Would States Secede to Protect Their Citizens?
By Alan
Caruba
Many,
if not most, Americans are unaware that the nation is composed of separate
republics with their own constitutions. They are, of course, the individual
states.
“The
powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by
it to the states, are reserved respectively, or to the people.” – Tenth
Amendment
By
tying compliance with federal laws and regulation to receiving funds, the states
have been coerced to accept programs that limit freedoms enumerated in the
Constitution and the passage of Obamacare is but one example. Some twenty states
have refused to set up the mandated insurance exchanges. Obamacare grants the
government complete control over the provision of medical care that every
American has formerly received from the free market health system that it
destroyed. It gives the federal government control over our lives in terms of
who lives or dies.
As
noted on the website of the Tenth Amendment Center:
“The founding fathers had good reason
to pen the Tenth Amendment.”
“The issue of power – and especially
the great potential for a power struggle between the federal and the state
governments – was extremely important to the America’s founders. They deeply
distrusted government power, and their goal was to prevent the growth of the
type of government that the British has exercised over the
colonies.”
“Adoption of the Constitution of 1787
was opposed by a number of well-known patriots including Patrick Henry, Samuel
Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others. They passionately argued that the
Constitution would eventually lead to a strong, centralized state power which
would destroy the individual liberty of the People. Many in this movement were
given the poorly-named tag ‘Anti-Federalists.’”
“The Tenth Amendment was added to the
Constitution of 1787 largely because of the intellectual influence and personal
persistence of the Anti-Federalists and their allies.”
Their worst fears are coming true as
the nation heads into 2013. In just four years, the Obama administration,
through its profligate borrowing and spending, has brought the nation to the
brink of financial collapse and, as we have seen, the refusal of the President
to negotiate anything than the current Band-Aid to avoid the “fiscal cliff” for
another two months, has brought the nation to a point where the collapse of the
U.S. dollar is not just imminent, but likely.
When that occurs the individual
states may elect to secede in order to avoid having the federal government
nationalize their National Guard units or take control of their state police to
enforce whatever measures it might take to control the population. Individual
state law enforcement authorities in cities and towns would need similar
protection. Reportedly, massive amounts of funding have been directed to them to
ensure their cooperation.
It would be a means to protect their
citizens insofar as state constitutions grant the same rights as found in the
Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It would not surprise me to see Texas lead the
way. Others would follow.
You know things are bad when
historians like Arthur Herman, writing on the January 3 Fox News, says
that “Washington’s Republicans and Democrats alike have become the toll
collectors on the road to serfdom.” Citing recent riots in Argentina, Herman
said that “Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s
wealth get mugged by those who spend it—as just happened this week in
Washington.”
If the private sector manages to
rally this year, it may buy some time before the midterm elections in 2014. A
letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune summed up the problem
neatly. “Let's look at what we have learned from
this election: Twenty-one of
22 incumbent senators were re-elected, and 353 of 373 incumbent members of the
House were re-elected. The American people have re-elected 94 percent of the
incumbents who were running for re-election to an institution that has an
approval rating of about 9 percent. This indicates, as an electorate, we are a
nation of idiots. We're now stuck with the useless, dysfunctional government
that we deserve.”
The U.S. Constitution was written in
the wake of the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the first attempt to
unite the states for the common good of the growing nation. It is the product of
some of the finest minds, the most dedicated advocates of liberty, to gather in
one place at one time. It is the oldest, living Constitution in the world. It
was adopted on September 17, 1787 and ratified in June of 1788.
On December 17, 1791, the first ten
amendments—the Bill of Rights—were ratified. It is a list of
immunities from interference by the federal government and the
fears of the Founders are now being borne out by a government that is too large,
borrows and spends too much money, and has departments such as the Homeland
Security that threaten the rights of free speech, travel, and other freedoms.
Every U.S. citizen is now subject to government surveillance more typical of a
totalitarian government than one that respects and protects their personal
security and rights.
This is why the United States could
find itself in a rebellion that will rival the causes of the Civil War, itself a
state’s rights conflict in addition to the issue of slavery that had hung over
the Constitution since its ratification; an effort to “kick the can down the
road” the Founders agreed to in order to get it
ratified.
It is not beyond the imagination that
a deliberately created crisis would prompt individual states to withdraw from
the Union to protect themselves and their citizens, otherwise known as “the
people.”
© Alan Caruba,
2012
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