State of Dis Union
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SECEDE & SURVIVE: Let's Dissolve the USofA by Carol Moore
Submitted by Carol Moore on Tue, 01/15/2008 - 12:50pm.
I'm back! After 4 weeks of probable walking pneumonia which my roommate brought back from an operation and overnight at the hospital. The hospital tried to charge his insurance company $42,000 just for the overnight, not including the operation! They settled for $18,000. But let's not start on the failings of our big government managed health care system.
Anyway, I've got a couple new articles cooking up on the stove, so today I'm just going to include some quotes from and a link to another article. The other day I read somewhere frenzied criticism of Thomas Naylor for not just talking about Vermont secession - but about dissolving the United States government. Hadn't the author ever heard of anarchism? Not to mention radical political decentralization? Well here's less than 500 words of retired Professor of Finance Michael S. Rozeff’s manifesto On Dissolving the United States published today. Enjoy!
The United States of America is a political union of fifty states and a federal district, commonly considered to be operating under the authority of the U.S. Constitution that was first adopted in 1787. The Union known as the U.S.A. was a creation of the then-existing thirteen states of the Union.
Lysander Spooner has provided ironclad arguments that this Constitution is an invalid authority for Americans of today. If that is so, and I believe it is, then no "legal" moves need to be taken to dissolve the U.S.A. It is already an entity that has no legal authority. In this case, the Union does not legally exist.
To demonstrate that fact and make it operative, however, requires that the Union be effectively shattered; and that requires the successful secession of any person or any political entity within the jurisdiction of the U.S.A...
I endorse dissolving the U.S.A. This does not mean that I endorse the 50 states or whatever political combinations of states result as a final ideal political system. I simply view that outcome, which ends the national (usually called the federal) government as greatly preferable to what we now have. Individual states could profitably break up too, but that is another matter.
The idea of dissolving the U.S.A. and its Constitution is not really as radical or extreme as it seems at first sight. The United Kingdom is on its way to dissolving. Majorities in both Scotland and England favor full independence for Scotland. The Soviet Union, in 1990-1991, dissolved into 15 separate states. Although this entailed some bloodshed, turmoil, and uncertainty over a 2-year period, it was by and large not at all a terrible happening. There was no major civil war anything like the War for Southern Independence. The aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union has certainly been largely benign as at least some of the individual states that resulted have moved in the direction of free-market policies that have benefited them. The progress of Russia itself has been far greater than when it was part of the Soviet Union...
What is the logical result of Union? Centralization of power and an increase in oppression and the likelihood of further oppression. If we do not think about dissolving the U.S.A. now, we will be thinking about it later when we, as did the citizens of the Soviet Union, begin to chafe and grumble at how bad things are. But why wait for those sad days that are nearing when Medicare and Social Security both fail, or when bombs are dropping on American cities, or when our roads develop even more potholes, or even more bridges collapse, or we find that our dollars are worthless? Why wait?
Dissolving the U.S.A. is becoming more and more an urgent and visible matter. Let us do a favor for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren. Let us place dissolving the U.S.A. at the top of our political agenda.
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While I agree that bigger is not better in politics, I don't think our "military enforced voluntary union" of states has been a complete disaster. There have been good things because of our Union. The IDEA of the USA did change the world. Our American Dream may have always been an illusion, but the core of our nation, the Constitution of the United States of America and the Declaration of Independence...that's great stuff! The problem is that since the Civil war this country has NOT been operating under the rules of the Constitution. We've been managed instead, as dept-slaves under "emergency/bankruptcy" status, in which our political and legal systems are actually operating under Martial Law disguised as Civil Law. The Executive Branch appears to let the Legislature and Judicial branches operate, but it's all a game of smoke and mirrors.
A quick read of the Constitution will make you feel like you're not smart enough to understand everything they mean. However, there are some very clear sections that are obviously NOT being followed. For example: Article 1 Section 10 states: "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;..." I
s there anything NOT clear about "No State...shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"? Yet we abandoned the Gold-Standard without Constitutional Ammendment, and handed over our US Gold reserves to the World Bank when they bailed us out of bankruptcy. In finance-terms, the state of bankruptcy/foreclosure is known as an "emergency." The Executive Branch is enabled by the Constitution to suspend the Constitution's power during a "period of emergency." We have been in this status since the Civil War.
But the Constitution of the United States is still a great plan for a well-designed government. Why don't we just try going by that and see if that works before we go the route of anarchy and destruction?
The constitution was written as an experiment and it has failed because Majority rule and representation inevitably lead to minorty rule. As I write at http://www.vtcommons.org/node/922 "Issues In Secession":
* Consensus-Oriented (or Super-Majority) Direct Democracy: Representative, majority rule decision-making, in small organizations and even more so in large ones and in government, leads inevitably to defacto minority rule by wealthy and/or well-organized elites and special interests who know who to elect, who to pressure, who to pay, to get their way. All the attempted and proposed tweaks couldn't fix the basic majoritarian/representative structural flaw, even if they could be enacted, which they cannot under current systems. Many libertarians dream of a society regulated by contract, but even such a society inevitably will encounter unexpected situations requiring democratic decision-making. And then there are the people who just love making decisions by committees, councils, congresses and parliaments. Learning and practicing direct, consensus-oriented democracy in our organizing will prepare us for creating them in our new political communities.