President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Update: This post is not a call to secession from America. Not even close.
Some readers have rightfully pointed out that my point, which was simply to have us explore how bad government would have get to lead an American to secession, was buried too deeply and too obscurely in such a long of a post. This post is far too easily read as a call for secession with my main point buried that far down.
But I finished it somewhere around 5:30 a.m., so I claim fatigue.
However I must admit that if the Supreme Court rules in an ObamaCare case that the government has an interest in my checkbook so as to tell me what products I must buy, a small rebellious flicker will be started deep in my heart.
It's an interesting theoretical topic. I hope you enjoy the discussion.
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This past Independence Day allowed for time to re-read the Declaration of Independence - the construct upon which America built her laws, politics and social aesthetic.
As I re-read it, President Obama and his shaky relationship with the document came to mind.
Recall his pre-inaugural speech in Philadelphia on January 17, 2009, when he asked for “a new Declaration of Independence” because America, as he sees it, is too small minded, prejudiced and bigoted to keep the original.
He later made a subliminal attempt to re-write the Declaration of Independence by citing its most important language – rights naturally endowed – only leaving out that they were endowed by the Creator.
If freedom didn’t come from the Creator, then freedom comes from the will of other men. That’s a far more dangerous perch for freedom, because if other men gave you your rights, other men can make a claim to take them away. Only rights endowed by the “Creator” are “unalienable.” The protective shield of naturally endowed rights falls apart if men can usurp rights by a claim of having given them to you in the first place.
Perhaps his view of man-made and not Creator-endowed freedoms is what makes the President think the government can control your discretionary spending by forcing you to buy a product of his choosing, namely health insurance that you may neither want nor need.
Consider his position – the government is claiming they may control your discretionary spending. In a very literal sense, the President believes your money belongs to the government.
It was the lack of monetary freedom that led to the Boston Tea Party, and similarly has given rise to the current version of the Tea Party.
While the sentiment of the first Tea Party ultimately led to secession from England, it begs the question of just how much economic freedom would have to be taken before the President, who promised “hope,” causes Americans such futilitarian lack of hope that they again think of secession. For if the government wins in the Supreme Court and is allowed to control your spending on health insurance, more command spending will follow thereafter, sliding us closer and closer to the “command economy” used by the despondent and dreary Soviet Union.
If Governor Rick Perry announces his Presidential candidacy, we will revisit the issue of secession from the union because he did in 2009 say that Texans might want to do that, even if they shouldn’t do it.
When the President and his partners in media bring up this issue as some unpatriotic part of Governor Perry’s soul, ask them why they dislike America’s founding document, as the opening of the Declaration of Independence reveals secession from oppressive government is also an entitlement granted by the Creator:
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.
While the first part of the Declaration of Independence sets firmly the American moorings of freedom and equality, the rest is a list of grievances against King George. Perhaps a decent yardstick to measure how oppressive government has become is to compare how many of the complaints about King George apply to the current administration. To wit:
King George: He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
President Obama: His administration sued Arizona to repeal their immigration law.
King George: He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
President Obama: He too has neglected laws to which he does not give his personal assent, for instance the Defense of Marriage Act , refusal to prosecute illegal immigrant “sanctuary cities” and failure to prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation.
King George: He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
President Obama: He is threatening to withhold Medicaid funding to Illinois if that state refuses to fund abortionist Planned Parenthood, in an attempt to force the people to relinquish their representation in the legislature, who voted for the defunding.
King George: He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
President Obama: He has appointed extra-constitutional “czars” who work outside the view of congress and the people.
King George: He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
President Obama: He has usurped the power of Congress by attacking Libya without following the War Powers Act.
King George: He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
President Obama: He opposed and tried to use influence against the legal appointment of Roland Burris to the Senate.
King George: He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
President Obama: His refusal to enforce immigration laws are an impediment to legal naturalization of foreigners, as illegal immigrants deplete resources, while his land grab of 2 million acres to block development allows less resources and living space.
King George: He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
President Obama: He has refused to follow Court Orders, and his administration was held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with an injunction of his oil drilling ban.
King George: He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
President Obama: He has yet to ignore this part of the Constitution.
King George: He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
President Obama: Even the Department of Education has a form of S.W.A.T. team who rough up citizens.
King George: He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
President Obama: His Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagen admitted she is not averse to using foreign law in making her decisions.
King George: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
President Obama: While not quartering foreign troops, he does nothing about incursion by Mexican troops and skirmishes along our border.
King George: For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
President Obama: Considering that Dominique Strauss-Kahn originally claimed diplomatic immunity for the crime he now insists he didn’t commit, perhaps the immunity needs to be reviewed.
King George: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
President Obama: The trade deficit widens, and when we do export more it is due to a weak dollar.
