Fool Me Twice: The Folly of Secession

Posted by Amphictyon | April 28, 2010 at 5:27PM CST

In his April 26 truthdig article entitled The New Secessionists, Chris Hedges suggests that secession is all the rage in American politics. The secession leaders quoted in the article, from Texas and Vermont, suggest that secession is the only escape from America’s constitutional crisis.

In the first place, that crisis is nothing new; it began 150 years ago with The War to Enslave the States when Mr. Lincoln's shock-and-awe campaign under the direction of the mercantilists subjugated the formerly sovereign states and then, beginning in the Progressive era, set out on a century of empire from Hawaii in 1893 to Iraq and Afghanistan today.

I agree with Vermont secessionist leaders Thomas Naylor and Kirkpatrick Sale; it is time to end the federal government’s bloody imperial escapades. This case is trenchantly made by Stephen Kinzer in his book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq and is cast more light-heartedly but no less astutely by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin in their modern classic Empire of Debt.

I also agree with a second premise of Messrs Hedges, Naylor, and Sale – as President Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address warned, the Military Industrial Complex spelled the end of ‘democracy’ (as early as 50 years ago, politicians were already calling our constitutional republic a 'democracy'). We are now sliding post-haste in the Age of Obama to a brutal combination of socialism and fascism.

No political party under the present arrangement in Washington D.C. can possibly change anything; thus I also grant Mr. Sale's premise that electoral politics are useless at this hour. In my new book This Bloodless Liberty, I posit that America’s functional fascism (alliance of central government and corporations to extort and control the citizenry) must end now, and electoral politics are at most 10% of the solution, with the other 90% being citizen law-enforcement through the courts of the States, plus citizens pushing through our own reform legislation to take back the past century of lost ground, and finally cutting off the financial supply-line at the IRS.

Thus, granting the secessionists’ premises, their conclusion is both illogical and proven by history to be a fool’s errand. As an unreconstructed Texan, I smile at the delightful secessionist map featuring a resurgent Republic of Texas carved out of America's heart. Oh, that things were so simple.

Secession was folly for several reasons in 1861, and even more so today, tactically and strategically. While Texas is as culturally foreign to Vermont or Oregon as we are to Germany or France, there are several reasons for any constitutionalist and patriot (patria in its classical sense; one’s native region, sovereign State) to oppose secession.

AmericaAgain! is the practical, achievable, tactically powerful, potentially perennial solution to every problem raised by those who support secession. Its three tactical prongs can:

- Bring corrupt members of Congress under indictment in state criminal courts
- Eventually reduce federal revenues & powers by almost 70%
- Immediately amount to ‘family secession’ for law-abiding Nontaxpayers
- Restore lawful, gold-backed American currency (silver floats at market)
- Outlaw Federal Reserve currency after an initial transition period
- End the immoral practice of fractional-reserve banking
- Secure our borders and end the ‘anchor baby’ illegal alien tactic
- Enact term limits & end all perks for Congress
- Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment and outlaw any future tax on salaries
- Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, restoring the States’ control of the Senate

Secession is a mistake tactically, strategically, culturally and sociologically. James Madison and company originally designed a republic, for reasons that are more valid today than ever. To remain welded together for the limited purposes set forth in the compact, makes good sense; no other nation on earth could match America for a very, very long time if we returned to the Constitution.

If the federal powers are once again restricted to only those 17 enumerated in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, these sovereign States would then operate as a republic; a loose confederation of culturally and geographically disparate States enjoying safety as a foedus, a confederation. The restoration of honest, specie-backed currency, moral banking practices, honest taxation, and our Christian epistemological foundation would again make this the finest, most blessed nation on earth.

If a few million Americans become members of AmericaAgain! and begin to take action whenever it is called for against corrupt and scheming members of Congress, all of the People of the 50 sovereign States will enjoy the vastly superior strength of numbers, tactical intellectual resources, and liberty that attends rule of law under this Constitution.

It remains true that We The People are in charge. We are the apex sovereigns in the constitutional framework that is meant to hold the 50 States in union. Congress works for us, and its members are not above the law. Its revenues are skimmed from taxpayers’ checks. The tactical way forward seems clear.

I must admit that I do support one limited form of secession. As one of the estimated 67 million who are non-filers, I find that ‘financial secession’ is lawful, logistically simple, and – if undertaken after due diligence – deeply satisfying. For 11 years, my family has not financed the innumerable crimes of the D.C. Leviathan that are detailed in countless dystopian books of late. The Tax Honesty Primer found at http://www.taxhonestyprimer.blogspot.com outlines my experience in this matter, and compends my due diligence results to date on the issue.

However, there is far geater duty than financial secession; that is diligently enforcing the terms of the U.S. Constitution against our own members of Congress. Not for an election cycle, but for the rest of American history. This is the purpose of AmericaAgain!

If We The People pool our forces in every State of this union, right from our home computers in the largest distributed neural and spiritual network in history, it seems entirely feasible that we can divide and conquer the 175-year-old criminal cabal in Washington D.C..

This seems a far preferable solution than secession, to all of the stated grievances. Learning the lessons of history seems far preferable to repeating them.

I invite fellow Americans in every sovereign State to visit us at www.myamericaagain.org and add your voice and effort to ours. A new way of life; the end of politics and the beginning of informed self-government.

© 2010 AmericaAgain!