End the Great American Myth: Secession, Not Revolution

Posted by freedomforall 3 years, 3 months ago to Philosophy
19 comments | Share | Flag

"“If these people can’t pay the bills now, what’s it going to be in ten or twenty years?” Sure, I was a naive ten or eleven at the time and had no idea about capital flight, but the sentiment was sound.

Even then the Emperor was naked to this child’s eyes. This was Rome near the end and the Sword of Damocles hung over the heads of my generation in ways we could barely articulate.

So, for me, the idea of the U.S. breaking up into its component parts has been a constant companion most of my adult life. And, as a libertarian, I always think in terms of secession first, rather than revolution. It sits on my shoulder whispering in my ear the truth of what’s in front of us.

We’ve reached a very important moment in world history. It is that moment where the promises of classical liberalism are failing in the face of a creeping totalitarian nightmare.

America as mythology has always stood as the ‘shining house on the hill’ for this enlightened idea that the wishes of the individual pursuing his bliss creates the community and culture which lifts the world out of a Hobbesian State of Nature.

The war of all against all, (bellum omnium contra omnes).

But America as Mythology and America as Reality are two vastly different rough beasts. And it is that difference between them that is being exploited today by The Davos Crowd to set the process in motion for their next victory.

Brandon Smith at Alt-Market brought up the trap conservatives are being led into today in his recent article. He argues, quite persuasively, that the ‘right’ is being radicalized into thinking about an armed civil war to fight the corporatist left-wing useful idiots in an orgy of violence.

To be clear, what I believe is happening is that conservatives are being prodded and provoked, not to separate and organize but to centralize. I think they want us to support actions like martial law which would be considered totalitarian. Conservatives, the only stalwart defenders of civil liberties, using military suppression and abandoning the Bill of Rights to maintain political power? That is a dream come true for the globalists in the long term. And despite people’s faith in Trump, there are far too many banking elites and globalists within his cabinet to ensure that such power will not be abused or used against us later.

Nothing would give Klaus Schwab and The Davos Crowd more pleasure than turning us into them — willing to use indiscriminate violence to push otherwise humble and decent people into crazed killers and repudiate their inherent meekness, their inherent desire to pursue their bliss, allowing everyone else that same courtesy.

But, leftism as practiced today, is aggressive. It is rapacious and rests on the idea that no one can exist outside their preferred outcome lest anyone see their world for the nightmare it truly is.

Secession is not only not an option, it is expressly verboten.

I’ve made the argument that violence, not secession, is one very possible outcome of where the current political divide is taking us. Brandon uses the situation in Germany in the 1920s/30s as his historical guide. In short, Fascism rose to meet the violence of the Communists with the old monied elite providing the means for the conflict.

Would that America still be worth finally fighting a bloody civil war for? Because that’s what The Davos Crowd is daring Donald Trump to do.

What if the better response is to do what the South tried to do and failed.

Simply walk away and say, “No more.”

Because fighting the bloody war of all against all, becoming raving fascists rising up to stop the rapacious (and economically backwards) communists in the process is always the wrong option.

Secession is always an option. Opting out of the hyper-collectivizing impulses of in-group/out-group bias is always the right choice. They want us to throw the first punch, to lash out, fire first out of fear, c.f. Fort Sumter, to justify their brutality afterwards.

But, as I said in the quote above, the states with the grievances today are the ones that produce the wealth of this fiction known as the U.S. It’s where the food is grown, the electricity generated, the goods produced and people aren’t shitting in the streets.

The food lines may be long in Texas but there’s still food to distribute.

The balance of power in the U.S. today in real terms is reverse of what existed in 1860. Post-Trump America looks a lot different than pre-Lincoln.

Because of that and the reality that the people pulling off this great coup against sanity are some of the most unimpressive leaders in history, the potential for a successful secession is far higher than it was for the Confederacy.

Brandon Smith is right that they invoke the Confederacy to shame conservatives as racists, conflating issues separated by more than 150 years of history. This is why the all-out assault on the history of the war, whitewashing it of any nuance.

Theirs is a mind-virus that grows beyond the ability of the oligarchy to control. And it is truly best to not just walk but run away from such people. Better to let them sink into their own cesspit of ideological rabbit holes while keeping the lines of trade open, if they have anything worth selling, of course."
SOURCE URL: https://tomluongo.me/2020/12/22/end-american-myth-secession-not-revolution/


Add Comment

FORMATTING HELP

All Comments Hide marked as read Mark all as read

  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 3 years, 3 months ago
    succession doesn't work. The problem is that if you have affluence there are some who want something for nothing and have a philosophy that demands you give it to them. This philosophy must be fought, not run away from.

    The most likely candidate for succession is Texas. It has lots of resources, access to water, a history of being independent etc., I is also being rapidly filled with people from tech companies moving away from the disaster that is California -- and bringing their politics along.

    One of the problems of a physical gulch is that people who don't accept the underlying philosophy could accumulate, attracted by the affluence. Sooner or later they become a majority and ignore whatever rules that are in place to protect individual right in the interest of "the majority".

    And if you absolutely prohibit immigration, then the next generations will turn on you.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by 3 years, 3 months ago
      I think you mean secession.
      You assume that it will be a democracy with universal suffrage. If that is the case, you are correct; it would be possible to convert it to the same socialist state we have now.
      Universal suffrage is a horrible mistake, and a debilitating weakness of democracy That's why the States United were never intended to be a democracy with universal suffrage.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 3 years, 3 months ago
        Damned spell check!

