Secession

[unionblue]

Tommy,

And yes, still wrong, still not right, needs to be addressed, and still does not excuse a wrong of a 140 years ago. A crime or excuse today does not mitigate a crime of the past. Why does it seem to be some magic form or counter somehow for something just as wrong at that time? How does that excuse it?

If we make an excuse that somehow the slavery issue in the South was really 'not that bad' or that 'people treated them different' or some other reason that let's this institution off the hook then, why worry about it now? Heck, aren't those guys in prison better off? Three meals, a job to keep them busy, off the streets, warm and clothed, etc? We justify the past, learn from it supposedly, so what lesson do we infer up here in this time if one is OK and the other is not?

Unionblue
PS Tommy, I am off the board as of now, as it is the end of my shift. Thanks for the converstaions and the thought-provoking posts. I hope to continue it tonight.

(Message edited by Unionblue on September 24, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on September 24, 2004)

[hawglips]

Thea, it is good to hear that you agree with my view on the benefits of having freedom of confederation.

It really seems to me that it is a no-brainer. It would be such a great leap forward for mankind, if such a policy was the rule, rather than the brutish and barbaric 'might makes right' reality of our republic and other empires maintained with the sword.

David: The "will" of the people made the USoA. It gave it a national government, national laws, and over the 70 years before the CW an expanded domain that went well beyond the jerkwater colonial provinces.

The will of the people, only as expressed by the different individual, separate and sovereign States, made the USA.

Isn't it interesting to note that there has never been any instance where the people of our republic officially expressed their collective will outside of their role as citizens of an individual and specific State? They are only heard through their state representatives. Even in a presidential election. That simple fact effectively destroys any notion of "the people" of the union expressing their will in the aggregate. It has never happened that way, and hopefully, never will.

David: That body in law, government and representation of "all" the people of the United States has primacy. The states and their citizenry ceded independent autonomy when they joined the Union.

As we all know by now, the States and their citizenry delegated only a few specific powers to the federal government. The rest were retained by them, as citizens of individual States represented in that federal government. "All" the people, are actually 50 States (at present) of people. And that "primacy" (constitutionally) exists in no matters pertaining to the States themselves.

David: The EU is not a nation state, it is at best an association of trade partnerships. No one joined the EU and declared that it had specific authority to direct squat from a member nation.

The European Union receives certain specific delegated powers, from the member States. The remaining powers are retained by the member States. The EU has a Constitution, which is to be ratified by the individual States. It has a representative legislative body, consisting of members of the separate States.

Sounds very familiar, does it not?

If you are unconvinced, you should read today's Economist article, entitled "A Divided Union."

http://www.economist.co.uk/world/eur...ory_id=3194381

Here's an excerpt: "Starting with agreements between six countries on the pooling of coal and steel resources in 1951 and moving on to the creation of a common market in 1957, the EU has gradually spread into a plethora of activities. Today it is hard to think of a field of public policy in which it is not active. It is involved in everything from foreign policy to immigration, and is reckoned to be responsible for around half of all new laws passed in its member states."

I wonder if the EU will stoop so low as to invade a member State that attempts to dissolve its bonds with the others?

David: If you're so hot to trot on self determination let's ask 3.5 million slaves if they'd care to remain slaves or not. Of course they can immediately go free if that is their will. Ooops I forgot; they're bound by law and someone elses determination to keep them enchatteled.

Yes. It is very sad that the USA embraced and coddled the evil institution of slavery from the beginning.

Unfortunately, as much as you may try, you cannot lay that malady at the feet of the wicked, secesh, southern, CSA.

And it is really quite irrelevant to the question of allowing people to exercise their inalienable right to choose their government.

Hal

(Message edited by hawglips on September 24, 2004)

(Message edited by hawglips on September 24, 2004)

[hawglips]

Neil: "Why is it the South during the Civil War is perceived to be an innocent victim, that somehow, the reason for leaving the Union was some Constitutional, high and mighty, search for liberty and freedom, etc., when almost every declaration of secession one cares to read stems from the issue of slavery?"

Why does it matter WHY any of them wanted to leave?

Is self government an inalienable right or is it not?

