This essay makes a good case. I had no idea the freedom movement was so big in Alaska.
http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2000/9/5/163553
++++++++++++++
Advertise Your Banner Here
To Alter and Abolish – Secession Movements on the Move
Diane Alden
September 5, 2000
"Whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." (Declaration of
Independence)
What do Walter Williams, Joseph Sobran, Lew Rockwell, Murray
Rothbard and Ron Paul have in common? Besides being very
bright, responsible, intelligent and erudite men, they believe in the
right of states around the world and in the good old United States of
America to secede.
In this day and age it is the unspoken option that simmers beneath
the growing cultural, political, spiritual, regional, sexual and
economic chasm that has developed over the last 50 years. The
alternative to the spreading social and political balkanization of
America is gathering energy and proponents.
As in any marriage gone bad, there is the hesitancy to speak the
unspeakable. After attempts to change, to reform, to come to grips,
to adapt, the basic problem and irreconcilable differences are still
there. They grow like a killing tumor until the pain becomes so
unbearable the only choice is to cut the cause of the pain from the
body. Usually "cures" for this sickness only put off the inevitable.
Our differences have become too profound, too wide and too deep.
The anxiety and tension expand and our only options will be to fight
or flee. The divorce, the separation, the final recognition that there
can be no resolution might salvage what little love remains between
some groups of Americans and others. So, while there is still the
desire to remain at peace and not totally destroy the other, the need
to separate begins to fill the air and a day will come when it cannot
be denied.
The American Secession from Britain
The American Revolution was not a revolution in the strictest sense
of the word. It was a separation, a secession, because the British
government was not overthrown; rather, a new entity came into
being out of an old union. The independent United States of
America was that new creation. England and the monarchy,
however, remained and still exist today. Eventually, our mother
country became our friend and ally. We have fought several wars
together since the dissolution of the American-British marriage, and
the bond is stronger than ever.
After the secession, the U.S. Constitution and federalism were not
created overnight. Our Republic grew out of the Articles of
Confederation of 1781 into a Constitutional Republic.
As Joseph Sobran stated in his essay, "The Right to Secede," "The
original 13 states formed a ‘confederation,’ under which each state
retained its ‘sovereignty, freedom, and independence.’ The
Constitution didn't change this; each sovereign state was free to
reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government
were ‘granted’ and ‘delegated’ by the states, which implies the
states were prior and superior to the federal government."
Sobran goes on to say that Hamilton and Madison hoped secession
would never happen but they never denied it was a right and a
practical possibility. The states would not be "rebelling" because the
states were sovereign and free and secession was the basic principle
of "self-preservation."
Today the problem is that we are no longer a united people joined
by a common culture, educational system, basic religious beliefs,
and tolerance. The fabric of America is fraying and dissolving even
as diversity is celebrated. As our common heritage and belief
systems are destroyed by something alien to them, a compromise of
values and political philosophy may not be possible.
Modern trends have shattered our unanimity and common bond.
Trying to put the American humpty-dumpty together again will only
lead to our final dissolution or an unacceptable tyranny of the
majority at some point in the future.
The trends that have been our undoing include a denial of the Bill of
Rights and its original interpretation. Add to that a legal system not
in keeping with the intent of the Founders, the destruction of the
separation of powers as well as an imperial executive branch, and a
tax system so corrupt, unfair and burdensome that no amount of
tinkering is going to fix it. Additionally, we have rejected the binding
nature of our religious heritage, which was the basis for our
common purpose.
Include the exponential increase in the power of the state and the
growth of the government bureaucracy, and the late great United
States is on life support. Well-meaning conservatives offer the
argument that if they get in power they will downsize government
and decrease the power of the state. Often their actions belie their
words. Many in the House and Senate vote to expand police powers
and do nothing to keep activist judges from the bench or prevent
the profusion of legislation that adds power to the state. Apparently,
they don’t understand that in the history of mankind government
has never willingly given up power or perks in order that liberty and
freedom should thrive.
Ancient Rome is only one example of many. As the effectiveness of
the Roman Senate decreased, the power of its bureaucracy grew, as
did the tax burden on individuals. The tax system became a career
passed on from father to son and only grew in its intrusive and
self-defeating nature.
Eventually, the Republic was lost to Empire as Rome centralized
and used military adventurism to increase its wealth and power.
