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Tag Archives: secession

Thoughts on America’s Protracted Cold Civil War

02 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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Tags

Blue States, Jim Langcuster, Red States, secession, wokism

TeenVogue is not the most intellectually sophisticated of publications but the fact that the prospect of secession, stemming from growing concern over this nation’s protracted cold civil war, is now being openly discussed by the mainstream left speaks volumes about the increasingly intractable divisions in this country.

My only problem is with their argument that a blue-state republic – or, as the case may be, peoples republic – somehow will be inherently more democratic, economically successful, humane, and progressive, not only culturally but also in terms of its commitment to scientific and technological advancement.

How can they be certain of that in light of the turmoil that has transpired almost exclusively within blue regions of the country within the past few years?

In what is turning out to be the one of the most significant demographic shifts in U.S. history, Americans, apparently fed up with the dysfunction of blue-state social and economic policies, are fleeing the most prominent blue states in droves and relocating to solid red states such as Texas and Montana, which are associated with lower taxes, lower costs of living and traditional notions of law enforcement

For that matter, can blue states even bank on the certainty they will remain paragons of scientific and technological achievement? How can they be so certain of this when far-left ideology of wokism is making what appear to be steep inroads into blue-state political and social institutions?

A crisis that transpired at a relatively obscure public liberal arts college in Oregon, The Evergreen State College, portended much of the social upheaval in the Pacific Northwest that would follow in 2020. What transpired there hardly represents an affirmation of Enlightenment principles of open inquiry and free speech. In fact the cultural struggle on this campus arguably played a significant role in the strengthening of the Intellectual Dark Web, a loose league largely comprised of center-left scholars who, while embracing many of the values of the progressive left, still affirm the Enlightenment legacy.

Much of this ideology of wokism by its own admission espouses a turning away if not a outright rejection of many of the ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment.

For years, eminent secularist scientists, notably Christopher Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have heaped scorn on the fundamental/evangelical red heartland. Yet, the culture of this region is steeped in a religious faith, a uniquely Ametican brand of frontier evangelical Protestantism, which is based on Enlightenment principles. And while the culture of much of the vast red heartland has tended to reject some aspects of 19th and 20th century rationalism, notably evolution, the region by no means is unequivocally opposed to the values and the legacy of the Enlightenment.

Yet, red state America increasingly is being drawn into what seems like a protracted struggle with its blue-state counterpart, one that has been characterized as a cold civil war and that sooner or later could morph into something resembling a full-fledged hot civil war. And much of this animosity is being stoked by elites in the blue regions of the country who regard their counterparts in the vast red heartland as intellectual obscurantists.

Yet, when one considers the issues in deep context can we really bank on the guarantee that a blue-state republic (or republics) will emerge from this protracted struggle as the most viable governing model?

Given the growing affinity of the mainstream left for the woke left, how can we be certain that a blue-state nation will prove a successful nation, one that maintains a fidelity to the Enlightenment legacy, which vaulted America and the rest of the West into the front ranks of successful nation-states?

Toward a Bipartisan National Divorce Settlement

22 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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Electoral College, national divorce, secession

Contradictory political and cultural trends seem to be playing out all around us.  For example, CNN’s Don Lemon, who remains, bar none, the dumbest and most untalented individual in cable news, urges the left to pack the courts as a first step toward abolishing the Electoral College.

It apparently has never occurred to him and to many others among our national commentariat class that the Electoral College underscores a vital truth: that the Constitution preceded the Union – or, to express it another way, that there is no such thing as a Union without safeguards such as the Electoral College.

Indeed, one could make case that Constitution and the Union, far from comprising a symbiotic relationship, are one in the same. The original 13 states joined the Union out of assurance that their sovereignty and independence would be protected. The remaining 37 that that joined over the next two centuries did so with the same convictions.

Lemon’s entirely uninformed argument about packing the federal courts partly with aim of subverting the Electoral College is tantamount to dissolving the Union.

With prominent news anchors calling for the dismantling of a vital safeguard of liberty, perhaps it’s not that surprising that another liberal columnist has  weighed in favorably on secession as a means of resolving this failing polity’s intractable divisions.

“Seventy percent of Americans are angry at a political system that is just not working for them,” writes  Chuck Bonfig, a small businessman and freelance photographer.