If it is, then we were 100% wrong in squashing it under the pathetic pretense of 'union'.

Hal


(Message edited by hawglips on September 24, 2004)

[dave_kelly]

Hal:

Your biting out of both sides of the apple and avoiding the sour bits to suit your case.

The EU exists to facilitate issues of common advantage while dumping the social issues of states on the individual sovereignties to fend for themselves. And where the individual interests and prestige of those states are put to the test will they abide by the EU or by their own interests? Did the leauge of nations stop fascism? Did Communism prevent a Stalin?

So no, in a crisis self-determination is a lousy way to protect high order justice when you can just ignore the laws and snuggle up to the juicy bits.

[hawglips]

Neil: I really think Hal is missing my point that the bar for leaving the Union was simply not that high for the South. The only liberty I see threatened is that one to own and move slaves into the territories. Is there any merit in any other argument, in your own view?

Let's say that you are absolutely correct. Let's assume that the only liberty threatened was slavery in the territories. So they seceded.

Now what?

The seceders gave up all rights to the territories upon seceding, thereby forever insuring that they could take no slaves into those lands.

So, the north won and the south lost already.

It was utterly pointless to both secede, and to force union, if your view is correct.

So, it obviously was not that simple.

Hal

[hawglips]

David: The EU exists to facilitate issues of common advantage while dumping the social issues of states on the individual sovereignties to fend for themselves.

This also sounds familiar. Sounds almost to me like you could replace the "EU" above with the pre-Lincoln USA:

"The Constitution of the United States is a compact of independent nations..." Thomas Jefferson to Edward Everett, 1826. ME 16:163

President Buchanan: "All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way. As sovereign States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the world for slavery existing among them. For this the people of the North are not more responsible and have no more right to interfere than with similar institutions in Russia or in Brazil."

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State." --James Madison

Hal


(Message edited by hawglips on September 24, 2004)

[unionblue]

Hal,

I am afraid your lab experiment is just too pristine and too clean for the real world. What works on paper, in the lab, or in our fondest belief systems in the Great Pumpkin, in 'States' having the freedom to chose between competing confederations is not real world and was not the case in 1860.

It does conjure up a nice scenario though, like those myself and other reenactors do for the benefit of paying spectators at reenactment events. Both sides, Confederate and Union, get together, discuss options, safety issues, plan exactly what we are going to do, and then run through it a few times to ensure everything comes out all right. Then we perform the skit and everyone is happy with the results.

But the brutal fact of the matter is what you propose and what actually happened in history is nowhere as neat and as simple as you would have us believe. Even quotes from Jefferson are all a matter of timing when concerning your pristine experiment that 'proves' your point. Find the quotes where Jefferson supported Union and feared secession, no matter what the 'competing confederation' would have been. One should not pick and choose portions of history but shove the entire, sticky mess out on stage and let all view those very same messy, unpredictable and often time, unpleasant facts.

The South did not wish any States to compete with any ideas of liberty or different forms of confederations. It wanted the entire country molded into it's own image, it's social and political structure, tied to the institution of slavery. To expand it and to permit it in EVERY State and have it protected by the Federal Government. The phrase, 'My way or the Highway' comes to mind. Not, 'Follow me and be free to choose your Confederation!'

It tried and lost its gambit in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln and the majority of the country saying they wanted something a bit different. (Yes, a three-way race, etc., but again, a legal election engaged in by all with one Party sabotaged by the South because it could not safely get it's version of those 'competing confederations', the one that protected and expanded slavery, in spite of 'State Sovereignty,' the act that let's a State choose, remember?)

Messy, unpredictable, hard to judge the repercussions. Always seems to be that way when you think you don't have to sit down, discuss and work things out before the rest of the country goes to hades in a hand basket.

So in the end, a minority could not dictate to a majority. So in the end, slavery is lost, even by those who wanted to maintain it and expand it at the cost of their country.

Results in the real world.
A view and an opinion held by myself based on history read by myself. I am responsible for any messy outcome this view and opinion cause.