Lost was the republican past, along with civic virtue, a unique
culture and common values based on notions of the individual vis à
vis the state. Internal enemies were often blamed for the problems
of the state. Those enemies included Christians, foreigners and the
weak in Rome itself.
The great Roman Republic was replaced by a culture that became
so decadent it could not survive the onslaught of barbarians and
dissolution. As much as anything, Rome lost the ability to look
beyond itself to the future. It lost its will along with the imagination
and creativity that had helped to make it great.
It placated the desires and whims of its citizens and grew
government so large and oppressive that in the end it died of its own
weight. Rome was unable to envision the future free of corruption
but rather accepted that corruption as inevitable. It did not nourish
the virtues necessary for any society to prosper and remain whole
and intact. In a state of disintegration, Rome did not see the
Visigoths waiting on the other side of the hill about to take
advantage of that lack of imagination and vision.
When Rome finally collapsed. it did not take long. It had been in the
process for years.
In our day many Americans observe that our common beliefs,
standards and ethics are being destroyed and replaced by something
alien. The Bill of Rights and Constitution are considered flexible
documents subject to the whims of whoever is in power or
whatever a poll or the courts say they are.
Today more and more Americans do not recognize the country they
grew up in, learned about, fought and died for, worked in, dreamed
for, or adjusted to. That fact is not acceptable to a significant
proportion of those people.
The process started long ago but has accelerated since the end of
the Cold War. In the past ten years, the great melting pot has
become an intolerant, multicultural, diverse, balkanized
hodge-podge of unworkable elements and people. Multiculturalism,
along with other movements such as environmentalism, feminism,
statism, globalism, and the miscellaneous ism, has worked only too
well.
Thus, big government, mega-corporations, various cultural
movements, the monolithic mainstream media, corrupted
educational system, and feel-good, unprincipled quasi-religions have
tossed the Western cultural tradition into the ash heap. We have
come to deny the destruction of what it has taken man ten thousand
years to develop. We have created divisions that may not be healed.
The proponents of multiculturalism as well as those who have
created the Leviathan State should be satisfied to know that they
have succeeded. We now have a nation that no longer understands
the philosophy behind the principles in its founding documents.
Many Americans would not even vote for those principles if they
were put on a ballot today.
This cultural and political elite should be proud to know that only 51
percent of Americans would vote for the Constitution of the United
States if it were set before them.
The elite and the anti-Western-tradition "progressives" have
succeeded in separating men from women, families from society,
culture from tradition and beauty, government from the people, and
common sense from the underpinnings of the Republic.
They have replaced common sense with political correctness, fed
the Leviathan State with the wealth of individuals through usurious
taxes, trashed the culture, and made it safe for a proscribed kind of
tolerance while destroying the religious faith that was the
cornerstone of the nation-state they inhabit.
Life is made safe for gay individuals but the Boy Scouts are thrown
to the cultural and societal wolves. Both groups SHOULD have
their rights protected, and both should be allowed the freedom to
live in peace even if that peace is separate. Speaking or practicing
one's religion is more or less okay as long as one keeps silent about
it and does not bring it out in public or apply its tenets to life.
Recently, billionaire media mogul and one-world guru Ted Turner
led the charge against orthodoxy at the U.N. religious summit. That
summit was the showcase for what has happened to American and
Western society and tradition. Ostracized and criticized, Christians
and Orthodox religion, as well as Orthodox Judaism and Islam, took
it on the chin. In fact there was booing and tussling in the audience
and outside the meeting as those of Orthodox or traditional religions
were ungraciously condemned. Thus, it has become okay for the
new religions to be intolerant, but it is not okay for the Old World
religions to complain or fight back.
By whatever name it is called, intolerance is still wrong.
Christianity, Islam and Judaism can not gut basic doctrine in order
to gain the good wishes of Ted Turner or anyone else. Though not
always following it very well, Christianity and the other great world
religions have at their core the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you
would have them do unto you."
The effort on the part of these religions has given the basis for the
United States of America, which has the most freedom mankind has
ever known. This freedom has led to prosperity and a home place
for nearly every kind of person on the planet that has ever made the
effort to get here, with the exception of small boys from Cuba.
It would seem Mr. Turner and others have now replaced the
Golden Rule with the golden calf. They substitute concepts that
have worked to man's benefit with those that will only make him
less free, more barbaric and more subject to the whims and dictates
of the elite like himself.
