When
outrageous becomes the norm, we've already breached that much-touted tipping point and are now plunging headlong toward national suicide.
Despite the serial lawlessness, betrayal and incremental foundational self-destruction being perpetrated upon us by our political overseers, so many of us have either not noticed, not fully grasped the phenomenon, been stunned into compliance, or become inured.
Short on principled leaders and statesmen determined to faithfully defend our Constitution and absent an energetic and virtuous electorate--the very building blocks of a viable republic--an insidious and likely irreversible transformation of our way of life and governing principles is most certainly well underway. That said, one has to question if our Founders foresaw such changes and, if so, what would they have counseled?
Unlike the Articles of Confederation which established a "
perpetual union"--and we can all see how "perpetual" that turned out to be--the Constitution's more conservative purpose was to establish a "
more perfect union"--not perfect, but
more perfect.
Stellar students of history, our Founders understood that no compact/contract could ever be perfect or perpetual; that all compacts, if breached, are subject to the equitable remedy of
rescission (annulment), which, in the context of our voluntary compact of States, is equivalent to the concept of a State's
secession (withdrawal), the converse of a State's
accession (consent to join).
Of special significance, never once did our perceptive Founders view the "more perfect union" of States as "indivisible", a self-serving Lincoln-esque invention to justify the north's invasion of the south, or that our union, with or without a clash of arms, would stand the test of time. (In fact, contingent on their grudging consent to ratify the Constitution, and with nary a peep of protest from either Federalists or Anti-Federalists, New York, Virginia and Rhode Island, the latter which ratified the Constitution only after George Washington's election, explicitly reserved their right to
rescind/revoke their ratification, or, in other words, withdraw from the union, if they became disenchanted with the arrangement. Thus, the Founders--framers and ratifiers alike--never believed that withdrawal from the union would be anything but a principled, entirely lawful, natural, and foreseeable development.)
From the outset, and despite outrageously muddled revisionist judicial opinions, e.g.
Texas v White (1869), and decades of revisionist indoctrination following the deliberately misnamed "civil war", this compact of States, the United States of America, was understood by the Founders to be strictly voluntary. And like it or not, this voluntary union remains just that--voluntary. And no amount of revisionism or political correctness can alter that foundational truth.
Like in any contractual relationship, violations occur and conditions develop which render the original contract of no further use, benefit or relevance to one or more parties to that contract. Thus,
perpetual was never intended to convey permanence or immutability, but, like any contract, a temporariness dictated by the benefits derived from that relationship by the parties to that contract. (The Articles of Confederation is a good example of the realistic limitations of the word "perpetual" for, as we all know, the Articles of Confederation quickly outlived is usefulness and was replaced by the States and their citizens with a federal republic in 1789.)
Astute students of history, both the Framers and Ratifiers clearly understood that, over time, no man-made political system could successfully resist corruption, mutation, transformation and, yes, eventual self-destruction. In short, they understood that the historical constancy of change and mankind's need to painfully re-learn history's unpleasant lessons is as hard-wired as DNA itself.
For reasonably serious students of history, there is nothing especially profound about the foregoing observations, but in these perilous times of gargantuan national debt, a chasmic ideological divide among the electorate and its representatives, relentless violations of the Constitution at all levels of government, rampant lawlessness and habitual mendacity among our political leadership, and, yes,
crippling subversion of our political system and the country's cultural fabric from within, dramatic systemic change is not only inevitable, but is already taking place. In short, our rapid transformation from a federal union of States to a unitary corporatist-welfare state has been underway for some time now.
As for our
federal republic, or what little remains of it, let's remember that a citizenry's commitment to political union at ANY price is sheer folly. If our economic, social and political systems fail to adequately safeguard our inalienable rights and our representative form of government, then our adherence to that political union is not only short-sighted, it is breathtakingly delusional and manifestly suicidal.
Going forward, I can only hope that preserving our God-given natural rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness will be our primary concern. And when it becomes crystal-clear that the federal union has failed us, then from a practical standpoint our options are limited to either emigrating to other less offensive countries or relocating to those individual States within the current union where more fertile ground for constitutional and economic order exist.
Remember that NOT ONCE did any of the Founders in any way deny our fundamental right to secede or revolt. (Indeed, the venerable
Declaration of Independence, was our first successful act of secession and the American Revolution our first act of revolt.)
From the outset, our Founders soberly understood that the union's days were, indeed, numbered. In fact, most of them would have been unsurprised by the so-called "civil war", though they would have bridled at the north's lawless actions to prevent the south's secession. At a terrible price in American treasure and lives, and only by application of overwhelming military force--not virtuous adherence to founding constitutional precepts--was the north able to quash the legitimate southern secession of 1861. And, of course, the systemic legacy of that costly Pyrrhic northern victory has been nothing less than the relentless assault upon and substantive transformation of our federal republic into something very much at odds with the political arrangement our Founders had so carefully crafted and adopted. Why Pyrrhic? Because since the conclusion of the War Between the States, States have become vassals of an essentially boundless central government, something our Founders would have roundly condemned. (That said, however, it appears that most of us have accepted monarchical rule so long as we are able to effectively delude ourselves into believing that our union of States is still a "republic".)
