by Austin Petersen
When in the course of human events…
Citizens from thirty out of fifty states in America have filed for secession from the Union. President Barack Obama‘s
petition website ranks Texas alone as having over 80,000 signatures.
Petitions receiving more than 25,000 signatures qualify for an official
response from the White House. The President is honor bound, but not
legally required to make a statement to citizens who are demanding that
they be allowed to break away and form separate sovereign republics.
When Benjamin Franklin
first began diplomatic negotiations with the British before the War of
Independence, he was undoubtedly on the side of the Loyalists. However,
as a long train of abuses made it abundantly clear that there would be
taxation without representation, self-written search warrants by
soldiers and the endangerment of American trade via British Imperialism
(If Britain were to declare war, all her colonies were at war as well),
Franklin decided it was time to separate and declare Independence from King George III. He was one of the last of the founders to do so.
Benjamin Franklin in Parliament
America was built on secession. After her
successful break from Britain, The Union was established to “secure
these rights among men.” The Constitution as it was written was a great
compromise at a convention built on guile and intrigue amongst America’s
founding fathers. The competing factions at that hall in Philadelphia
ultimately sowed the seeds for the partisan divide in politics we have
today. Federalists wanted a strong central government. Anti-Federalists
wanted none of it. The Federalists won and the Anti-Federalists
backstopped our liberties the best they could with a Bill of Rights.
These United States were born. We successfully seceded.
There was secession again in 1860. When
the many States of the South formed a compact, a Confederacy, to
maintain certain economic liberties as well as the practice of chattel
slavery. These Americans risked their lives for principles that were
right and for some that were undoubtedly wrong. Ultimately because of
their loss our nation became stronger in some ways and weaker in others.
For the price of freeing the slaves, we slammed shut the door that
would allow states to peacefully withdraw from a union they peacefully
joined.
We
do still honor the confederacy in this country. We do not honor those
men because of slavery however. We honor them because of their
willingness to sacrifice their lives for the spirit of Independence.
President Barack Obama acknowledged this when he deliberately laid a wreath
at the Confederate memorial at Arlington despite pleas from his
supporters to cease. He rightfully understood that the events of that
struggle were more than just one issue and that the 750,000 men who died
did not do so in vain. There were real ideas at stake in this war and
both sides had principles that were correct. Most of these principles
would remain when the wartime Income Tax was declared unconstitutional
and the US was placed on a gold standard for a short period.
Now, fresh on the heels of the presidents
reelection comes the wave of citizens petitioning for their states to
be independent. Doubtless many Americans are reeling from the
expectations of tax increases on small business owners, the
implementation costs of Obamacare and the long term effects of a $16
trillion dollar debt. Many of them are feeling desperate and without
options to escape the crushing burden of taxation, debt and regulations
inflicted on them by an uncaring federal government.
But, is it time to secede again?
No.
But it is time to talk about what it means.
The topic of secession is not uncommon in
DC socialite circles. It will often go to the American Civil War and
whether or not States should be added or allowed to secede. As a test of
the audience, I like to ask a simple question and gauge peoples
responses. My question I ask is, “If the State of California decided to
secede over federal drug raids or because they wanted gay marriage,
would you advocate that we roll tank into Sacramento?” If they say no
then I respond, “Then you’re a confederate.” And think about this: If
Puerto Rico, which recently voted in favor of statehood, were to join
the Union, and then four years later decide to leave; would you advocate
we invade and kill the citizens of that island? Some people do suggest
we respond with violence. Supporters of the President and his agenda
have launched their own petitions asking that those who signed a
secession petition be stripped of their citizenship. But why if you
believe in Union do you suggest those who wish to leave be stripped of
their rights? Are we to ship them off to Gitmo next?
Some secessionists point to the Declaration of Independence as their document that gives them claim to secession. The words are:
“When in the Course of human events
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of
the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature
and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.”
This
seems to give us the idea that we do have a right to alter or abolish
our forms of government and I would agree in theory. However, one
glaring problem with the Declaration is that it is not the law of the
land. As a legal document, the Declaration only holds weight insofar as
it created a temporary union to defeat Great Britain. It is not used
today as a legal document or precedent other than a symbolic one.
Citizens of the United States are descendants of the tradition of
secession, but the formation of the Constitution created a system of
positive law, rather than Natural Law that the framers instilled into
the Declaration. America is not operating under the Articles of
Confederation and thus the Declaration of Independence is not applicable
in this case. If citizens were to write a new one however, that might
be a different story.
Thomas Paine
But
despite all of this, should we retain the right to alter our government
or even abolish it? Undoubtedly yes. Thomas Paine once wrote “The
parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, has no more
right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to
control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of
the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to
live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must
be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the
living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases
to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any
participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any
authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government
shall be organized, or how administered.”
It
is sensible to understand that men who died long ago cannot bind future
generations permanently to a any set of laws or document. Lysander Spooner,
abolitionist and entrepreneur illustrated it in this way: If a father
builds a house for a family, can he compel them to live in it? If he
plants a fruit tree for his children to eat one day, can he compel them
to eat from it? Of course not. So then it must be understood that the
citizens of the United States can not be compelled to toil forever under
a constitution that is so obviously defunct in our modern era. Spooner
went on to explain in his treatise “No Treason” that:
“The
Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no
authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and
man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between
persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract
between persons living eighty years ago. [This essay was written in
1869.] And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between
persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be
competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we
know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then
existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to
express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those
persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now.”