However, the world according to Ted Turner and his ilk is merely
the visible symptom of the great divisions that have taken place in
American society as well as in other societies throughout the world.
In the United States it is becoming obvious to all but the most
obtuse and implacable that the contract between society,
government and the people has been displaced by a new ethic and a
new contract. Out of the ooze of 19th century Prussian statism,
Marxism and fascism, 21st century America is now home to a
bizarre philosophy and rationale.
They may call themselves Progressive Democrats or Progressive
Socialists or the Third Way. By whatever name you call it, that
philosophy is incompatible with the ethics and philosophy of
Western tradition, which is the girding for the Constitutional
Republic known as the United States of America. There is no
compromise with the philosophy of progressivism, because at the
heart of that philosophy the state is superior to the individual, the
collective is more important than individual liberty. Western
tradition and progressivism are opposites and one or the other will
be destroyed.
Tolerance recognizes these differences and in the immortal words
of Star Trek's Spock the wise would say, "Live long and prosper."
However, that cannot mean that I want to become a convert and
turn over my core beliefs to your system.
Americans can't have it both ways. This is more than a minor
disagreement over the color of paint in the bathroom. It goes to the
heart of where freedom lives.
On one side the individual is only as free and at liberty as the state
will allow. Government is no longer the servant but the master, and
an expensive one at that.
This philosophy is neither progressive, as the left would like to
believe, nor is it compassionate: it does not serve mankind, it serves
itself and the elite who benefit from it. This new state of affairs is
antithetical to all that has gone before and it is tyranny by whatever
names it is called.
In America the new progressive politics plus the various social
trends are a bad combination of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New
World," George Orwell's "1984," "Animal Farm" and "Blade
Runner."
Yet if that is how some wish to live, they should be allowed to do
so. But those who do not should be free to create a place,
government, and environment that is compatible with their core
beliefs.
An Idea Whose Time May Have Come
Nonetheless, a revolution is brewing. As the "progressive"
movement with its politically correct social engineers becomes more
entrenched, there will be a revolt against it. Human nature will not
exist for long confined to a condition that it deems oppressive. It is
not long before it seeks to go beyond those boundaries that are
antithetical to human nature, the laws of nature and nature's God,
the movement of history, and man's own evolution as a free being.
While many people worry about the New World Order, the
European Union, and America's own growing tendency to give up
its sovereignty to supranational bodies, another tendency has been
germinating all over the world. Like the universe, our world is
coming together and breaking apart. New nation-states are forming
out of old alliances and dependencies. It is the natural law for new
growth to form out of the old. For young stars to form out of what
is left of the old stars.
With the end of the Cold War, independence and secession
movements have sprung up in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe,
Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Spain, Yugoslavia,
Indonesia, Canada and the Middle East.
Yet there are those who cannot conceive that it could happen in the
United States. Many people believe secession movements in the
U.S. are nothing more than the crazed fantasies of loony militia
white separatists, when actually some of the leading proponents of
secession are blacks, Hawaiians and Native Americans.
In the United States the two most influential independence
movements are in Alaska and Hawaii. The Alaskan Independence
Party has 18,000 members – about 8 percent of the electorate. The
party gained respectability in 1990 when Walter J. Hickel was
elected governor on that party's ticket. The AIP complained to the
United Nations in 1993 about the abuses against that state and their
right to 'use and exploit' the state's wealth and natural resources.
Alaskans have been in turmoil since Jimmy Carter declared nearly
55 million acres as "wilderness," disallowing the state from using its
own resources or deriving the benefits therefrom. Alaskan Indian
tribes have been cut off from their own riches as the federal
government in Washington has taken over these resources for its
own purposes.
This same federal government thousands of miles away is running
Alaska's territory and wealth for environmental or statist military
purposes.
Additionally, up until 1992, Alaska was one place where an
American could homestead. In other words, stake out a claim on
property and “prove it up” so that in five years an individual could
own the property free and clear. That is no longer allowed.
Actually, private property rights have been lost all over the United
States and the federal government now owns 42 percent of the land
mass of the states, particularly in the intermountain West.
In Hawaii a similar move toward independence is under way and
gaining steam. On January 16, 1994, Hawaiian separatists declared
the restoration of the Independence of the Sovereign Nation-State
of Hawaii. They declared: "The current citizens of the Independent
and Sovereign Nation of Hawaii consist of all those who are
descendants of the Kanaka Maoli prior to the arrival of the first
westerners in 1778, and those persons, and their descendants who
have lived in Hawaii prior to the illegal overthrow, invasion and
occupation of January 17, 1893. ... " Thirty thousand descendants
of Hawaii's Polynesians voted in favor of creating a native Hawaiian
government that may resemble Indian reservations on the mainland.