It seems that growing numbers of Americans on both ends of the political spectrum are coming to terms with what has heretofore been a rather unpalatable truth: that this country is simply too damned big and culturally diverse to be governed on the basis of an antiquated 100-year old Wilsonian centralist model.

Facing up to National Disunity

08 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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American nationalism, American secession, American Unity, Centralized States, secession

Photo: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

It truly is fascinating how even the blue-coastal commentariat are discerning and even embracing the merits of secession. At this rate, public awareness of long-term unsustainability of American unity will soon be regarded as the proverbial elephant in the room.

I have been fighting this battle with my very modest resources more than a quarter century now.

As endeavors go, it hasn’t always been pleasant. My father, a retired U.S. Army Reserve Lt. Colonel and staunch American nationalist, became so exasperated with my Jeffersonian/secessionist views at one point that he jumped out of his seat, flailed his arms and called me a traitor. We eventually made up.

Today, I feel largely vindicated. In fact, I am more convinced now than a quarter century ago that the moral and intellectual underpinnings that have sustained American unity, however tenuously, for the last almost quarter millennium are fraying rapidly. As this author, who writes from an unmistakably center-left, blue-coastal perspective, readily perceives, many of us already have reached a kind of intellectual separation with the rest of the country. And it likely will not be too much longer before formal calls for a political solution to these deep cleavages emerge.

Yet, as I have argued time and again, the pace of events may outstrip our ability to react quickly enough. We are fast approaching what I have come to call our Gorbachev moment – the point at which we must improvise provisions for what was previously considered unthinkable, a national breakup – though, unlike the ill-fated Soviet president, we haven’t begun to conceive anything resembling a contingency plan.

White Animosities, Black Foils

05 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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BLM, Civil War, regionalism, riots, secession

Observations by Blair Nathan and other outstanding thinkers on Twitter have prompted some thinking on my part regarding the intractable divisions that seem to have have overtaken the country in recent years.

Yet, I don’t think that these divisions are of recent vintage at all but rather that they reflect deep historical animosities and rivalries that stretch back centuries and that predate colonial settlement.

Indeed, based on a long and fairly extensive reading of British and American history, I believe that because of these deep-seated animosities one could make the case that the North and South never should have confederated in the first place.

The recent upheavals in this country, which were only exacerbated by Trump’s 2016 electoral success, simply have placed these divisions into deeper perspective.

Within the last few years, I and other close observers of our national divisions have been surprised by the increasing candor with which some academic and professional political pundits have expressed this rather unpalatable fact, notably columnist Michael Malice in The Case for Secession, written shortly after the 2016 election.

These regional amosities may even be traced to genetic factors rooted in the ethnic cultures of the British Isles – a theme deftly explored by historian David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America.

A scientific exploration from this perspective of longstanding political division was supplied recently by Scientific American.

From the very beginning, the incipiently mercantilist Northeast, stemming significantly from the region’s East Anglian and Puritanical ethno-cultural roots, regarded itself as entitled to rule the country and was enraged that the agricultural South had garnered what they considered an unfair competitive advantage. In time, they contrived a brilliant strategy, feigning outrage over Southern slavery as a means of obfuscating their ambitions to become the young republic’s cultural and political hegemon.

The Civil War and a series of cultural and political flashpoints in the century and a half that followed have only served to underscore that the United States remains a deeply sundered country, though 20th century material prosperity and two world wars were effective in obfuscating for a time these profound  and intractable differences. But within the last half century, these deep-seated divisions have been exposed again in unusual raw form and conceivably could lead to a conflagration that even could rival the Civil War under certain  conditions.

Negotiating the American “Gorbachev Moment.”

31 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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American Federalism, American secession, Gorbachev, secession, Soviet Coup

Thousands rallying sound the Russian “White House” in Moscow in defense of Russian sovereignty during the post-Soviet “August Coup” in 1991.

A perversely interesting read, and, frankly, I find it fascinating that this scholar made no mention of Mikhail Gorbachev’s furious efforts to negotiate a new union treaty that would have transformed the post-communist Soviet Union into a union of sovereign states.

