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The Civil War Didn't 'Settle' The Question Of State Secession

Posted by freedomforall 8 months, 3 weeks ago to Government
50 comments | Share | Flag

Excerpt:
"While the Constitution doesn’t address secession, it does have a provision that implicitly grants that power to the states. According to the 10th Amendment, “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.” Since the Constitution does not expressly deny the states of that power (nor delegate it to the central government), secession is reserved to the states.

Even by itself, the word “delegated” further substantiates states’ right to secede, by underscoring that the United States was formed as a compact of independent states — with “states” used in a sense that puts Pennsylvania on par with Mexico or France. Those sovereign states created the federal government to serve them, only granting the new entity powers that James Madison described as “few and defined,” while the states retained powers that were “numerous and indefinite.”

“Delegated” validates that the states are rightly the masters of the federal government they created, and should therefore be free to voluntarily exit the compact just as they voluntarily entered it. As historian Brion McClanahan argued in a 2015 speech, “Sovereignty can be delegated, but a delegation assumes the ability to rescind that power.”

Speaking on the Constitution’s 50th anniversary, former president and statesman John Quincy Adams said:

“If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred…far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint.”"


All Comments

  • Posted by term2 8 months, 2 weeks ago
    The federal government will NEVER allow secession, period. They didn't in the civil war period, and they wont now. It will be putdown by force, just as it was then. It will take revolution to stop the powers of the federal government and their military might. If the feds run out of money, revolution might be essentially painless as it was with the USSR when THEY ran out of money.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    There is only one reality. If there are differences in opinion about what is true then either all opinions are wrong or only one of them is right.

    It is fine to question things. Double checking knowledge is always good.

    There is the truth and then there is what we think the truth is. Those don't necessarily match. I don't think it is possible to know with absolute certainty if some truth is actually true. However, it is possible to get close. The reason why things don't work in the real world how they should based on logic is because there is some mistake somewhere. So, we should not altogether abandon logical discourse and its application to the real world. We should find where the mistake is and fix it.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    I think violence is allowed in self-defense, pending formal proof. So, if they try to 'tax' me, it is fair game. They would ignore me at their own peril. Of course, if I can't win I might just let it slide for a while.

    Otherwise yes, I can only hope they find my arguments convincing. Coercion is not allowed.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Today you have to deal with people who think truth is relative to your individual bias, rather than an absolute - not what I think, but many do. Scientists live to question proof, or new discoveries will never be made. What you say may be an academic truth in logical discourse, but the real world doesn't work like that.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Then you're content with being ignored. When change is needed, you need to have people listen. Your own words "make the believers believe in the truth," which implies (the word "make") convincing argument, coercion, or use of some kind of pressure if logic alone doesn't work.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    I work for pay that is voluntarily given in the free market. My customers are not state entities to my knowledge.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    I don't define truth. Truth exists and only needs to be found and shown to be true to everyone. One cannot deny a proof. One also cannot reasonably claim something true without showing the proof.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    The 'protection' 'afforded' by 'the state' is nothing more than a protection racket like with mafia. The question is how do we get rid of these criminals so that some non-criminal security service organizations could start taking over. One idea is to run them down by causing them to go to war against each other, but only in such a way as to keep the balance of power such that they continue to obliterate each other in an equal way until they are down to their last soldier.

    I would imagine once a critical mass of legitimate security organizations is reached, the system would attain a stable state.

    I propose a secret society that would engage in double espionage, false flag operations and such.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    The only reason for having labor camps is to force unwilling violators to pay back damages to victims and pay for legal costs and costs of their imprisonment. Once everybody is paid back, the perp would be released. There would even be a free market of labor camp organizations which prisoners may have a say in choice of.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Conflicts between security service organization would probably never happen because they would use the same law book. In the event that conflict does arise, they would go to an arbiter to resolve it peacefully because that would be cheaper. The only reason why they would need to use force against each other is if one of them is actually wrong about something. I would imagine this would never happen. I guess if one went rogue then maybe. In that case they would probably be overpowered by everybody else.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    The reason for illegal immigrants overrunning the border is twofold:
    1. they are getting paid by the state once they get here, the funds are involuntarily coming from local population of course
    2. their point of origin has states that prey on them which causes them to want to leave

    Once the states are gone, not many would want to move.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Humans are as individual as their fingerprints, so expecting them to awaken to your fantasy and become obedient followers of the "truth" as you define it is the well tread path of autocratic dictators down the centuries of human existence. The usual response to the disobedient is the use of force to compel obedience, and Utopia suddenly isn't so great.

    How do you exist now? Dependent on the labor of others, or do you support yourself?
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  • Posted by DrZarkov 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Some of your ideas could work. Abolition of borders is pretty much the situation we have now, and the result is not positive, because the state is trying to manage the process. English common law is the result of precedence based on legal debate, and seems to work as well as any other way. South Africa has more private security than state police, but the question is what kind of restraints on the use of force would be needed to prevent unending combat between opposing companies. Replacing prisons with labor camps reverts to the old southern chain gang operation, which did keep the roads repaired. Making the duration of labor camp time dependent on repayment of damages sounds logical, and sets goals for the offenders (I like this idea the best).