Indigenous tribes located within the United States have been granted
self-rule through the "Indian Country" Laws, 18 U.S.C. Section
1151. The U.S. Government recognizes 200 tribes in Alaska and
235-plus tribes in the remaining states.
In The Republic of Texas on December 13, 1995, there was "The
rebirth of the Sovereign Nation of The Republic of Texas,"
International Court of Justice, cause #94135. Texas, as a Nation,
was first established in 1836, when it won independence from
Mexico. Proponents state that the United States has unlawfully
occupied Texas since 1865.
Speaking the Unspeakable
Professors Thomas Naylor of Duke University and Donald
Livingston of Emory University in Atlanta have stated: "A booming
economy and a roaring stock market can cover up a host of social,
economic, and political sins. But once the bubble bursts and
everyone discovers that the emperor truly wears no clothes,
whether in the Oval Office or elsewhere, local independence
movements may seem a lot less radical than they do today."
Cultural and political analyst Lew Rockwell of the Von Mises
Institute is a former student and friend of libertarian godfather
Murray Rothbard. The late Rothbard was a most articulate
spokesman for secession around the world and kept track of the
various movements and their histories.
Rockwell stated in a column in July that "the usual democratic
channels don't offer much hope for real change, any more than they
did in the Colonial period. The Congress and the White House can
throw us bones in the form of tiny tax cuts spread over 10 years but
no legislative efforts are going to gut big government in a way that
would have satisfied the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
much less those who fought and died to throw off the British
Crown. … ig government is bigger than it has ever been, but
there is no practical or ideological rationale behind it. The state is
just openly and aggressively ravenous much more so than the
original British oppressors."
Walter Williams is an African-American and heads the economics
department at George Mason University in Virginia. Williams is also
very funny and a dead-on analyst of the economic and political
scene in modern America. Not long ago he wrote a column, and
several since then, suggesting that perhaps it was time for
Americans to begin thinking about secession.
+++++++++++=
Follow the link for the rest of the article.
http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2000/9/5/163553
++++++++++++++
Advertise Your Banner Here
To Alter and Abolish – Secession Movements on the Move
Diane Alden
September 5, 2000
"Whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." (Declaration of
Independence)
What do Walter Williams, Joseph Sobran, Lew Rockwell, Murray
Rothbard and Ron Paul have in common? Besides being very
bright, responsible, intelligent and erudite men, they believe in the
right of states around the world and in the good old United States of
America to secede.
In this day and age it is the unspoken option that simmers beneath
the growing cultural, political, spiritual, regional, sexual and
economic chasm that has developed over the last 50 years. The
alternative to the spreading social and political balkanization of
America is gathering energy and proponents.
As in any marriage gone bad, there is the hesitancy to speak the
unspeakable. After attempts to change, to reform, to come to grips,
to adapt, the basic problem and irreconcilable differences are still
there. They grow like a killing tumor until the pain becomes so
unbearable the only choice is to cut the cause of the pain from the
body. Usually "cures" for this sickness only put off the inevitable.
Our differences have become too profound, too wide and too deep.
The anxiety and tension expand and our only options will be to fight
or flee. The divorce, the separation, the final recognition that there
can be no resolution might salvage what little love remains between
some groups of Americans and others. So, while there is still the
desire to remain at peace and not totally destroy the other, the need
to separate begins to fill the air and a day will come when it cannot
be denied.
The American Secession from Britain
The American Revolution was not a revolution in the strictest sense
of the word. It was a separation, a secession, because the British
government was not overthrown; rather, a new entity came into
being out of an old union. The independent United States of
America was that new creation. England and the monarchy,
however, remained and still exist today. Eventually, our mother
country became our friend and ally. We have fought several wars
together since the dissolution of the American-British marriage, and
the bond is stronger than ever.
After the secession, the U.S. Constitution and federalism were not
created overnight. Our Republic grew out of the Articles of
Confederation of 1781 into a Constitutional Republic.