To a man, our Founders would be astonished that the union today, a shattered copy of what was originally conceived, still remains at all. Thus, as said, if our best efforts fail to restore constitutional order on a national level, and if the electoral process continues to fail to restore the union as originally conceived, then the original compact among the States is, for all practical purposes, null and void, and has been null and void for some time now. Unsurprisingly, authoritarianism and, eventually, disunion are but natural consequences of the foundational disintegration we have been experiencing since the War Between the States.
Now more than ever, and in the face of insidious political correctness, ideological delusion, a widespread Pollyanna mentality, and pervasive historical revisionism, our foundational governing principles and rights demand our clear-headed attention and vigorous assertion if we are to successfully survive the political treachery which has befallen us. If we genuinely cherish those principles and rights, then it remains our duty to defend and advance them in any way we can. If history is any lesson, once lost, only the clash of arms can again restore those principles and rights. And in that regard, we can only hope that such a painful re-learning of history's lessons can be averted.
If we can prevent national dissolution by restoring constitutional order, all well and good. But, ALL appropriate Founder-sanctioned remedies to successfully counter the malignant deconstruction of our system of governance must be on the table. That said, my personal view is that, short of a miracle, the foundational deterioration of our republican-free enterprise system is so nearly complete as to render that corruption irreversible, the consequence of which is that the successful restoration of constitutional order on a national level is most likely unattainable. Not a Pollyanna by nature, I am, therefore, expecting the deterioration to worsen, but am both hoping and working to reverse this corrosive process. So, while I'm not throwing in the towel, I am refocusing on more realistic and achievable outcomes. And that is precisely what we should all be doing. But, for starters, we must all jettison the blinders which dangerously impair our ability to clearly see conditions as they really are.
So, to clear-eyed patriots everywhere: don't be overwhelmed into compliance by the lawlessness, double-talk, chicanery and propaganda spewed by our "leaders" and their minions; keep your eyes on the ball and be prepared for further painful and dramatic change. Very importantly, however, begin developing a workable plan to survive and prevail as Freemen. My suggestion is that we take careful measure of those States within the current union which are most likely to successfully succeed as independent republican states. It's always a good idea to know where best to relocate our families when the rubber really does hit the road.
Our choice is simple: weak-kneed, mindless submission to and continued accommodation with an alien order quite at odds with our founding principles
or a single-minded commitment to restore constitutional order--if not on a broad national level, then on a State or regional/confederated level. In any event, I can only hope that most Americans will clearly see the subversion taking place, make no excuses for it, and finally take appropriate action to reverse course.
Watching our republic slip into oblivion, I wonder just what it will take to rouse Americans from their stupor? What will it take to encourage them to take convincing remedial action to shake up the power structure and to actually resurrect the republic. I'm still wondering, and I'm still without an answer. I don't pretend to have the solution, but I do know that our doing more of the same, i.e. a little more than nothing, is solving absolutely nothing.
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"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world." A. Lincoln on the floor of the US House of Representatives, 1847. (Previous to his politically-motivated flip-flop in 1861)
"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." Amendment X of the US Constitution, 1791
"If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation...to a continuance in the union...I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.' " Thomas Jefferson
"...a breach of any one article [of the Constitution] by any one party, leaves all other parties at liberty to consider the whole convention as dissolved." James Madison,
The Madison PapersEvaluating Lincoln's beautiful Gettysburg words that Union soldiers sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination, i.e. government of, by and for the people, H. L. Mencken asserted that
"the Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.""If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." New York Tribune, 1860
The answer is to isolate and debilitate Obama. Cut him off at the knees.
If Obama recklessly carries out his threat to issue a sweeping and illegal immigration executive order, our congressional representatives--with tens of thousands of American patriots at their sides--must encircle the White House and demand his resignation! Such assertive, unified action will bring it all to a head one way or the other. This lawless Chief Executive will either resign or pull his lawless executive order. Chastened, perhaps he will then behave like a law-abiding President of the United States until his merciful departure in 2016.
In any event, merely chest-pounding and complaining will no longer be enough to stop the tyranny. Clearly, Obama's achieving his alien ideological goals--not upholding his oath of office or ensuring the Rule of Law--remains the menacing driving force behind all he does. A demonstrably serial liar and neo-Marxist, it is now time to stop him!
Congressional representatives should also use their bully pulpits by appealing directly to the States and to federal employees to ignore all such orders forthwith. Congress should also withhold any funding used to execute any illegal executive orders.
Better the temporary shutdown of a corrupt government than the complete collapse of our constitutional republic.
This is about so much more than simple-minded politics. It’s about safeguarding the doctrine of separation of powers and the very survival of our republic. If Obama–or any Chief Executive– is permitted to routinely get away with such brazen acts of lawlessness, the precedent, like a malignant cancer, will render the Constitution moribund and the Rule of Law an irrelevancy. We would, indeed, become a "banana republic". Are we really willing to accept that?
P.S. I understand the Constitutional Sheriffs Association is planning to descend on DC if Obama commits this crime. If so, then perhaps the Association can lead this effort. Sitting on our hands and hoping for the best or leaving it to fate alone is utterly irresponsible and suicidal.
"The most basic reason for a community or a nation to set up a system of government is to assure its inhabitants that the rights of the people shall be protected and preserved." Thomas Jefferson