The fact is, the United States is also fast approaching a similar inflection point – its own Gorbachev moment – the point at which it dawns on most everyone that existing constitutional arrangements simply are not equipped to handle the stressors playing out around the country. This partly stems from the fact that the hard left is banking on full-blown hegemony and has little use for the Madisonian protects that once safeguarded American liberties.


Meanwhile, the right, for it’s part, is so invested in flag waving and nationalist rhetoric that it can’t summon the courage to admit that everything is falling apart and that the most viable solution lies in the radical decentralization of federal power that would better address all of the cultural rifts playing out in this country. So what we face, as a result, is an impasse, a dangerous impasse, that resembles in some respects the late Soviet Union. Either we find some constitutional means of dealing with these cleavages, namely by returning power to regions of the country with strong cultural and historical affinities, or we face something even more horrendous: authoritarian leftist political and cultural hegemony or civil war or outright dissolution, with all the domestic and geopolitical upheaval this entails.


Yet, I would venture to day that most of us on this group are roundly convinced that the feds will never acceded to this, so the ultimately solution will be states, clusters of states, acting unilaterally, much as they did in 1776,

Toward a Detoxified, Humanized Federalism

28 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Devolution, Federalism, Southern History, The Passing Scene, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Brexit, Demassification, Devolution, Federalism, Great Britain, Jim Langcuster, secession

pluribus-unumMuch like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests, the result of the 2016 European Union Referendum — Brexit, as it’s commonly called — will be one of those memories that stay with me the rest of my life.

Late in the night as the Leave vote amassed an insurmountable lead, I reflected on how Brexit likely would constitute a wakeup call not only for the European Union but possibly for the American Union too.

I was motivated as much as I was inspired by the results.  The next morning, I got busy setting up a devolutionary weblog as a forum for discussing how the Brexit outcome likely would affect federalism in the United States.

Reflecting weeks later on how the results of the referendum had galvanized Scottish nationalist sentiment, I also began to wonder if Britons would take up a serious discussion of drafting a constitution for a new federal British union encompassing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And this led me to speculate about whether such a union of sovereign states ultimately would inspire one or more American states to demand a return to the principles of state sovereignty enshrined in the Constitution, particularly in the Tenth Amendment.

Sclerotic, Dysfunctional American Federalism

Brexit should have been regarded as a wake-up call for all Americans.  Indeed, American federalism is arguably just as sclerotic and unresponsive to present-day needs as its European Union counterpart and perhaps equally as imperiled.

Challenges to American Federalism

Some of the maladies associated with American federalism date back as far as colonial times, while others have emerged considerably more recently. The deep cultural chasms stemming from the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Conflict some 50 years ago certainly have contributed. But so have more recent technological advances, namely, the demassification of media that followed the expansion of cable television within the last 50 years and, more recently and significantly, digitization, particularly social media.

These new media, despite all the good that they have produced, have added an extra layer of complexity to our cultural and political discourse. For better or worse, they have enabled growing numbers of Americans to self-organize into a myriad of subcultures.

Demassification has also compounded the challenges of our current federal model. In the face of this demassification, our highly centralized and sclerotic federal system has only grown more unresponsive, unworkable and even toxic, contributing to the deep regional and cultural divisions, particularly as they are expressed at the national level.

Some readers may regard such disparaging talk about our federal system as shocking.  After all, many Americans tend to regard our Constitution and the institutions and mechanisms that developed out of it as truly singular, if not beyond reproach.  To characterize these vital components of our constitutional system not only as unresponsive but even unworkable comes off sounding, well, downright un-American, if not treasonous, to many.

Deep Cultural Cleavages

Yet, the time for a frank dialogue about the inadequacies of our federal system is long overdue.  American federalism, despite its many notable successes over the last almost quarter of a millennium, has never managed to compensate fully for the deep cultural cleavages that have challenged this country from the very beginning.

Author and columnist Michael Malice was right and, I would contend, rather courageous, to argue that one part of the country, which could be broadly described as the cultural and political heirs of Puritan New England, have spent almost a quarter of a millennium trying to impose their vision of the American Experiment on the part of the country that traces its cultural and political legacy to Jefferson and that could be broadly characterized as the South.

He even argues that America was never that united a nation in the first place. Even in those rare times when we have enjoyed a measure of ideological unity, we have seldom marched in cultural lockstep.