As Joseph Sobran stated in his essay, "The Right to Secede," "The
original 13 states formed a ‘confederation,’ under which each state
retained its ‘sovereignty, freedom, and independence.’ The
Constitution didn't change this; each sovereign state was free to
reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government
were ‘granted’ and ‘delegated’ by the states, which implies the
states were prior and superior to the federal government."
Sobran goes on to say that Hamilton and Madison hoped secession
would never happen but they never denied it was a right and a
practical possibility. The states would not be "rebelling" because the
states were sovereign and free and secession was the basic principle
of "self-preservation."
Today the problem is that we are no longer a united people joined
by a common culture, educational system, basic religious beliefs,
and tolerance. The fabric of America is fraying and dissolving even
as diversity is celebrated. As our common heritage and belief
systems are destroyed by something alien to them, a compromise of
values and political philosophy may not be possible.
Modern trends have shattered our unanimity and common bond.
Trying to put the American humpty-dumpty together again will only
lead to our final dissolution or an unacceptable tyranny of the
majority at some point in the future.
The trends that have been our undoing include a denial of the Bill of
Rights and its original interpretation. Add to that a legal system not
in keeping with the intent of the Founders, the destruction of the
separation of powers as well as an imperial executive branch, and a
tax system so corrupt, unfair and burdensome that no amount of
tinkering is going to fix it. Additionally, we have rejected the binding
nature of our religious heritage, which was the basis for our
common purpose.
Include the exponential increase in the power of the state and the
growth of the government bureaucracy, and the late great United
States is on life support. Well-meaning conservatives offer the
argument that if they get in power they will downsize government
and decrease the power of the state. Often their actions belie their
words. Many in the House and Senate vote to expand police powers
and do nothing to keep activist judges from the bench or prevent
the profusion of legislation that adds power to the state. Apparently,
they don’t understand that in the history of mankind government
has never willingly given up power or perks in order that liberty and
freedom should thrive.
Ancient Rome is only one example of many. As the effectiveness of
the Roman Senate decreased, the power of its bureaucracy grew, as
did the tax burden on individuals. The tax system became a career
passed on from father to son and only grew in its intrusive and
self-defeating nature.
Eventually, the Republic was lost to Empire as Rome centralized
and used military adventurism to increase its wealth and power.
Lost was the republican past, along with civic virtue, a unique
culture and common values based on notions of the individual vis à
vis the state. Internal enemies were often blamed for the problems
of the state. Those enemies included Christians, foreigners and the
weak in Rome itself.
The great Roman Republic was replaced by a culture that became
so decadent it could not survive the onslaught of barbarians and
dissolution. As much as anything, Rome lost the ability to look
beyond itself to the future. It lost its will along with the imagination
and creativity that had helped to make it great.
It placated the desires and whims of its citizens and grew
government so large and oppressive that in the end it died of its own
weight. Rome was unable to envision the future free of corruption
but rather accepted that corruption as inevitable. It did not nourish
the virtues necessary for any society to prosper and remain whole
and intact. In a state of disintegration, Rome did not see the
Visigoths waiting on the other side of the hill about to take
advantage of that lack of imagination and vision.
When Rome finally collapsed. it did not take long. It had been in the
process for years.
In our day many Americans observe that our common beliefs,
standards and ethics are being destroyed and replaced by something
alien. The Bill of Rights and Constitution are considered flexible
documents subject to the whims of whoever is in power or
whatever a poll or the courts say they are.
Today more and more Americans do not recognize the country they
grew up in, learned about, fought and died for, worked in, dreamed
for, or adjusted to. That fact is not acceptable to a significant
proportion of those people.
The process started long ago but has accelerated since the end of
the Cold War. In the past ten years, the great melting pot has
become an intolerant, multicultural, diverse, balkanized
hodge-podge of unworkable elements and people. Multiculturalism,
along with other movements such as environmentalism, feminism,
statism, globalism, and the miscellaneous ism, has worked only too
well.
Thus, big government, mega-corporations, various cultural
movements, the monolithic mainstream media, corrupted
educational system, and feel-good, unprincipled quasi-religions have
tossed the Western cultural tradition into the ash heap. We have
come to deny the destruction of what it has taken man ten thousand
years to develop. We have created divisions that may not be healed.
The proponents of multiculturalism as well as those who have
created the Leviathan State should be satisfied to know that they
have succeeded. We now have a nation that no longer understands
the philosophy behind the principles in its founding documents.
Many Americans would not even vote for those principles if they
were put on a ballot today.