        Do you imagine a political organization with a small number of people who actually have the power to vote or otherwise designate the leadership and the vast majority disenfranchised? Can such a society remain stable?

        I think that the solution has to be in educating the society to accept individualist views rather than trying to find a structure to enforce it on an unwilling majority.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by 3 years, 3 months ago
          No, I imagine a large number of voters who have proven themselves to understand the constitution as originally written and to have a vested interest in individual liberty over safety promised by politicians. Yes, education will certainly be vital so people can earn and maintain their voting rights. No one should be a voter solely by virtue of being born.
          Not receiving payments from government sources should also disqualify some people- like lobbyists and employees of companies with large government contracts.
          Limiting funding for political campaigns to donations from voters in the district of the race will also be important, and so will laws to eliminate career politicians.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 3 months ago
    I was looking into this book last night. Buckley comes at this from the Brexit perspective. American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup. By FH Buckley.

    I am not sure that allowing the perverse states secede would solve the problem. There exists pockets of idiots in each state, never mind the cities...we'd have to banish them from America and surround them by impenetrable walls, lest they poison our society once again.

    And, I could not imagine how we would traverse our country, negotiating our way around those states.
    If it were possible, I certainly would let them rot in their own swallow.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by 3 years, 3 months ago
      Agreed, secession would either have to extensively modify the current state lines, create city states isolated from their leftist allies, or force a massive migration from leftist statist cities isolated in an ocean of conservative America. Virtually every system of education at all levels in a conservative America would have its curriculum extensively modified, too.
      It would be a new/old world.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 3 months ago
        Let's say we win the battle and secession is no longer necessary...we would still need to segregate the staunchly leftest population...Alcatraz comes to mind, or shipment to a far off county. Gitmo would already be full of schiffy politicians and unelected bureaucrats.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by 3 years, 3 months ago
          We'd become nearly what we hate.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 3 months ago
            Yep...and THAT would be our conundrum!
            Sometime our Conscience gets in the way of engaging in something that would solve a problem we can't fix.
            Just like our frustration over the election problem and knowing we have proof and the Traditional Christians waiting for the return of Christ; Knowing that there are somethings we the conscious are just not meant to do...it would be the job of someone that has already reflected the image we all, religious of not, strive to attain...yes..no?

            Allowing some creatures to be happy in their own stupidity or in this case, evil corruption, would be a challenge.
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ jbrenner 3 years, 3 months ago
    No offense, but secession of any meaningful region within America is not an option. Secession of a number of individuals to a site to get away from tyrannies is not a viable option unless you have the money of a Midas Mulligan. I am a millionaire, but it would take a minimum of tens of millions to buy a private island just to get started. Secession is not really viable either.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by 3 years, 3 months ago
      If the Deep State controls the military, I agree, they will declare open warfare on any confederation of regions who declare secession to be free. If that is the case, open secession is not a viable strategy.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by j_IR1776wg 3 years, 3 months ago
      The only people who never fail are those who never try.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by $ jbrenner 3 years, 3 months ago
        I have treid to marshal support for a physical Galt's Gulch here for years with very little interest. Everyone is on his or her own, and that is as it should be.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by j_IR1776wg 3 years, 3 months ago
          Neither Individual Rights nor Objectivism imply non-cooperation with like-minded individuals. We are in the same position as the British colonists were in 1776. The Socialists have pushed us into the primitive responses of fight or flight. We must conceive, propose, and publish Rules for Objectivist Radicals. Then cooperate in their implementation.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by $ jbrenner 3 years, 3 months ago
            The challenge is the cooperation aspect. As individuals, each of us thinks that we know best. You would think that finding others who are sufficiently like-minded would be easier than it really is.
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by DennisJeeves 1 year ago
          jbrenner, here is a message of mine that would partially address your post:

          https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

          Loks like I cannot message you without a paid account so you will have to email me in interested.

          Dennis

          =========copy/paste from the link above ===========

          Most people when they talk about 'Going Galt' are generally talking about themselves and probably no one else (except perhaps family members) being involved. This is a great start but also has limited value in what one can achieve individually. Also being off the grid is not always optimum, Ideally the gulch should be able to replicate all the good stuff the grid has to offer, like a hospital, or jobs that pay well. In short larger projects (whatever that might be) require more people who are philosophically aligned.

          I'm putting crude efforts in that direction which are outlined here at https://quberoot.wordpress.com/ . If you are interested please contact me after reading what I have put in the link. One thing that I can say unflinchingly is that it will take a lot of effort in building working relationships - something which admirers of Ayn Rand do not comprehend.

          Summary, if you don't want to read the whole thing:
          1) Get together with like minded people ( I have defined what like minded is).
          2) Work on projects for mutual benefit.

          As you can see there is nothing new about it really (partly the theme of Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged ) , but the big challenge appears that often relatively independent thinking people also come with their quirks, for example a near complete lack of effort in putting aside minor differences to co-operate with other like-minded people for mutual benefit. Independence of thought (which is good) tends to foster loner (which is bad) like tendencies.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 3 years, 3 months ago
    I liked this Post. I mentioned earlier we had kids camping under the bayou bridge. No longer. People are hiring them and taking them into their homes. God Bless America.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  

FORMATTING HELP

  • Comment hidden. Undo