And why should that come as a surprise?

The Failures of Centralized Federalism

Ponder this fact for a moment: The United States now possesses a population of 300-plus million people spanning a continent-sized country, the fourth largest in the world. Yet, we are governed on the basis of a badly antiquated federal model conceived a century ago by a progressive-minded political scientist named Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president.  He and other academics concluded that the country would be better off divesting states and localities of many of their traditional responsibilities, entrusting these instead to a central government manned by technocrats steeped in the emerging insights of social science.

Even today a few proponents of this centralized model would steadfastly contend that the wisdom of these reforms were affirmed by the degree to which they guided us through two world wars, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  In the interest of time and space, I’ll defer that topic for a later date.  Suffice it to say that this model is showing its age in the highly diffused and decentralized economic, political and cultural environment of the 21st century.

America’s Oldest Cultural Impasse

Yet, as Malice stressed in his column, the deepest and most intractable problems associated with American federalism stem from the longstanding regional rivalry and animosity between the political and cultural heirs of New England and the South, two regions with competing visions of the American Experiment.

The fact that New England emerged as the nation’s most culturally preeminent region after the Civil War should surprise no one.  Historical research has revealed that New England was the most literate region on the planet following American independence.  Its emphasis on mass education, particularly higher education, afforded the region immense intellectual and, ultimately, material advantages over the agrarian, slave-holding South and parts of the emerging American Back Country.  And even today, this region and other sections of the country directly shaped by its cultural and political vision continue to project their aspirations onto the rest of the country, particularly the South.

To be sure, the South, despite its statesmen supplying the theoretical foundations for many of the founding principles of this country, not to mention, the fact that seven of the first ten U.S. president were Southern, was encumbered by an slave-holding economic system that impeded economic diversification and, as a result of which, provided Southern political elites with less incentive to educate the region’s farming and laboring classes.

The South’s economic disadvantages proved disastrous over the long run. Following the South’s defeat and economic dispossession after the Civil War, New England and its regional offshoots emerged as the nation’s unrivaled cultural and political hegemons.

If one good thing besides the end of slavery followed this disastrous outcome, it was how defeat provided an impetus for the defeated and economically prostrate South to reinvent itself. One even could argue that the South owed its New England counterparts a debt in terms of its being forced to abandon an economic system that had sapped its intellectual and economic potential for some two centuries.

Lessons from Ireland and India

Yet the story is a bit more complicated.  The case can be made — and has time and again throughout U.S. history by Southern political leaders, academics, and writers — that certain traits bound up with the New England cultural legacy have also worked to exacerbate American unity as much as they have mitigated them.  Virtually from the founding of this country, the cultural heirs of England, many of whom comprise the core of this nation’s current ruling class, have tended to regard the South as the nation’s problem region, fit, in a manner of speaking, only to don the dunce’s cap and to sit on a stool of everlasting repentance.

As they see it, the South comprises the central, defining core of the worst aspects of the American cultural legacy, reflected in gun ownership, religious dogmatism and reactionary conservatism.  And, predictably, this animus has sparked a reciprocal reaction not only in the South but in other so-called red-states, many of which not only share significant cultural affinities with the South but also lay equally strong claims to the Jeffersonian legacy of strictly limited government.

Speaking as an amateur student of history and particularly of 20th century nationalist movements, I’ve always found it remarkable that this cultural animus never sparked enduring nationalist sentiment in the defeated, post-war South comparable to what emerged in Ireland beginning in the late 18th century — or, for that matter, India, in the 19th century.

Whatever the case, I think it behooves Southerners and, for that matter, inhabitants of other red states that share strong ties to the Jeffersonian political tradition to reflect on all of this constructively.

History has demonstrated time and again that conquest and economic dispossession are not one-way streets. Even the inhabitants of conquered lands sometime derive immense cultural, material and even political benefits over the course of time.

Many a contemporary Irish or Indian citizen would concede a considerable debt to the British colonial legacy.  Deep historical scars remain, yes, but despite all of this, they credit their former British hegemons with a few things of estimable value: a national communications and transportation infrastructure as well as a legal and parliamentary tradition, which provided both aspiring nations with critical facets of nation-building. These factors contributed immeasurably not only to a united Ireland and India but to their becoming singularly successful parliamentary democracies.