This cultural and political elite should be proud to know that only 51
percent of Americans would vote for the Constitution of the United
States if it were set before them.
The elite and the anti-Western-tradition "progressives" have
succeeded in separating men from women, families from society,
culture from tradition and beauty, government from the people, and
common sense from the underpinnings of the Republic.
They have replaced common sense with political correctness, fed
the Leviathan State with the wealth of individuals through usurious
taxes, trashed the culture, and made it safe for a proscribed kind of
tolerance while destroying the religious faith that was the
cornerstone of the nation-state they inhabit.
Life is made safe for gay individuals but the Boy Scouts are thrown
to the cultural and societal wolves. Both groups SHOULD have
their rights protected, and both should be allowed the freedom to
live in peace even if that peace is separate. Speaking or practicing
one's religion is more or less okay as long as one keeps silent about
it and does not bring it out in public or apply its tenets to life.
Recently, billionaire media mogul and one-world guru Ted Turner
led the charge against orthodoxy at the U.N. religious summit. That
summit was the showcase for what has happened to American and
Western society and tradition. Ostracized and criticized, Christians
and Orthodox religion, as well as Orthodox Judaism and Islam, took
it on the chin. In fact there was booing and tussling in the audience
and outside the meeting as those of Orthodox or traditional religions
were ungraciously condemned. Thus, it has become okay for the
new religions to be intolerant, but it is not okay for the Old World
religions to complain or fight back.
By whatever name it is called, intolerance is still wrong.
Christianity, Islam and Judaism can not gut basic doctrine in order
to gain the good wishes of Ted Turner or anyone else. Though not
always following it very well, Christianity and the other great world
religions have at their core the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you
would have them do unto you."
The effort on the part of these religions has given the basis for the
United States of America, which has the most freedom mankind has
ever known. This freedom has led to prosperity and a home place
for nearly every kind of person on the planet that has ever made the
effort to get here, with the exception of small boys from Cuba.
It would seem Mr. Turner and others have now replaced the
Golden Rule with the golden calf. They substitute concepts that
have worked to man's benefit with those that will only make him
less free, more barbaric and more subject to the whims and dictates
of the elite like himself.
However, the world according to Ted Turner and his ilk is merely
the visible symptom of the great divisions that have taken place in
American society as well as in other societies throughout the world.
In the United States it is becoming obvious to all but the most
obtuse and implacable that the contract between society,
government and the people has been displaced by a new ethic and a
new contract. Out of the ooze of 19th century Prussian statism,
Marxism and fascism, 21st century America is now home to a
bizarre philosophy and rationale.
They may call themselves Progressive Democrats or Progressive
Socialists or the Third Way. By whatever name you call it, that
philosophy is incompatible with the ethics and philosophy of
Western tradition, which is the girding for the Constitutional
Republic known as the United States of America. There is no
compromise with the philosophy of progressivism, because at the
heart of that philosophy the state is superior to the individual, the
collective is more important than individual liberty. Western
tradition and progressivism are opposites and one or the other will
be destroyed.
Tolerance recognizes these differences and in the immortal words
of Star Trek's Spock the wise would say, "Live long and prosper."
However, that cannot mean that I want to become a convert and
turn over my core beliefs to your system.
Americans can't have it both ways. This is more than a minor
disagreement over the color of paint in the bathroom. It goes to the
heart of where freedom lives.
On one side the individual is only as free and at liberty as the state
will allow. Government is no longer the servant but the master, and
an expensive one at that.
This philosophy is neither progressive, as the left would like to
believe, nor is it compassionate: it does not serve mankind, it serves
itself and the elite who benefit from it. This new state of affairs is
antithetical to all that has gone before and it is tyranny by whatever
names it is called.
In America the new progressive politics plus the various social
trends are a bad combination of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New
World," George Orwell's "1984," "Animal Farm" and "Blade
Runner."
Yet if that is how some wish to live, they should be allowed to do
so. But those who do not should be free to create a place,
government, and environment that is compatible with their core
beliefs.
An Idea Whose Time May Have Come
Nonetheless, a revolution is brewing. As the "progressive"
movement with its politically correct social engineers becomes more
entrenched, there will be a revolt against it. Human nature will not
exist for long confined to a condition that it deems oppressive. It is
not long before it seeks to go beyond those boundaries that are
antithetical to human nature, the laws of nature and nature's God,
the movement of history, and man's own evolution as a free being.
