Federalism - What CAN'T it solve?!


Posted On: Wednesday - March 2nd 2022 6:31PM MST
In Topics: 
  Americans  Liberty/Libertarianism  US Feral Government  Poetic Stupidity  World Political Stupidity  Morning Constitutional



In the case of the ongoing downfall of the United States and very possible dissolution of the Union (whether openly or de facto), perhaps that old time Federalism, so in fashion for well nigh 2 centuries, could help solve our problem.

As commenter Hail pointed out two posts ago, Steve Sailer has a post, taken from his latest Takimag column*, advising us to be very wary of a break up of this country. (The idea here this time - as Mr. Hail noted that Mr. Sailer has written something like this before - comes obviously from what's going on with the Ukraine and Russia.) Steve Sailer says "Let’s Not Break Up the USA".

Lots of us beg to differ. No, the break up of the country will not be a picnic. It could turn out to be something we on the right might regret, something even worse than we are experiencing now. The column gives the reasons. The money quote is:
Whether you blame poor Ukraine’s current agony most on Russia’s obvious aggressions or NATO’s subtle machinations is a matter of opinion, but the lesson is clear: If you can avoid it, don’t be Ukraine.
Mr. Sailer even quotes George Washington surprisingly, about foreign entanglements.**

In reply to this line, Mr. Anon noted:
What if the alternative to being Ukraine in 2022 is being Cambodia in 1976?
(The rest of his comment was equally good.) Damn right. However, why don't we at least consider a solution that a real student of American history and the US Constitution might come up with - Federalism!

Before I read Mr. Sailer's column I did a quick ctrl-f (in the iPad sense) for the word “Federalism”. Nada.

He talks about the problems of having many small separate countries, as far as foreign interference. Well, there WERE many ALMOST separate countries in this land until not that awful long ago! They called ’em “States”, and they still do, even now, when they are behaving and being treated like nothing but districts or provinces by the Feral Gov’t.

The Founders of this country were smarter than most. Even though this country was run entirely by White Men, a big majority of British extraction, with real Federalism again, this ultra-diverse Tower of Babel might be able to hang together. The Founders created the Federal Gov’t for the main purpose of a common defense. That’s all it SHOULD be for!

There is far too much diversity at this point for this place to stay together as it is. I would not want to be part of the Totalitarian Police State, a Yugoslavia on steroids, that it’s going to take to keep it together. (That’s what it’s been becoming for a long while, accelerated by the problems of the immigration invasion and “civil rights”.)

I want no part in BEING together with many of these people period. It’s not just the policies but the fact that my labor is being stolen for the use of those with opinions and lifestyles anathema to me that makes me want out. Simple solution: Devolve the power back to the States and people where it belongs, per Amendment X.

One of the silver linings to have come out of the Covid PanicFest*** was the visibility of, and a modicum of respect for, Federalism again. Go Gators! Go Governor DeSantis!

Now, the first argument against my comment would logically be that this country is not divided politically along anything resembling State lines, such as in 1860. We are not only mixed in with each other to the level of counties, but we are mixed together right down to the level of voting precincts. It might take a decade or a couple of generations, but “experiments in democracy” (in some cases now, something else entirely) CAN STILL WORK. People can vote with their feet. It's not easy at all to leave the land one's had or regions one's lived in, even for a generation, much less 5 or 10. However, Americans ran off in the first place. They can do it again.

The hitch with the plan of reverting back to Federalism is that Federal power would have to be taken. That’s where the worries about violence come in. It will not be given up easily. The stupid bastards that let the Feds usurp State power over the many years are responsible for any bloodshed involved there.

Hey, if Federalism could come back in fashion, how bout hoop skirts Ragtime music, and Coca~cola made with REAL cocaine? Just as importantly, how about REAL MONEY? The great limericist**** of the iSteve comment crowd, Eustace Tilley (not), promotes Federalism much more poetically, with these 2 nice ones: :
A Phlebotomist Party would strive
For a Washington barely alive.
Kill Amendment XVI:
A New Switzerland seen
With the sovereign states free to thrive.
His 2nd one even brings back some of that olde tyme spelling:
Congrefs no Law shall enact
Using Force to keep Union intact;
Nor shall States beggars be,
Nor be serfs, but be free;
Nor the Dollar by Magick be backed.
Thank you, even if you WERE Eustace Tilley!


* His weekly Wednesday Takimag columns are some of his best writing, IMO. I think he spends quite a bit of time on them.

** Yeah, well that's water under the bridge. When you let your central government get out of control over (arguably) a whole century, you're way beyond the point of being able to control all that.