Southerners likewise owe their New England cousins a measure of debt.  New England’s intellectual and material advantages not only proved instrumental in defeating the South but also were major factors that forced the region over the course of time to undergo much needed economic diversification.  But even before the war, New England’s rich religious legacy also left an indelible mark on the South and much of the Back Country.  Indeed, much of the impetus behind the evangelical religious revivalism in the South and the rest of the American frontier were incubated in New England.

Well-Articulate, Vibrant Regional Identities

No doubt about it: Every region of the country, even the relatively disadvantaged ones, have benefited from American federalism.

Yet, this doesn’t obviate the fact that we now regard ourselves as a deeply sundered and increasingly embittered nation, increasingly divided by religion, culture and politics. Indeed, we have arguably grown even further apart within the last couple of years following Donald Trump’s electoral upset.  And this division is exacerbated by the very nature of Wilsonian model of centralized federalism.  Each side of the great political divide in American, blue and red America, still harbors hopes that they ultimately can harness this centralized federal model to impose their will on the other.

As Malice stresses, this has prompted growing numbers of us to ponder the unthinkable: the merits of breaking up this big, increasingly unwieldy federation into smaller, more manageable, and arguably more humane political entities.

Indeed, if an increasingly restive, assertive California has demonstrated one thing , it is that the South’s preeminent Founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were right all along.  Even at a time when America was overwhelmingly Protestant and culturally British and thoroughly wedded to a single language, these two men categorically rejected centralized federalism on the basis that a country as large and diverse as the United States simply could not be managed centrally.  For his part, Jefferson even occasionally wondered out loud whether liberty ultimately would be best secured across this vast continent through an aggregation of smaller republics, all sharing common cultural and political affinities, all pledged to securing the blessings of prosperity and liberty for their citizens.

In the midst of all these wrenching, seemingly intractable divisions, we are being challenged to return to questions that once preoccupied our Founding Fathers.

We are being called upon to search for ways to detoxify and humanize our federal system. But how?  How do we best govern ourselves in an age of sweeping media demassification?  What political relations are best suited to securing liberty and fraternity among Americans of diverse backgrounds stretched across a vast distance?  Are these relations best secured by some version of Madisonian federalism — a large republic encompassing smaller republics — or are the times calling for a more radicalized, Jeffersonian view?  Has our current political union grown so large, so diverse and so ungovernable that we would be better off living in smaller federations, each of which arguably would be better designed and equipped to serve human needs?

Some readers may regard this last question as needlessly cynical and unpatriotic, if not downright treasonous.  But I would argue that engaging in a frank discussion now about the future of our political association may better ensure that we avoid a disastrous impasse, if not a breakup, further down the road.

Yes, I believe that the cultural and political divisions in this country really are that deep and wrenching.

We must find a way not only to detoxify American federalism but also to humanize it.

 

 

The Mainstreaming of Secession

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Devolution, Federalism, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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Federalism, Federations, Interstate Compacts, Jim Langcuster, secession, States Rights, Wilsonian Progressivism

texas-capitol

Texas: One of several states harboring a nascent secessionist movement. 

I’ve been bowled over the last few weeks reading the growing number of articles in which mainstream columnists are finally coming to terms with a reality that I embraced more than a quarter century ago: the likely, if not inevitable, transformation of the  American Union into a much looser federation or into a number of smaller nation-states.

Predictably over the last quarter century, I’ve even been labeled everything from a neo-Confederate and a racist to a secessionist and traitor for subscribing to such views.

Actually, far more prodigious intellects, notably, the late George F. Kennan,  foresaw this inevitability years before I did.

I, for one, and despite my conservatism, respect the right of California and other left-leaning states to experiment with different domestic policies. I hope when all the chips are down that these enlightened blue-coast cosmopolitans will afford their counterparts in the red American hinterland the same courtesy.  And lest we forget, that was the concept behind American federalism:  that states possessed the attributes of nationhood but had chosen out of a desire for self-preservation against Britain and the other maritime powers of Europe to delegate a comparatively narrow range of powers to a general government that operated on behalf of the states.