    The problem you have is how and where to create the opportunity for such a society without the protection afforded by the state. There aren't any places on the planet that aren't claimed by a country already, so it seems you either establish this new society by somehow overthrowing an existing state, or looking off-world on a privately built and supplied space station or colony on the Moon, an asteroid, or another planet.

    Reality sucks - we get that, but we live in the real world, not a fantasy academic vision.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    I have always suspected that there is something greatly wrong in with the idea of government/'the state'. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was until more recently when I have finally figured it out.

    I have come to a number of realizations that helped me resolve my confusion:
    1. morality exists without government. the laws decreed by the state can only poorly misrepresent what is actually right and wrong.
    2. human predation is the most important force in the world that is causing most of the problems; statism is predation.
    3. freedom is the opposite of slavery, NOT the rights and liberties guaranteed to individuals under the constitution; freedom is reciprocal interactions between members of society; non-reciprocal relationships are slavery.

    My vision for a perfect world is one that is final and universal. It is not democratic or authoritarian, it is not voted upon or decreed. It is scientific, mathematical, logical. My kind of anarchy is not just anarchy. It is the truth.

    My view is that humanity is guilty of extreme dumbfuckery. You guys think you are so smart and righteous. Nothing can be further from the truth. If not for your idiotic misunderstanding of the universe and your stupid behavior, you would have been traveling the stars by now and living unbounded lifespans.

    Here is what I would change about the world:
    1. bring about the abolition of 'the state', dissolve borders.
    2. allow laws to be derived with logic from universally accepted axioms by academia and the like.
    3. allow private organizations to provide security services / 'law enforcement' for profit in a free market, not a monopolist criminal organization that is 'the state'.
    4. get rid of no prisons and replace with labor camps, disallow punishment and replace with repayment of damages
    There is more but it isn't coming to me at the moment.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    As I understand it, statism vs anarchy is a different dimension of thought as compared to capitalism/individualism vs communism/collectivism. One can have any combination, authoritarian individualism, authoritarian collectivism, leaderless individualism and leaderless collectivism. Please don't confuse the two. Anarchy ONLY means no leader / no ruler / no master / total freedom. It says nothing about anything else.

    You appear to be setting up some sort of straw man, then proceeding to knock it down.
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  • Posted by nonconformist 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Definition of words is irrelevant now? Wow. How are we to understand each other?

    Define 'Utopia' for me. I have no idea what you are talking about. If you mean 'ideally perfect place' then I see nothing wrong with wanting perfection. Of course, I do understand that attaining perfection is not easy, but one can at least try.

    'Humans don't behave in the way believers think they should' - sounds like they believe wrong. This is easy to fix: just make the believers believe in the truth and not falsehood.

    You appear to be using some kind of fallacy to argue against me instead of using logical arguments. Which human behavior am I wrong about exactly and why?
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  • Posted by nanovation 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    I disagree. America was not "born to an idea". It was the outcome of the European people that settled this land.

    We were warriors with no fear and nothing to lose. We received no handouts, no welfare, no quarter, NOTHING!

    We left everything behind and risked our lives to come here and make a life out of the wilderness.

    Everything tried to kill us here: the elements, the wildlife, the Indians, etc.

    It was not an easy life and thus only the hardiest survived. The WEAK died or went back home.

    It is because of our European heritage and genetics and the fact that only the strongest survived, that made America the Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave.

    That is why the more people we allow to come here that are not of the original stock, the more diluted the American Spirit becomes and the less willing to die for our freedoms the country becomes.

    You really think a Pakistani is going to come here and FIGHT for freedom and liberty and be willing to DIE to preserve those freedoms when he has no connection to the land, the people, or the freedoms our forefathers gave to us?

    Why would he when the public school system and the Jewish owned media tell him everyday how the white people here are all evil racists that are holding him down and that the solution is to murder every white person he sees?

    I would postulate that what we see around us today all started when Lincoln flooded the country with immigrants so he could use them as cannon fodder against the Southern States.

    That's exactly what we've been seeing the last couple of years as Biden's puppet masters instructed him to allow in 100M illegals. When the time is ready, they will use those 100M illegals to murder us all.

    Prepare accordingly.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    Precise definition is somewhat irrelevant, given that you're correctly defined as a Utopian thinker. Utopias always fail in practice, simply because humans don't behave in the way believers think they should, and never will.

    Humans are social animals that function as best they can in a hierarchical structure. Anarchy is just a different form of Communism, as the desired end state of that philosophy is the withering away of any state structure, with all sharing equally in labor and the results of that collective labor, while Anarchy doesn't care so much about the equal part, as participants who don't contribute as much get what they deserve. It's supposedly a society made up of "lone wolves."

    The lone wolf picture is itself a fallacy, as the wolf pack is a very ordered structure with an alpha male and female at the top, and a pecking order all the way to the bottom. The pack does defend and support even the lowest members, but it acts in much the same manner as a human hierarchical society.

    Obviously you will contend that I've go it all wrong, but I'm always interested in hearing different ideas, so humor me and explain what your kind of anarchy would be like.
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  • Posted by $ splumb 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    "And they're coming to take me away, ha-ha
    They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha
    To the funny farm
    Where life is beautiful all the time
    And I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats
    And they're coming to take me away, ha-ha!"
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 months, 3 weeks ago in reply to this comment.
    There was a time when preaching that men can get pregnant would get you netted by men in white coats hauling you off to the funny farm.
    Reply | Permalink  

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