*** I'd say the highly increased awareness of homeschooling is another one.

**** Sorry, spell check, it's stayin'!

Comments:
The Alarmist
Saturday - March 5th 2022 6:47AM MST
PS

With regard to SCOTUS screwing with state legislature districting, that would be Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), yet another POC ruling from the Warren court.

The particular offending finding of law was #4, “The seats in both houses of a bicameral legislature must under the Equal Protection Clause be apportioned substantially on a population basis. Pp. 568-576.”

Warren himself opined, “Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.” The majority based their opinion on the principle of “One person, one vote” in their zeal to make state representations “more democratic.”

The majority opinion was further supported by the obiter that the original constitutions of 36 states provided for proportional allocation of the districts underlying both chambers of those states, and further, that the Founders were also for more democratic allocations of representations. In short, the Court found that the Federal analogy with regard to the Senate was not relevant to allocations of representation in the states, particularly when it acted to dilute the votes or essentially create separate classes of voter based on the geography of their abode.

The Federal Analogy doesn’t really fit because the United States was created by the peoples of individual states, so it was sound principle to ensure that each state had some level form of representation vis à vis other states at the federal level. The states themselves create the counties and cities they comprise, so it would be less relevant in the context of a state for any given county or city to have equal weight of representation with any other in the state.

Having said that, the practical effect is nevertheless the same: The majority of a state can appropriate to themselves the property and liberties of the minority as they see fit, i.e. mob rule. This is why states like Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Califormia, all of which have vibrant economic regions and industry that are being slowly strangled to feed the mob, are descending into shit-holes.

Unfortunately, there is no political solution for what ails the US, because politics is the problem.



https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep377/usrep377533/usrep377533.pdf
Hail
Friday - March 4th 2022 4:43PM MST
PS

Re: Sam J., continued

If the above link does not work, try this one:

https://naturallawinstitute.com/the-law-full/?section=the-simple-version-of-our-movement-for-normal-people

Or search this phrase:

"We’re Repeating the Founding Fathers’ Demand for Reform. And it will work."
Hail
Friday - March 4th 2022 4:29PM MST
PS

Sam J. has previously posted this elsewhere, at Isegoria.net (https://www.isegoria.net/2022/01/popular-support-for-authorities-who-gut-liberalism-when-needed/).

Sam, what you say reminds me of what Curt Doolittle has been saying for a few years. He is a minor right-wing intellectual with several thousand regular followers and head of a right-wing libertarian school of thought (now Natural Law Institute). He long headquartered his institute in Kiev but is now in America again.

Curt Doolittle's big point is that there need to be explicit demands for constitutional revisions/adjustments --- **as the basic negotiating position**, --- and NOT, therefore, what we see, namely desperate cargo-cults around extremely flawed individuals (be it with orange hair, or any other color hair, or no hair at all), not getting your soul lodged into some silly outrage game (which you get from much of media discourse today on all sides), nor some silly push to desperately elect Republicans ("this is the most important election of our lifetimes"--often predicted, always wrong), nor some desperate hope for there to be five good Supreme Court justices to four bad ones at any specific moment.

Doolittle and co.'s work has been in part to explicitly write out these adjustments, in a way that stands as an intellectual inheritance that will outlast the din of the moment.

Here is a summarized version of the project:

https://naturallawinstitute.com/the-book/revolution/the-simple-version-of-our-movement-for-normal-people/
MBlanc46
Friday - March 4th 2022 1:42PM MST
PS MOD No doubt that the New Deal is also a large part of the account. And the “civil rights” and Great Society legislation of the 1960s. SAM J: The reason we can’t overturn any of this, and whatever the Left have in store for us down the road, is that they control every significant institution in the country. And they control much of voting. By importing Third Worlders by the tens and hundreds of thousands every month. And by by eliminating all controls on who votes and how many times they vote. And by pallets of ballots when required. The major cities are gone. The coasts are gone. We’ll be hard pressed to save anything. It can be done, but it won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap in effort and blood.
Moderator
Friday - March 4th 2022 9:34AM MST
PS: Thank you for the treatise on the slow downfall of Federalism, Sam. I agree that Amendment XVII was a big factor in this. It seems like a minor housekeeping issue, but it took away rights of the States, making State governments less powerful.

Which particular SCROTUS decision do you refer to after this?

You may want to go through the "Morning Constitutional" topic key, but I'd guess you'd know most of this, based on your writing:

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?tkid=98

Amendment XVII post:

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=1455

Your comment would make a good stand-alone post (of course,a dupe for some of us who read the comments). I'll put it up if you say OK.
Sam J.
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 8:39PM MST
PS

This is long but it's a step by step method of taking over the whole country which requires a bit of wordage.

