I have been a big advocate for decentralized power, which in our American context has been connected to “states’ rights;” the most prominent period and example being the American Civil War, where the Southern states resisted centralized federal control and both fought for and applied to their Constitution a strong decentralized states’ rights policy.
A decentralized Union where sovereignty lay with the people of the various states, as intended by the Founders, would allow diversity of opinion, practices, and so on, providing greater freedom as people could live in any of the various states with diverse policies. However, a centralized “one nation” as Lincoln implemented ruins such choice, and replaces freedom with force, obligating everyone to follow the dictates of the center, controlled by the most powerful party backed by the national majority; in other words, the tyranny of mob rule that replaces choice and diversity with conformity and coercion.
While I believe any movement towards decentralization, such as “states’ rights,” giving choice back to the people of the states and allowing them to decide their own affairs rather than having decisions imposed at the federal level, is always a good thing, it no longer carries the same meaning, purpose, or result as it once did. The early American colonies, and later the states, were to a much larger extent what Thomas Aquinas labeled “united wholes.” They had similar religion, culture, and thus politics. Each state was made up of largely coherent blocs of like-minded people.
Today the states have become much more diverse. Changes in politics, culture, beliefs and more have caused a rupture in the localized “old-fashioned” way of life that kept blocs of similar people together. People now seek to “find themselves,” travel the country, leave for job opportunities elsewhere, or go to college across the nation, and families are separated, displaced, and more.
The population drift and overall increase make managing these states as blocs of like-minded people impossible. Texas has a population of over 31 million people. The entire population of the states when they ratified the Constitution was less than 3 million. It did not reach Texas’ current population of 31 million until the Civil War! If we had told the people at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, or the Civil War, that 31 million people would be forced to live under the same state government, they would lock us up in an insane asylum. You cannot manage that many people under one state government.
The Abbeville Institute has a great short video asking the question, “Is America too big?” Demonstrating the loss of local control and self-governance simply due to the population size, we have one representative for every 750,000 citizens. The scale and population are just too large to achieve any self-governance.
I recently met with conservative and libertarian members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Texas, yet the county they were in, and many near them in Houston, were very radically progressive. States that we label “conservative” have, in fact, very liberal counties within them. Why force these separate counties to be at war within the state to decide policy? Is that not the same as what Lincoln forced on the states by having the federal government decide? We now do the same at the state level by pitting counties against each other.
Thus, if we can hand back to the states much of what the federal government does, it is an improvement, but in today’s society, it will just cause mini-fights at the state rather than the federal level. Which while not ideal is better, and is also how should it be legally done within the framework of American history. However, to achieve what our decentralized Union prior to Lincoln was meant to do, today we must make governance even more localized, where true diversity could blossom; that is, at the county level.
The Solution
So, what can we do? Giving authority back to the states is only a slight correction, we must go more local and abolish the “states” as we know them and hand governance over to local county control. Every decision, and all authority that was previously held at the state and county level, would now rest solely at the county level. This would also rid us of a layer of bureaucracy, politicians, and taxation. Now we would have only the local county-level control and the federal.
Next, we would slowly transfer various decisions still done at the federal level and give those choices back to the counties, thus decentralizing power and authority back to the people at the local level, allowing us to decide our own government and laws at a reasonable scale to create a unified whole, where people can select the policies of their choice.
We could create thousands of self-governing counties of like-minded people. One county might be conservative, the next liberal, the next communist, the next libertarian, and so on. Each county would maintain sovereignty within its sphere, create its own policy, and enact it. People could move to the county of their choice and live under the laws of their choosing. This would remove much of the antagonism, hatred, and more derived from majority democratically-elected rule, and end that great evil of centralized control and forced conformity, that places all citizens politically at war with each other; all while achieving the level of self-government that the Founders and the Confederacy desired.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
“Think locally, act locally” – Brion McClanahan.
Counties already have much of the power to nullify Federal mandates. Counties seceding within a state is a good idea IMO. I already live in a state that is miserably skewed to the left due to a large region of it being woke. Unfortunately living next to or near a communist county/region infects the neighboring counties because the commies ALWAYS seek out the lower taxes, prices and regulations of the freer counties. I have experienced this personally over the last three decades. This means to maintain a freer county there must be a total ban on immigration of commie immigrants. How that can actually be done is not clear to me.