YMOS,
Unionblue

[dave_kelly]

“It was generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a confederation of Sovereign States. A voluntary observance of the federal law by all the members could never be hoped for. A compulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice, and if it could, involved equal calamities to the innocent and guilty, the necessity of a military force, both obnoxious and dangerous, and, in general, a scene resembling much more a civil war than the administration of a regular Government.

Hence was embraced the alternative of a Government which, instead of operating on the States, should operate without their intervention on the individuals composing them; and hence the change in the principle and proportion of representation." (Madison to Jefferson on the New Constitution)

"With respect to our sate and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the later. But this is not the case. They are coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole...to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other states.... (Jefferson to Ludlow 5 Jun 1824)

It's the Union. Not the parts. Not the sum of the parts. All of it. One Constitutional domain.

[hawglips]

Interesting article.

Would this secession scenario be palpable?


*****************************
BREAK IT UP

What did you make of that poll showing 40% of Canadian teens regard America as “evil”? A little statistical oversampling of various Khadr nephews and nieces in southern Ontario perhaps?

But no, these seem to be regular well-adjusted wholesome all-American-hating Canadian teens. And the only sub-group variation I saw in the Dominion Institute’s survey was that, when it comes to francophone teens, the number who regard America as an “evil global force” rises to 64%.

Given that, unlike other Yankophobic nations, the Canadian economy has only one customer, our anti-Americanism is, obviously, psychologically unhealthy: we decline to put our money where our mouth is, and, as a consequence, the gap between our money and our mouth widens every years. Even though Americans are “bastards” and “morons” and a “force for evil”, we expect to be able to cross their border without the passports, visas and other paperwork required of other foreigners.

But let’s look at it from their point of view: Is the continued existence of Canada in the interest of the United States?

Traditionally, it’s been understood that Washington is in favour of the Dominion’s unity – ie, she prefers a friendly neighbour to the north rather than neighbours. No surprise there. The foreign policy establishment’s line is that, when it comes to other countries, it likes fewer and bigger. In the first Bush Administration, Brent Scowcroft and Larry Eagleburger wanted to stick with the territorial integrity of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia even after the Soviets and Yugoslavs had thrown in the towel. In the Clinton era, Strobe Talbott talked up the European Union in much the same way: “A politically united Europe will be a stronger partner to advance our goals.” Only if your goals include losing Britain as your most reliable ally and military comrade.

Thirty years ago, Henry Kissinger used to say, “If I want to call Europe, whom do I call?” And that sums it up: better half-a-dozen big numbers in your Rolodex than getting the whole thing clogged up with Slovenias and Slovakias. The State Department’s natural tendency to inertia does the rest. A preference for the status quo in Canada relieves one of the need to think about Canada.

But suppose Canada’s becoming an unfriendly neighbour to the north in perpetuity. That would not be an unreasonable conclusion after an election in which the standard insult hurled by three of the political parties at the fourth was “American-style”. The Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren summed up the Conservative failure to make any headway in the decisive riding-rich Golden Horseshoe thus: “Low birthrates, outward migration, and high immigration from non-traditional sources have utterly transformed the political landscape.” None of these factors is going away. In fact, they’re going to spread. So, if David Warren is right, the arithmetic for the lone non-anti-American party is going to be worse in 2008, and worse still in 2012.

At a superficial level, America’s northern neighbour is taking on the characteristics of its southern one (pre-Vincente Fox): a ramshackle ersatz democracy where the ruling party never gets dislodged and the churlish resentment of the Yanqui is in direct proportion to the country’s economic dependency on him. This would be manageable were Canada’s anti-Americanism strictly of the traditional variety – the banal CanCon mood music playing in the Dominion’s elevator to nowhere. I’m thinking of things like: “As the United States descends into fascism, the importance of Canada, North America’s only civil society, is greater than ever.”

That was the opening sentence of an article by The Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume. Mr. Hume doesn’t write about politics or global affairs. He’s the architecture correspondent. Even more poignantly, he was writing about the new plaza on the Canadian side of the Peace Bridge between our two great nations.

But the US can afford to be relaxed about Mr Hume. He talks the talk but he has no inclination to walk the walk. He’s some arts-page pantywaist, so he’s not going to be strapping on the old suicide-bomber belt and waddling over to Buffalo pizza parlours any time soon. It’s on the long continuum between poseur Yank-haters like Christopher Hume and hard-core jihadi like the Khadrs that the judgments get more difficult to call.