Aside from all the constitutional arguments, there just comes a point when people outgrow relationships, whether these are business contracts, civic groups, friendships or marriages.  And the simple fact of the matter is that America is simply too damned big and diverse to govern, at least, based on the cookie-cutter approach that Woodrow Wilson and the progressives devised for us roughly a century ago.  We have reached the point where cultural evolution throughout through Europe and America has outstripped the ability of the central government to keep pace with it.

I really believe that.  In fact, I think that this is one of the inherent flaws in federations: The constituent parts are often inherently fissiparous, with their own highly evolved cultures and political ideologies.  These constituent parts don’t stop evolving when they enter into a federation: Their cultural and political evolution continues apace, sometimes to the point at which they feel compelled to question the utility of their relationship with the other members of the federation. Maybe it’s time for us to take into account that incontrovertible fact whenever we undertake the design and execution of another federation.

How close is America to a crackup?  I’m not sure.  Even so, I do believe that in many notable respects, we are drawing close to where the beleaguered Soviet Union found itself in about 1990.  Either we find some way to renegotiate federal arrangements in the United States by devolving more power back to states and, most important of all, localities, or we face a situation where internal pressures build up to a degree that states and regions take it upon themselves to address these problems.

Deep-blue California’s nullifying tendencies vis-a-vis the policies of the Trump Administration are merely a taste of what is to come.

In fact, in an unusually comprehensive and informative column posted in the Intelligencer recently, one perceptive columnist, Sasha Issenberg, predicts that growing number of states may enter into interstate compacts to work through a number of intractable domestic problems.  In the end, the United States may comprise up to three de facto federations: blue, red and neutral, each conducting their own unique domestic policies, while remaining parts of the United States.

Yet, even this columnist concedes that these de facto arrangements will only work for a time before the internal stresses build up and rend apart these federations, forcing each to move close to becoming bona fide countries.

For his part Kennan offered a sort of middle way, one to which I’m sympathetic: a union of about 15 or so constituent republics, to which the bulk of domestic powers would be entrusted, leaving the central government to run a common market and defense pact.

Whatever the case, we are very possibly approaching a constitutional impasse in which large states, particularly California, increasingly will assume more and more powers on their own, drawing us closer to a Soviet scenario. By that I mean that, despite our attempts to stay ahead of the problem by introducing institutional reforms, the country inevitably comes apart.

 

Many American Republics Instead of One?

25 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, American History, Devolution, Federalism, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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Civil War 2017, Jim Langcuster, National Divisions, secession, Thomas Jefferson

Thomas-Jefferson2

Thomas Jefferson

The American Thinker recently painted a disturbing picture of the American future.  We are embroiled in a Civil War – for now, a cold one, though one that bears many hallmarks of one that eventually could run hot.

And from my perspective as a conservative, the left seems implacably opposed to compromise.  And why shouldn’t it be?  They control most of the institutions that define cultural hegemony:  the mainstream media, the arts, popular entertainment and higher education, not to mention, elements of the so-called Deep State.   As I have argued in this forum many times, a Democratic victory last year would have sealed its victory.

The rancorous divisions in this country have prompted some thoughts about an observation Jefferson offered throughout the post-revolutionary period of American history. He presumed that this continent was too big to encompass one American nation. He expected that settlers, as they spanned across broad American continent, would establish several republics, though all of them would share mutual affinities.

That was not to be.  As it turned out, our forebears essentially hewed a kind of middle way between the ideals of Jefferson and his arch ideological rival, Alexander Hamilton. We have tended to place great emphasis on the Jeffersonian fixation with individual liberties, while tacking more closely to the Hamiltonian ideal of a centralized federal union.

And I wonder: Could the case be made that this push toward centralization has simply prolonged the inevitable? Isn’t it natural for a country this big to develop distinct regional identities, even fissiparous ones? Would we be getting along better on this sprawling continent if we had been allowed to develop several polities, albeit with strong shared mutual affinities?

Why Is Secession Such a Terrible Word?

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, American History, Devolution, Localism, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Articles of Confederation, Catalonia, Federalism, Jim Langcuster, John Stossel, Localism, secession, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Constitution

John-Stossel

Libertarian pundit and author John Stossel. Photo: Courtesy of Gage Skidmore.