The only way to nullify any federal law, is to reclaim and assert each state’s national sovereignty, and thus national power– as it still exists, by law, since the USA was never a national union, but only an international union like the UN or the EU.
I address this method at my website.
Well each county could decide to ban immigration or not, to have qualifiers for legal immigration or not.
“Today the states have become…People now seek to “find themselves,” travel the country, leave for job opportunities elsewhere, or go to college across the nation, and families are separated, displaced, and more.”
Well said. Much truth there.
Interesting topic. Makes me wonder how the Gentile nations are going to operate in the Messianic Millennium, or how the Lord will allow them to operate. It might be how it was here and there in the O.T. If Israel’s neighbor’s were smart they gave respect and honor to Israel like the Queen of Sheba did. The Gentiles, when the Messianic kingdom is established, better be smart as the prophecy for that future time warns:
Zechariah 14:17 “And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.”
Matthew 10:34 ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
This means that corrupt law should be fought against, rather than peacefully accepted, to re-establish the true law.
Martin Luther did the same in 1517 with the 95 theses.
In our case, the Constitution is being falsely claimed as a national compact over domestically sovereign (i.e. dependent) states; while in reality it formed an international union, among the democratically sovereign peoples of the (internationally) sovereign states, with each person equally consenting to their government, while having the supreme power to alter or abolish it at will.
I don’t compare myself to Jesus or Martin Luther, but the point the same: opportunists will always corrupt the law to seize power, unless countered.
As far as Matthew 10:34 goes, the historical context concerns the critical importance, for Israel exclusively, of Israel believing that Jesus was their Christ:
Matthew 10:33 “But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”
Matthew 16:13 “…Jesus…asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
Matthew 16:14-15 “And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?”
The whole context of Matthew 10 concerns God’s program with Israel. In chapter 10, the Lord is sending His disciples out to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
So, there’s something else entirely different going on in Matthew. It’s not related to the ordinances God installed before Genesis 12. Those ordinances are: 1) Man’s free will. 2) Marriage. 3) Family. 4) Nationalism- human government.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the arguments the states had, in that they had a Constitutional right to secede. However, I have been looking at the possibility that America has been reaping what was sown when the Colonies rebelled against the Crown and Parliament. I think the Loyalist’s blew the Patriot’s arguments out of the water.
“If government was God’s ordinance to man, little more need be said. Disagreement with government became rebellion against authority and, in turn, opposition to God.”
Hi Matt, I would love to chat with you about a comment you made. I think I have a book you would enjoy! Please email me if you would like to talk about it.
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“I don’t necessarily disagree with the arguments the states had, in that they had a Constitutional right to secede. However, I have been looking at the possibility that America has been reaping what was sown when the Colonies rebelled against the Crown and Parliament.”
Well let’s look at that, beginning with the 1783 Treaty of Paris:
“His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”
So the states sowed sovereignty in 1776, and reaped it in 1783– as 13 separate sovereign nations, each supremely ruled by its respective legislature.
Lincoln, however, DENIED this fact of history, in his July 4, 1861 Message to Congress; claiming that the states had NEVER been 13 sovereign nations, but only a single nation via “the Union”:
“Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of” the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of ‘State rights,’ asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the “sovereignty” of the States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is a “sovereignty” in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it ‘a political community without a political superior’?
*Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the land.*
The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution.”
And so that’s always been the US government’s official legal argument, for claiming national union over the states: i.e. the claim that they were never 13 sovereign nations, but always formed a SINGLE sovereign nation.
Keep going, you’re on the right track. Decentralization is the proper path away from the domination of the many by the few. The just and necessary end to “….that great evil of centralized control and forced conformity, that places all citizens politically at war with each other….” Is to recognize that the only valid and legitimate authority is self-governance based on individual responsibility and that no person has the right to exercise political power and control over another.