King George: For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
President Obama: Raising the debt ceiling so that future generations will pay back the debt despite having no vote in the matter is imposing a tax on them without their consent.
King George: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
President Obama: Despite the 7th Amendment, he wishes to pass limitations on lawsuits.
King George: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
President Obama: He continues the practice of rendition.
King George: The next 8 paragraphs are about heinous acts of war in which President Obama has not engaged (although President Clinton and Janet Reno have at Waco, Texas).
To even bring up the word “secession” one risks being labeled a kook, unpatriotic or an unrealistic reactionary to contemporary events and often that is the case. Not to mention that secession is illegal.
However, to concede that secession will never occur no matter how tyrannical the government becomes is to invite that very tyranny. Surely every American can think of their personal breaking point to approve of secession - a time when the government has so distorted America that our nation no longer is America.
To conclude, no better words on the subject of keeping secession as a weapon against oppression have been written than in the Declaration of Independence itself:
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
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Comments :
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Sure, we have a right and a duty to throw off this government. Through the ballot box. Let's take the shortest path from Point A to Point B, Tommy.
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
When the Supreme Court rules (very soon) that the Government may control your discretionary spending, do you suppose the Constitutional Amendment it will take to overturn that will be a short path?
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Tommy De Seno
When the Supreme Court rules (very soon) that the Government may control your discretionary spending, do you suppose the Constitutional Amendment it will take to overturn that will be a short path? · Jul 8 at 3:50am
Compared to secession?
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Tommy De Seno
When the Supreme Court rules (very soon) that the Government may control your discretionary spending, do you suppose the Constitutional Amendment it will take to overturn that will be a short path? · Jul 8 at 3:50am
Compared to secession? · Jul 8 at 4:00am
What if the effort toward a constiutional amendment fails be it by shenanigans or otherwise, and the government control of your capital increases?
Capitulation?
Feb '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Some of your comparisons, Tommy, are less than tenuous.
I am not sure of planting the seed now so that it will grow later is a foundational process or if it will attach the "kook" label forevermore.
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Isreal my intention is not to draw a mirror image and call for immediate insurrection.By far I'm not there myself.Rather, I am curious on your thoughts as to what conditions would have to exist to bring you to rebellion, if at all.Nothing in the the current state of America does that for me, but if the Supreme Court rules the President controls my after-tax discretionary spending, that will start the flame.Not a conflagration, but a flame.
Jun '10
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Unfortunately our government is stealing our livelihoods with its gross incompetence and abandon of any fiscal sanity. By eventually forcing our dollar down to worthlessness visa vie inflation due to the huge debt and no ability to pay it off other than printing money, each of us is being forced into slavery. When all that we work for and have worked for and saved is made to be valueless, than the governments of temporary politicians have turned us from free men with private property into serfs of the Lords of the ruling classes. A civil society is one of laws created by the people and their institutions. Was the dissolution of bankruptcy law in the Chrysler situation lawless? Was the use of TARP funds to make loans to GM and Chrysler by the previous President (specifically against their intended purpose) against Civil Order? When governments decide they can do whatever is expedient and useful no matter the future harm to the people, what then? The ballot box has been the answer. I pray it remains that way.
Aug '10
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
It seems to me you are confusing the natural right of revolution, of which the Declaration speaks, and a legal or Constitution right to secession, which the Southerners claimed but cannot be found in the Constitution.
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
At first I thought to myself, "No, that's not possible. There is no way that someone on Ricochet was actually making the case that seceding from the United States was not only viable, but a just cause."
So I went back and re-read the post because I surely must have been misreading it....
The notion that our country is so far gone that political remedies are unavailable to us and that the only course ahead is natural right to revolution or secession is complete madness. Madness.
If you recall the last secession didn't turn out so well. Not only was it unconstitutional, as the Founder of our Party argued at the time, it touched off the bloodiest war of American history that left nearly 1,000,000 people dead or permanently maimed. It was an unspeakable, awful, horror.
If you believe, as conservatives once did, that ideas have consequences, it is impossible not to recognize this argument as irresponsible.
If you believe, as the classical authors did, that the worst thing that can ever befall a people is civil war, then a moral man would never consider it as any option but the very last.
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Crow read it a 3rd time. No case for current secession is made. Save your contempt for civil war for Washington. His was a civil war where secessionists won. Who is more dangerous - you who tells the government rebellion never comes or me who warns it arrives with oppression?
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Tommy,
If I have misread or misunderstood, than I apologize.
Here was the chain of reasoning that lead me to my conclusion that you were making an argument in favor of revolution.
You started a post with Obama and King George and Secession in the same sentence.
The post went on to list the grievances from the Declaration of Independence line by line and a series of events from Obama's Presidency line by line.