It's a severe lack of imagination that portends that the only solution is to break up the US. Why not run ALL of it for our benefit?

The shape we are in didn't happen overnight, but there are a few points in history that made what we live in today what it is. Can we not change them? Yes we can, legally and fully within the boundaries of our Constitutional framework.

So what has happened and how did we get here?

The country was politically murdered.

The start was the ending of the Federal Senate being controlled by the States Senates. Elected Federal Senators. This was sold as Democracy but in reality removed control from the people and put it into the hands of whoever could come up with the most campaign funds. It also removed the Senators exclusive interest in their actual States and transfers it to whoever had the cash to put them in office and various other mobs of people.

The second was a Supreme Court ruling that said that all the States Senates must be elected by population instead of by regional representation. How this is unconstitutional for the States and not for the Federal government, the Courts didn't specify.

The third major blow was to stop most all requirements for voting which they continue to push even farther and farther today. Such that now they are saying illegal aliens should vote.

All of these together are directly responsible for emplacing ALL the power of the country in the major cities and stripping all power from the rural areas. The founders of our Constitution directly addressed this issue and were firmly against it.

Why issues two and three are not burning hot, jumping up and down blood curdling protesting blasphemy is beyond me. They are clearly unconstitutional power grabs of the greatest magnitude. Total dictatorial control by the large population centers and without these ruling what is going on in the US today would be very, very unlikely to be happening.

This is a huge, massive power grab that started after the civil war when the big population centers in the country defeated the more rural South, and it has only intensified over time. Over time the city centers have become more and more corrupt and since the lesser population regions have no power they can not stop it. Look at all the big cities where all the fraud goes on and then imagine that every single State had a regional Senator instead of one based on population in every State. Can you imagine that these regional Senators would allow all this corruption to go on in the cities voting and have all their rural residents votes nullified by these corrupt bastards. Hell no. There would be a huge massive investigation that would never end by the regional Senators until at least the most flagrant of the violations would stop.

So what do we do? We must nullify the illegal court decisions that caused this abortion of the cities controlling everything and we can do this in several ways.

The Republicans who had the Senate and House in the Federal government under Trump could have done this but they were too timid, corrupt or ignorant to do so. In fact the Legislature and the President can tell the Supreme court to kiss their ass. It’s built right into the Constitution that THEY decide WHAT the Supreme court can rule ON.

Here’s the relevant constitutional passages.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211204204701/https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii

“…In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make…”

“…with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make…”

The important part. The earlier part declares what powers they have but it ends with control of these functions by Congress. Congress could tell them to butt out of any stupid overbearing rulings. They could do that with lots of stuff they keep ramming down our throats. The courts could be stuck with only deciding water rights cases between States if they push too hard to twist the Constitution to death.

As soon as Congress nullifies this illegal ruling and changes it back to regional representation for all the States in the US in all the States then we will be in a position in the State legislatures to do whatever we damn well please. I can give a direct visual map of the present power of the US politically and how it will change if we nullify the illegal court decisions and put ion regional representation in the State Senates.

The State legislature map will change from this, the population control present map,

https://web.archive.org/web/20211104163922/https://www.270towin.com/uploads/2019_senate2.png

to this, the regional control county map.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210312123448/https://inthesetimes.com/imager/s3_us-east-2_amazonaws_com/itt-images/Bullington-win-rural-report-Edited_01c8ac7cc3b849e525e370bc51344120.jpg

I can also give very simple examples of how this would change various detrimental projects ongoing in the US.

Let's take gun control for one issue. In Virginia gun control almost passed leading to counties thinking of defecting to West Virginia. With a regional based Senate, these laws would have never even been brought up. No one would have wasted their time because they would have zero chance of being anything but laughed at.

In Washington State and Oregon when they were burning down the cities do you think that the people in eastern portions of those States would have stood for that? Not a chance, they would have blanketed their regional Senators with complaints such that the Governor, I expect, would have been told by the Senators that this disruption be brought to a halt or they would get rid of him and find someone who would.

The same goes for the massive, I mean massive, voting fraud in the cities. You think the people in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvanian, Georgia, Upper New York State etc., with regional based Senators would allow all their votes to be stolen by corrupt city officials. Hell no. No way. There would have been multiple ongoing and obsessive investigations and if the Attorney general refused to corporate, as they are now, they would have impeached them and shown them the door.

So you even think this anti-White "critical theory would be a thing with regional representation in the State Senates?