Libertarian author and pundit John Stossel is mystified by all the smack talk about secession.

“Why do so many people see secession as such a terrible thing?” he asks.

Stossel cites the recent Catalonian push for secession, stressing that the struggle is about Catalans taking charge of their own affairs.  As he stresses, no government is perfect, but local governments, generally speaking, are “more responsive to the needs of constituents.” Moreover, by keeping government closer to home, citizens secure a greater likelihood of keeping their governments under close watch.

So, why all the agonizing over secession? he asks.

Short answer:  because the people in charge of big governments are seldom willing to give up power.

I wholeheartedly agree with Stossel: Why is secession such a terribly unspeakable word among so many of us? As he stresses, secession is by no means alien to the American experience. Indeed, the United States is an outgrowth of a secession struggle against the British Empire.

But I wonder: How many of us are aware that the the post-constitutional United States is a product of secession, too?

Madison once referred to this secession as the “delicate truth” behind the current American union. In effect, 11 states seceded from the union of states founded on the Articles of Confederation to form the present union. Recall that Rhode Island and North Carolina had refused to accede to the new Constitution and were still out of the union when George Washington took the oath as the first president of the United States on March 4, 1789.

Quite a few of our Founding Fathers never lost their enduring affection for small governments. A few of our Founding Fathers even had a hard time envisioning a nation the size of the present-day United States.  Writing to Dr. Joseph Priestly on January 29, 1804, Thomas Jefferson observed:

Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children and descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty and the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.

I concluded a long time ago that the American Experiment has essentially amounted to a forlorn attempt to force one part of the country to meld culturally and politically into the rest. And it hasn’t happened – not after almost a quarter of a millennium. Yes, I would like to see us soldier on as looser federation sharing common market and defense.  There are legitimate geopolitical threats, after all.  But this business of forcing a nation as geographically and culturally diverse as the United States to march in ideological lockstep is madness, sheer madness.

America’s Coming “Identity Awakening”

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Federalism, Geo-Politics, Localism, U.S. Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alvin Toffler, Centralized States, Demassification, Devolution, European Union, Identity Awakening, Jim Langcuster, Nationalism, secession

Catalan-demonstration

A Demonstration of Catalan Nationalists.  Photo: Courtesy of Sergil.

Identity Awakening.  I like that term.

It’s a term that geopolitical analysts and commentators have improvised to account for how globalization has produced a sort of paradoxical effect.

“Everywhere we see regionalism, nationalism as well as religious devotion growing in intensity, sometimes morphing into intolerance. It’s the great paradox of globalization: Far from erasing the peoples’ identitarian and cultural claims, it reinforces them,” writes Li Figaro’s Renaud Giraud.

Technology in the form of digitalization has played a role, too. This takes me back to the writings of the recently deceased Alvin Toffler, a futurist who wrote extensively about the the implications of digital technology, especially in terms of how it would transform society, culture, politics and the economy.

Toffler perceived demassification as one very palpable effect of digital technology.  Mass media would no longer be, well, a mass phenomenon.  There would be no more news anchormen of the stature, not to mention, with the temerity, of Walter Cronkite ending newscasts with the hyper-confident pronouncement:  “That’s the way it is…”

As bandwidth expanded, Toffler predicted that media would scale down to accommodate smaller, more defined audiences.

Remarkably, though, this demassification is not only affecting media but also entire nations.

Demassification seems to have played a major role in the “identity awakenings” occurring throughout the world, particularly in Europe.  It even appears that identity awakenings soon will be playing out in America.  Judging from what’s occurring in California, Texas, Vermont,and Cascadia, they already are.

And why shouldn’t they?  If the Toffler’s musings drove home one realization to me, it’s that national identities based on strong, highly centralized governments are a relic associated with 20th century industrialism, just as mass media are – were.

While I am a great sympathizer with and proponent of identity awakenings, I’m no rigid ideologue.  We are urgently in need of decentrism in America, but  we also depend on a common American market and a common defense, much as Europeans require a common continental market and defense apparatus. But to demand that continents as culturally diverse as America and Europe march in cultural and even political lockstep? It’s madness, as more and more people are coming to realize.

Sooner or later, our institutions will reflect that new reality.  Let’s hope that this occurs as a result of peaceful evolution.

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