The post concluded with a quotation from the Declaration that it is the right and duty to throw off such a government--"such a" being one that is guilty of the stipulated long train of abuses.
Now, I could conclude from the lengthy comparison of Obama to King George that you meant to quell any suggestion of revolution and that your comparison was designed to make an argument that whatever its faults, the current government is in no way one that should be subject to revolution, but it sure doesn't read that way..
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
With regard to your "who is more dangerous question"....I share Locke's opinion on this subject--which is to say, I acknowledge that, on very rare occasions, appeals to heaven are necessary in order to turn the ship from the course it has been tacking on to the slave market at Algiers.
So, I recognize Lockean right to revolution. What I don't recognize is that there is any semblance between our current state of affairs and one that would require violent revolution, or that there can be any comparison between Obama and King George via a line-by-line Declaration analysis that isn't necessarily broaching the idea that we should consider violent revolt an option.
Moreover, any case for revolution in the US today is necessarily, by geography, a case for secession. In the 18th century, Britain was a far off island separated from the United States by a vast ocean taking weeks to cross.
If an American state or any group of states were to declare themselves Independent today, unless it was Hawaii or Alaska, it would border other American states that did not secede, and between which there is no ocean to cross.
May '10
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Freedom comes precisely from other men. The only reason you've got freedom now is because the government assigns legal rights to you and protects those rights via the courts, law enforcement, and the armed forces. Otherwise, you wouldn't have freedom to enjoy.
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Crow's Nest, I was first a bit shocked when I read Tommy's post myself, but I re-read it more attentively and saw that he's asking a question, not calling for secession. He's asking, "What is the breaking point?" And "Is there a natural right to succession at that point?" You obviously know where I stand on the issue, but I think a thoughtful discussion of the sources of government legitimacy--and of the rich arguments, historical and moral, about the nature of the Union and the grounds for secession--are appropriate for Ricochet: After all, political philosophers have asked these questions and questions like them for a very long time, and the debate has engaged some of the most important figures in the history of political thought. As you say, these ideas have had very real consequences. So they are worth revisiting.
Jul '10
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
There is nothing in the Constitution that addresses the possibility of secession. But the Declaration of Independence is quite clear that it is the right of the people to dissolve their relationship with a tyrannical government.
In the absence of a Constitutional ban upon secession, I'll go with the Declaration: it is the right of the individual states to secede.
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Of course Crow's Nest is not wrong that my question was buried too deeply in too long of a post. This post is too easily read as a call for secession.
But I finished it somewhere around 5:30 a.m., so I claim fatigue.
I should amend it with the thesis up front.
It is an interesting topic. Nothing gives me the thought of secession, but I must admit if the Supreme Court rules that the government has in interest in my checkbook so as to tell me what products I must buy, a small rebellious flicker will be found deep in my heart.
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Claire,
I am enjoying the lively and provocative back and forth on this topic.
My thoughts on it are happening on different levels simultaneously. Here are those levels, from most public to deepest.
1) Perception. Tommy’s feed is on the main page. In the age of the digital public square, this is an argument that is being seen, and can be referenced, by many people and not just those on the right. What lesson do they draw?
2) Today's Political Atmosphere. Americans of all stripes are much closer on many subjects than they realize, but our rhetoric often loses perspective. No serious conservative is advocating a William Bradford plan. No serious liberal is advocating Saint-Simonism. In other nations, the far left and far right are much further apart than in America where the debate is largely within the liberal tradition (with a few notable exceptions).
3) Political Philosophy. What the highest thinkers teach us is beautiful, and needs to be defended in every age from debasement. Let us ponder them, with the text at our elbow. Don't dismiss thoughts that are out of season. But when you speak, don't forget the season.
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
"....a small rebellious flicker will be found deep in my heart."
Then hope is not lost, dear friend.
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Crow's Nest:
The notion that our country is so far gone that political remedies are unavailable to us and that the only course ahead is natural right to revolution or secession is complete madness. Madness.
No it's not. 51 percent of the population doesn't pay taxes anymore, expecting others to carry the burden. A huge... and growing... sector of our population thinks the government owes them a living. In practical terms, that means they think other taxpayers owe them a living. They're becoming the majority.
We're rapidly entering territory where democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. If that happens, what are the sheep supposed to do? Accept it? Leave? Leave for where?
One half of this country has very, very little in common with the other half. Civil wars have started over less. The author doesn't necessarily want secession or rebellion or a big national divorce. But he's not mad for suggesting that it's possible. Because it is.
Mar '11
Re: President Obama, King George, and the Right to Secession
Michael Labeit
Freedom comes precisely from other men.
Law comes from other men. Not the same thing, not by a long shot.