[even my browser is anti-White, it corrected anti-White to anti-white]

Not a chance, they would throw these bomb throwers out and possibly even disband the schools and issue cash credits for all students. If you wanted your children to hate themselves you could choose it for yourself. I expect there would not be as many people take this up as is supposed presently.

If we changed the rules for voting to be that you be informed by say having a high school diploma and actually paying some positive level of State taxes we could crush crime in a matter of a few years. Presently Black people are letting Blacks go who are coldly murdering White people in the streets just because they are Black. That would come to a screeching halt. Politicians who catered to BLM and rabid Blacks who incessantly hate Whites would soon find themselves pursuing another line of work because the mobs of Blacks to vote for them would dry up to nothing.

Changing just a few variables from the original conception of our country has brought us to ruin. We should change them back and then treat them like they have treated us and crush them completely.

In the 70's after Nixon was impeached, the ruling Democrats told one, I think it was, New Hampshire district that they felt there was fraud or they had some reason to suspect their elections. They would not seat their Representative. They made them revote three times until a Democrat was elected, then they seated their Representative. We could do the same. Force all States to have regional representation in their Senates by either direct land proportions or by the traditional county boundaries. If they refused, then don't seat their Representatives and carry on voting without them. What they can do to us, we can do to them.

If we had this sort of legislative power it would not take long at all before the country was run by us, instead of them.
Moderator
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 8:17PM MST
PS: Mr. Blanc and Mr. Smith, I agree that Lincoln set the precedent that there's no getting out of this deal, which in and of itself gives the Feds leverage. However, I'd be more generous and say it wasn't until FDR's New Deal that the the Feral Gov't metastasized to the point that the Founders would have been shaking their heads wondering what else they could have done to "prevent this shit".

The Civil Rites laws were the death knell of Federalism. Goldwater was a last chance, and the American people blew it big time.
Moderator
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 8:11PM MST
PS: Adam Smith comes through yet again! Got te video back up. Thanks.

A-G, I understand. The generation before that is even worse from my experience. Whether it's the jab or "SS is a wonderful thing"* or what, "the government knows best". Well, it didn't then either, but it sure was a hell of a lot more competent and on the side of the American people when they grew up in the 1930s and '40s.


* Well, yeah, it IS nice that you all - Silent Gen folks - paid in 10 bucks a month and got back $1,200 monthly for 30 years. You were on the front end of the big ponzi scheme.
MBlanc46
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 6:29PM MST
PS Thank you, Adam Smith. Mme B and I are well. I certainly agree that the 1861-65 unpleasantness and its sequelae certainly played a role in ending federalism. As a native of northeaster Illinois (the “Land of Lincoln”) I probably have a different perspective on those events than someone from the South, but I do wish that our ancestors had handled things differently in the 1840s and 1850s (if not before). This would probably be a different, and better, country if they had.
Anti-Gnostic
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 5:19PM MST
PS

Mr. Achmed, Steve is in my demographic cohort (Anglo-Saxon, late 50s - early 60s). It is very hard for my peers to imagine any other regime besides the one that has promised to pay us Social Security. Even though the regime's ability to keep that promise is in serious question.

Tyler Cowen (also in my cohort, but Scots Irish) is similarly disappointing. Given the choice between truly vanguard, outside-the-box-thinking and the status quo, Tyler lovingly embraces the status quo and gives it a big, wet, sloppy kiss. Smooch!

Ellis Island-Americans like Bryan Caplan and Alex Tabarrok are likewise actually about as revolutionary thinkers as Kamala Harris.
Adam Smith
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 3:01PM MST
PS: Good evening, Mr. Moderator...

Kira Rudyk “We fight for this New World Order”...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcLzzfWgO6E

Adam Smith
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 1:22PM MST
PS: Good afternoon, everyone,

And good afternoon, Mr. Blanc...
I hope this message finds you and Mme B well...

“Federalism... is dead, dead, dead. ...We don’t know the exact date of death. There is some controversy about that question. However, the Wilson administration is a plausible hypothesis. And the Second World War dotted all the “i”s and crossed all the “t”s.”

I agree that the Wilson regime is a good plausible hypothesis (16th Amendment, February 3, 1913)(Federal Reserve Act, December 23, 1913), and that the Second World War dotted the “i”s and crossed the “t”s...

But I'd like to suggest Lincoln's aggression against the South and the 14th Amendment as the end of Federalism.

“The 347th Mechanized Hairdresser Brigade”... Lol... Thanks!

I hope you have a great afternoon, Mr. Blanc!