Once you start thinking about it in American national-security terms, maintaining the territorial integrity of Canada seems easily the worst option, and all the permutations of coast-to-coast crack-up infinitely preferable.

1) AN INDEPENDENT QUEBEC

On September 11th, at Montreal’s now famous Conqaedia University, Muslim students bayed and whooped as the twin towers came down and spent the rest of the day celebrating or brawling with those boorish enough to be offended by their good cheer. Are those students as reliably passive in their anti-Americanism as Christopher Hume? Or would some of them be willing to serve as part of a support network for Islamists? Just small things, you know – providing references, loaning their addresses to applicants for driver’s licenses, etc. And, if you think some of them would, what percentage does it have to be before it becomes significant? Two per cent? Five? Ten?

Right now the Province of Quebec, for reasons best-known to jelly-spined federalists, controls its own immigration policy. That means new Quebecers come mostly from the francophone world – Haiti, Syria, Algeria, French West Africa. Furthermore, about a third of the “refugees” “processed” into Canada hail from terrorist-producing countries and they too tend to gravitate to Montreal, where they can blend into sympathetic local populations a mere half-hour from the US border. I was told by an RCMP guy recently that roughly three-quarters of Canada’s counter-terrorism effort is concentrated on the Montreal area.

Suppose you’re in Washington and you don’t like some of the things you’re hearing about terrorist cells in Quebec. Most jurisdictions that run their own immigration policy are independent countries, so you deal with them direct. But, under Quebec’s make-believe form of sovereignty, it gets to have a national immigration policy without being a nation. So you can’t get on the phone to the relevant guy in Quebec City. You have to go through Ottawa, and, given that the bedrock principle of modern Canada is Quebec-pandering, they’re the very last people who are going to crack down on la belle province.

In other words, if Montreal’s terrorist subculture expands and Washington wants any leverage on the scene, the best way to do that is through a small, weak Quebec it can apply the normal economic and diplomatic pressures to.

2) CANADA WITHOUT QUEBEC

If Canada were Iraq, Quebecers would be the Sunnis and the Anglos would be the Shia. And at least Iraq’s Shiites had the excuse that they were living in a ruthless dictatorship. As those statistics for francophone teens and American “evil” suggest, a Canada shorn of Quebec would be a lot less antipathetic to its southern neighbour. It wouldn’t be as reliable an ally as Australia and Britain, but it would be closer than it’s been for years.

3) AN INDEPENDENT ALBERTA

However the endgame plays out in Saudi Arabia, it’s going to be messy and disruptive. It’s in Washington’s interest to cultivate local sources of energy, and, once you start mulling over where most of that is, the reality is that bilateral US-Alberta relations would be more congenial for both parties than having to go through Ottawa. Freed from having to pick up the tab for Canada’s basket-case provinces, Alberta could be a textbook example of a modern medium-sized power. And Princess Patricia’s Alberta Light Infantry would be better funded and equipped.

4) CANADA WITHOUT QUEBEC AND ALBERTA

That doesn’t leave a lot for Canada. But the best way to rescue the Dominion from its death spiral is to remove the two biggest distorting factors in the national equation – Quebec’s pseudo-separatist shakedown and Alberta’s bankrolling of socialist torpor.

In Washington, the assumption has always been that Balkanisation is bad for North America. But not if the alternative is a sour monolith whose privileged access to your territory is unwarranted by its fast-shifting demographics and subversion of continental security. If national security is the priority for Washington, then the secession of both Quebec and Alberta is in the American interest.

And, if those sinister neocons are half as “evil” as Canadians think they are, they’ll be giving some thought on how best to advance that.

The Western Standard, August 2nd 2004

~ Mark's column can be read every fortnight in The Western Standard. In the current issue, don't miss Steyn on small-twig foreign policy,only in the print edition of The Western Standard, on newsstands now - or click here to subscribe.

[unionblue]

Hal,

Canada's current situation concerns itself with the American Civil War in what way?

Unionblue