While many people worry about the New World Order, the
European Union, and America's own growing tendency to give up
its sovereignty to supranational bodies, another tendency has been
germinating all over the world. Like the universe, our world is
coming together and breaking apart. New nation-states are forming
out of old alliances and dependencies. It is the natural law for new
growth to form out of the old. For young stars to form out of what
is left of the old stars.
With the end of the Cold War, independence and secession
movements have sprung up in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe,
Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Spain, Yugoslavia,
Indonesia, Canada and the Middle East.
Yet there are those who cannot conceive that it could happen in the
United States. Many people believe secession movements in the
U.S. are nothing more than the crazed fantasies of loony militia
white separatists, when actually some of the leading proponents of
secession are blacks, Hawaiians and Native Americans.
In the United States the two most influential independence
movements are in Alaska and Hawaii. The Alaskan Independence
Party has 18,000 members – about 8 percent of the electorate. The
party gained respectability in 1990 when Walter J. Hickel was
elected governor on that party's ticket. The AIP complained to the
United Nations in 1993 about the abuses against that state and their
right to 'use and exploit' the state's wealth and natural resources.
Alaskans have been in turmoil since Jimmy Carter declared nearly
55 million acres as "wilderness," disallowing the state from using its
own resources or deriving the benefits therefrom. Alaskan Indian
tribes have been cut off from their own riches as the federal
government in Washington has taken over these resources for its
own purposes.
This same federal government thousands of miles away is running
Alaska's territory and wealth for environmental or statist military
purposes.
Additionally, up until 1992, Alaska was one place where an
American could homestead. In other words, stake out a claim on
property and “prove it up” so that in five years an individual could
own the property free and clear. That is no longer allowed.
Actually, private property rights have been lost all over the United
States and the federal government now owns 42 percent of the land
mass of the states, particularly in the intermountain West.
In Hawaii a similar move toward independence is under way and
gaining steam. On January 16, 1994, Hawaiian separatists declared
the restoration of the Independence of the Sovereign Nation-State
of Hawaii. They declared: "The current citizens of the Independent
and Sovereign Nation of Hawaii consist of all those who are
descendants of the Kanaka Maoli prior to the arrival of the first
westerners in 1778, and those persons, and their descendants who
have lived in Hawaii prior to the illegal overthrow, invasion and
occupation of January 17, 1893. ... " Thirty thousand descendants
of Hawaii's Polynesians voted in favor of creating a native Hawaiian
government that may resemble Indian reservations on the mainland.
Indigenous tribes located within the United States have been granted
self-rule through the "Indian Country" Laws, 18 U.S.C. Section
1151. The U.S. Government recognizes 200 tribes in Alaska and
235-plus tribes in the remaining states.
In The Republic of Texas on December 13, 1995, there was "The
rebirth of the Sovereign Nation of The Republic of Texas,"
International Court of Justice, cause #94135. Texas, as a Nation,
was first established in 1836, when it won independence from
Mexico. Proponents state that the United States has unlawfully
occupied Texas since 1865.
Speaking the Unspeakable
Professors Thomas Naylor of Duke University and Donald
Livingston of Emory University in Atlanta have stated: "A booming
economy and a roaring stock market can cover up a host of social,
economic, and political sins. But once the bubble bursts and
everyone discovers that the emperor truly wears no clothes,
whether in the Oval Office or elsewhere, local independence
movements may seem a lot less radical than they do today."
Cultural and political analyst Lew Rockwell of the Von Mises
Institute is a former student and friend of libertarian godfather
Murray Rothbard. The late Rothbard was a most articulate
spokesman for secession around the world and kept track of the
various movements and their histories.
Rockwell stated in a column in July that "the usual democratic
channels don't offer much hope for real change, any more than they
did in the Colonial period. The Congress and the White House can
throw us bones in the form of tiny tax cuts spread over 10 years but
no legislative efforts are going to gut big government in a way that
would have satisfied the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
much less those who fought and died to throw off the British
Crown. … ig government is bigger than it has ever been, but
there is no practical or ideological rationale behind it. The state is
just openly and aggressively ravenous much more so than the
original British oppressors."
Walter Williams is an African-American and heads the economics
department at George Mason University in Virginia. Williams is also
very funny and a dead-on analyst of the economic and political
scene in modern America. Not long ago he wrote a column, and
several since then, suggesting that perhaps it was time for
Americans to begin thinking about secession.
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