the day pampered poseurs from Hollywood were faced with paparazzi toting AR-15s to the food court. Or passing a 200% excise tax on soy lattes and vegan cheeseburgers.
Stop pining for places to run and hide, and start looking for ways to shove reality up communists' noses (or a couple of feet south) until they cry for mama. Stop trying to build the castle walls higher on your little fantasyland fiefdoms, drop the drawbridges, and get out there and burn the weeds out of the fields instead. Stop wishing for a dreamworld you'll never get: grab the world you have by the throat, and beat it into submission instead.
That's America.
Since 1603.
You could look it up.
"it's hard to see a politician willing and able to sacrifice..."
ReplyDeleteThey are quite happy to sacrifice the cultural history of the Republic and destroy any chance of a 'mythos' that would serve as a unifying point for all the new immigrants from regions well beyond those of the founders, new immigrant who are 'our strength', as the left puts it. Obama was and is the worst of the Dream Killers.
Aesop, what makes you think I am advocating secession, or think it's a good thing? I'm not, and I don't.
ReplyDeleteBut things look the way they look.
1. Point: "This time, it's hard to see a politician willing and able to sacrifice 10% of the military age population in a War of Secession."
ReplyDeleteCounter-point: Kamala Harris.
2. Anyone who argues from the experience of the 1st American Civil War is a misguided thinker of limited imagination. What is far more likely to occur (if we let it) is a combination of Bosnia 1992/95 mixed with the worst excesses of the Maoist and Pol Pot governments from earlier in the 20th century being inflicted on variable segments of the US population by the US government itself. In virtually every neighborhood in the country to some degree, many of them repeatedly.
While Aesop enjoys his high from his incinerated strawman, we would all do well to continue to increase our capabilities to live our lives as best we are able, given the evidence readily discernable on the social and political horizon.
3. The concept of The Grey Man is one worth pondering.
ReplyDeleteFollow up point: Of all the 50 States that comprise the United States, only one of them is it's own independent, self-sufficient power grid (with existing commercial international contracts for natural gas and electricity in place). There's more involved in a Texas secession than people generally take into consideration.
https://thetexan.news/texas-state-rep-proposes-bill-to-allow-texans-to-vote-on-secession/
In CW1, Lincoln sacrificed 10% of the military aged males. CW2 will expand that to 10?% of the total population. The combatants in CW1 were Victorians with all those sensibilities about women and children (even in Missouri which was the worst). We are not and won't observe those conventions. Especially the Left which are the spiritual descendants of the Bolsheviks.
ReplyDeleteI warned you people about this back when we held at least some levers of power but got blown off. Now it is too late.
@Borepatch,
ReplyDeleteI don't think you're advocating it; I think the idea is ridiculous, and a catspaw for those who don't think very deeply.
The reasons for wanting it I completely understand, albeit those just noticing it are a wee bit late to the party.
But the necessary pre-conditions are totally absent this time, as even a cursory glance shows.
People are either going to try to "secede" mentally, hunker down, and do everything they can to de-couple from The State (Czechoslovakia from 1969-1999), on the faint hope that Leviathan will let them alone to do that, rather than pursue them into their deepest caves, physical or mental, like the Hounds Of Hell they are, and/or eat them last.
Or else, if they have the spine for it, confront reality, and start shooting the bastards in the face. We'll never be stronger than right now, and they'll never be weaker, so that would be the smarter course. The people soft-soaping it, publicly and privately, are quite frankly delusional idiots, with as much wit as the isolationists of 1938.
Lacking the spine, as most do, or the sense to see what's coming, most people will freeze, dither, and wait until there's no choice, no hope, and no chance, and be consumed, or else take to being good little apparatchiks like a duck to water.
The later possibility is both a likelier and far more fearsome state of affairs.
It's difficult to unplug everyone from the Matrix simultaneously, and try to explain their current condition to them, when they're relatively warm and happy, with bellies full of pre-digested baby food, and heads full of well-constructed and beloved illusions.
It wasn't just the Founding Fathers who were a better class of citizen 245 years ago. The average colonist of 1775 would've gone into the capitol looking to put some heads on pikes, not snap selfies. More's the pity.
Tell me, Aesop, how your country can hold together? Your home state of California is starting to look and run like Mexico. (Which isn’t surprising because it’s full of Mexicans). The Californian economy used to be about the same size as Canada’s. Now people are moving out as soon as they are able. Rolling blackouts and brown outs are common. Thanks to the Covidiots, small business is now impossible. As are the bigger hospitality, transportation and tourism industries. California is the endgame for America’s politicos now.
ReplyDeleteYour debt load is unsustainable. Your currency is going to fail. The foreclosures will start soon. Besides govt, the only industry your leaders will tolerate are food banks, flop houses, and soup kitchens. Your leadership also hates the cops and the military and makes sure they know it. They’ll be bankrupt soon.
Getting to your leaders themselves: most of them are elderly and in all seriousness, senile. None have run a business, or or worked for a living. Your president was a pedo. His son still is. His entourage is infested with incompetents, geriatrics, sexual degenerates and flat out criminals that would be in jail were they not protected by their status.
Just curious: how is your nation going to stand? It couldn’t hold itself together even if it wanted to - you can’t run a country like that.
Unless, of course, a Joe Stalin, or a Pinochet, or a You-Know-Who comes along and imposes order. Trump was your last shot at a unified America. In the days ahead he will be glad that he was ousted; because the troubles the Donks will have cased will tear the country apart... and hopefully some of those responsible for it as well.