Decentralization and Secession

Erick Brimen joins Bob to show how Próspera Honduras offers economic freedom and choice in regulatory treatment.

Gen. William T. Sherman‘s infamous “March to the Sea” is covered almost antiseptically in American history texts. Yet, Sherman‘s actions would have been judged as war crimes had he not been on the winning side.

President Donald Trump has openly called for the US to annex Greenland. However, Greenland‘s residents don‘t want to be part of the US empire. Unfortunately, this is another chapter in the sorry history of US acquisitions.

There is always the choice between the market principle and the hegemonic principle. There is no third way or middle ground between the two, often presented as a “mixed economy.”

How did the US go from a nation that revered liberty to one with despotic governance? While political forces already were trying to push the US in a direction of centralization, the Civil War completed the job. We see the results of those centralized outcomes daily.

Harry Jaffa suggested that Americans should adopt a “civil religion,” with Lincoln as a quasi-divine figure. This, of course, makes the state into a quasi-divine institution. 

Democracy is the watchword with the ruling classes, yet a democratic political system does not protect individual freedoms. Indeed, democracy often has become the main road to socialism. It‘s time for some honest discussion.

Passed in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to further centralize governance away from the old decentralized political model. It still is accomplishing that purpose.

William Rawle was a well-respected lawyer, legal scholar, an abolitionist, and a believer in the right of states to secede. He described this in A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, which many claimed to have read while at West Point prior to the Civil War.

In the post-Civil War South during Reconstruction, federal troops attempted to impose their will in part by pitting recently-freed slaves against southern whites. The outcome was obvious, leading to more than a century of violent racial clashes, all the while strengthening federal power.