MBlanc46
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 12:32PM MST
PS Federalism in the territory of North America that was formerly the United States of America is dead. Dead, dead, dead. The death certificate has not been found, so we don’t know the exact date of death. There is some controversy about that question. However, the Wilson administration is a plausible hypothesis. And the Second World War dotted all the “i”s and crossed all the “t”s. To restore federalism, we’d have to vote on it. And Globohomo is certainly not going to vote for it; nor are they going to allow us to vote for it. Only the break up of AINO will allow pockets of Western civilization to survive. Yes, those pockets (and some of them might be fairly large) will, in some respects, resemble Ukraine. But there is a significant difference. The Ukrainians are fighting the Russian Army. Our pocket-dwellers would be fighting angry Negroes, lesbians, and men who say that they think they are really women. The 347th Mechanized Hairdresser Brigade, as Severian over at Founding Questions has it. Fighting a defensive war, the pocket-dwellers will be in with a real chance. They don’t have to defeat Globohomo, just resist being defeated by Globohomo.
Moderator
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 6:59AM MST
PS: I just watched your 11 s video Alarmist. Maybe we need to re-arrange the teams here. On the other side is the New World Order crowd, which reminds me that I haven't yet found a video on youtube to replace the one taken down with that "oops, did I say that out loud?" bit at the end.
The Alarmist
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 6:03AM MST
PS

BTW, did you catch the video of the Russian UN Ambassador stating that the legitimately elected POTUS was ousted by a coup that stole the election?


https://twitter.com/HTTP_404_NotF/status/1499106731858800643?s=20&t=jK5rdNZG7AP7Kq8sEkf_rQ


The Alarmist
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 5:59AM MST
PS

The Republic is dead ... Once they’ve tasted imperial glory, there’s no going back, and the ultimate resolution is for succeeding decadent generations to dissipate the wealth built up by their more virtuous forefathers.

They will wave that Rainbow Flag right up ‘til the time the barbarians they invited in to do the scut work they themselves were too proud to do are taking the last of their Cis-females and tossing the rest of them off the rooftops.
Moderator
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 3:32AM MST
PS: Oh, I'd forgotten your "just days later ..." part. Funny, too. I also see that Dumbo (a guy who I usually agree wholeheartedly with) had a comment that Steve used in his latest post on this. (Who knows if that was consciously or with just the point having set in his mind.)

"Another thing: Italy and Germany for a long time were not nation-states, but a collection of different kingdoms. United by language, religion and geographical proximity, but not unified nations as we understand them today. In fact, I think that the concept of nation-state in the form of large multicultural democratic republics might have been an anomaly and it is on the wane, replaced perhaps by the historically more common city-state. New York is a nation of its own, very different from the rest of the U.S., like, say, Venice once was."

https://www.unz.com/isteve/should-the-united-states-break-up/#comment-3751054
Moderator
Thursday - March 3rd 2022 3:28AM MST
PS: Thanks for finding that one, Mr. Hail. I'm guessing the post was surrounded in the archives by a whole bunch of Kung Flu Panic ones. I remember now my comments and your great numerical summary. This must have been not long before you quit commenting there, huh?

I just read through most of the thread. Some people has some pretty good short-term predictions. How about our MBlanc46, for one:

"You’re probably correct about a Biden victory. Vote stealing alone will probably be enough to over-turn 2016. I doubt that a push for secession will be an immediate result."

https://www.unz.com/isteve/should-the-united-states-break-up/#comment-3752707
Hail
Wednesday - March 2nd 2022 10:44PM MST
PS

Here is the last time Steve Sailer floated the US breakup question:

"Should the United States Break Up?" (March 4, 2020)

https://www.unz.com/isteve/should-the-united-states-break-up/

How about that--it's exactly two year sago to the day this Friday.

I remembered it as 2019 because my memory placed as definitely before "Covid," before the full weight of the Corona-Panic tidal-wave swept ashore. I am surprised it was so late, March 4, 2020.

(Little did we know, on March 4th of 2020, that that the Panic had already not only "formed," but actually already "won," probably, and and was by then simply waiting to consolidate and collect its winnings, like an invasion army encircling opponents and waiting for the inevitable surrender. Just days later, Steve would not have posted such a thread at all, for who has time for idle discussions when there is Coronapanicking to do?)

The exact-two-year span it took for Steve Sailer to revisit this topic seems like another poetic end-mark to the Corona-Panic. (God willing).

I did some data-analysis of Sailer-commenter opinion in the early March 2020 case:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/should-the-united-states-break-up/#comment-3753790

The conclusion: "70% agree that 'the United States should break up,' n=40 Steve Sailer readers who commented or ‘voted’ (via the reaction button). I don’t expect a larger sample will wildly change the result here."
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