Lysander Spooner – Abolitionist
But
if we are not to be governed under the constitution forever, what
should be our guide going forward? Paine and Spooner are correct in that
we can not forever be bound by one system of laws written by people
long gone. We must be able to adapt to change. The question is; Are we
stronger individually if we act as a Union, or would be stronger
independently as sovereign republics?
The
author of this piece believes that now is not the time for secession
despite the many usurpations of our rights we are currently suffering.
Having traveled from sea to shining sea of this great nation in the past
few years has convinced me of the individual benefits that we receive
as Americans to be able to travel freely from state to state. Growing up
on a farm in Missouri, living in New York City for eight years and now
in Washington D.C. for four, I have witnessed more beauty in one nation
than could ever exist in any heaven dreamed of. To secede might mean to
lose access to the wilds of New Hampshire should they shut us out. How
tragic would be the loss of Texas, or California if they refused to
recognize your citizenship from a neigboring state? Would we really want
to see them shut down and turn their southern border into a militarized
zone? Is that a vision of a peaceful future that we wish to leave for
our children? We need less walls not more. Now it a time for unity and
for us to resist tyranny, not retreat. The libertarian movement has a
saying we like to repeat from the Latin: “Tu Ne Cede Malis sed contra audentior ito“.
It means “Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against
it.” The citizens of America have a duty not to shrink away from evil.
We must proceed boldly against it.
Our
forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in
liberty. And though we have lost our way many times, we have also gained
many rights and privileges as well including the abolition of chattel
slavery and womens suffrage. From California, to New York City and
everything in between, we the citizens of the United States are blessed
to live in a free nation. If we have oppressive government then we
should not shrink away from it in resignation. Don’t give up the fight
for individual liberty and cede ground to the forced unionists who talk
of liberty but demand ever increasing taxation. A quick look at the
electoral map from the 2012 election shows that only a tiny portion of
this country is blue, the red far outpaces them in terms of overall
territory. You would cede ground to these tiny holdouts of
progressivism?
Only a very small portion of the United States regionally are dominated by Democrats
You
want to take your ball and go home and just give up on the rest of the
nation? What about the liberties of those people in your neighboring
states? Do they not deserve to be free of socialized medicine and
confiscatory taxation? Will you not stand with your brothers in arms who
are fighting the state through grassroots organization and peaceful
democratic action? Is the fight for America truly over?
No
friends. It’s not time to secede. It’s time to stand our ground and
fight for this nation from the forces of corporatism, socialism and
tyranny. It’s time to hold onto what we have and fight to make it more
free for our posterity. As we are grateful to our ancestors, so will
our descendants be if we give them a strong, unified nation built on the
ideas of liberty and peace. It can only happen if we fight for it and
work together across state lines. Even now, versions of the founders “Committees of Correspondence”
exist on the Internet. The first American Patriots established the
committees to develop communication networks devoted to keeping Patriots
informed. At the time their only method was to send letters.
FreedomWorks has established its own modern version through FreedomConnector,
which allows local activists to connect and work together. Citizens in
neighboring states can even come in and find their neighbors and help
them in their campaigns and ballot initiatives.
Also, why leap immediately to secession when there is a much easier option and one less prone to bloodshed? A growing Nullification movement is budding in the United States today. The founders gave us a powerful tool to combat federal tyranny in the Tenth Amendment. The Amendment reads: “The
powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.” This is a clear authority given to the States
and individuals to claim rights that are not written in the Bill of
Rights. The founders knew that it would be impossible to fully codify
all the privileges and immunities granted by citizenship so they left us
this powerful tool to fight back with. Already states Arizona, Idaho,
Virginia and Utah have passed legislation that declares certain
provisions of Obamacare null and void. The Governor of Idaho Butch Otter,
even passed legislation that required Utah to sue the federal
government if they are forced to buy health insurance. Look to the
growth of the tenth amendment movement as a sign Americans are working
to restore what was lost and that there is hope for the future.
Also individual citizens must begin to use more aggressively their right of jury nullification.
Jury nullification is when a jury acquits a defendant who is
technically guilty of a law, but who does not deserve punishment. It
occurs when a verdict opposed to the judge’s instructions is handed down
by citizen activists sitting on a jury. It has been used before and has
experienced renewed energy in places like New Hampshire, where a jury
recently acquitted a man for growing marijuana for medical uses. A single informed citizen sitting on a jury can have a more powerful effect than an entire house of legislators.
Tools
such as jury nullification, the Tenth Amendment and our committees of
correspondence are our modern weapons to fight tyranny without needless
bloodshed, or the loss of our country as a whole. The time now is to
fight and work together and to use these tools. It is not time to leave.
We must stand and fight. We must proceed boldly against evil.
However, if things change for the worse and we are denied the right of redress of grievances…
I reserve the right to secede.
No comments:
Post a Comment