The path to decentralization, however, is paved in history: namely, the historical FACT that the American Revolution established the states as 13 sovereign nations—
which wholly invalidates the US government’s legal claim of central (i.e. national) power over the individual states (and peoples thereof), which is based solely on the false premise that they were NEVER 13 separate sovereign nations.
Meanwhile, this fact of history also precedes your second point, by which the states then each established its respective PEOPLE (i.e. as represented by its respective electorate), as the supreme power therein, and thus able to directly overrule their government officials.
This was true populist government in progress; but the lobbyists seized power before franchise even reached 51%, again by claiming that the states were never 13 separate sovereign nations. (See my website for more info on how to solve this).
P.S.
>>The just and necessary end to “….that great evil of centralized control and forced conformity, that places all citizens politically at war with each other….” Is to recognize that the only valid and legitimate authority is self-governance based on individual responsibility and that no person has the right to exercise political power and control over another.
True; but more to the point, every person has equal and final power over their national government, so that the majority carries on matters of national policy; while the minority may concur by choosing to remain under it, or to “vote with their feet” by expatriation to a nation with policy more to their liking.
This is the actual law established by the American Revolution, with each state being a separate sovereign nation that is supremely ruled by its respective electorate, and the USA is simply an international union like the UN or the EU; while government is simply subordinate to the respective state’s people.
This was exercised in 1861 when the people of South Carolina revoked authority from the US government, and delegated it to their state officials in order to overrule it; and several other states did likewise.
In response, however, the US government mounted a coup to seize power, by falsely claiming that the states had never been separate sovereign nations, and that their union was national rather than international.
Accordingly, historical fact wholly invalidates this false argument, and states can now challenge the US government’s claim in order to re-assert their respective long-standing national sovereignty, which existed as long as the state itself– while the USA never had sovereignty of its own, any more than the UN or the EU.
You’d have to define “states’ rights.”
If you mean technically written rights against a national union, there are none; only federally-defined privileges– as Hitler himself declared in “Mein Kampf,” when claiming that the American states were never separate sovereign nations. (Meanwhile Lincoln claimed the same in his First Inaugural Address, holding that an actual breach federal breach of any state’s rights, was only moral grounds for revolution– never legal grounds for nullification or secession.)
This is why the Founders established each state as (13+) separate sovereign nations, in an international union like the UN or the EU : i.e. so that state’s rights would be ultimately defined by the respective state’s people, and not by the whims of any federal bureaucrats.
E pluribus unum…even lincolon should be able to understand the Republic’s motto…from many, one…must have the many first…in order to have the one. All you have to do to defeat a liar’s position is listen to his argument. The bullets are there in front of your eyes. The Founders of the Republic never agreed to have an oppressive fedgov lording over the States. The fedgov is to SERVE the States…if not, the States gather at a Constitutional Convention and remove fedgov from its positions. The only reason this wasn’t going to happen in 1860 is the northern States were ALREADY IN VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION AS WAS THE FEDGOV…the invasion of Virginia by fanatics, not prosecuted by fedgov as fanaticBrown’s supporters should have been, declared to the South the fedgov had abandoned its charter to defend the States from invasion…hence…there was no Constitution in effect.
Jeb Smith: >>So, what can we do? Giving authority back to the states is only a slight correction
Legally, supreme sovereign power must be given back to the state’s respective PEOPLE — not its respective government– to ultimately determine the respective state’s national policy, by their choice.
This is the correction which the law requires.
Jeb Smith: >>So, what can we do? Giving authority back to the states is only a slight correction
Legally, supreme sovereign power must be given back to the state’s respective PEOPLE — not its respective government– to ultimately determine the respective state’s national policy, by their choice.
This is the correction which the law requires.
Agreed, and that is the end goal, to give it to the people. But more practically, attempting to move in that direction under our current system fits my proposal well. ideally, the outcome is that power is with the people. My proposal, imperfect as it is, would go a long way to achieving that localized allowing for self-governance, and creating united wholes.
The “current system” is an epic scandal that wrongfully claims national union and fake democracy, over what is actually 50 separate popularly-sovereign nations.
The only way to restore power to the people, is by their directly challenging it, via the information I have at my listed website.
P.S. just click my name to read it.