It is an honor to be here at the prestigious Mises Institute to talk about a very important
topic, especially after the reelection of President Obama.
We all saw this word pop onto the radar, and so it's an exciting topic.
I'm glad the Mises Institute has taken on this very controversial topic, but as I talked
to Dr. Thorn about, they're not afraid to tackle controversial topics.
So who am I?
I'm Mark Kreslins. I am a talk show host on AM 930W FMD in Mid-Maryland. It's a number one show out there because we tackle topics like this.
I'm a married man. My wife Patti is here. I'm a father of four. In a former life, I used to be a senior legislative assistant for two different members of Congress.
I'm a gentleman by the name of Richard Baker from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a gentleman
by the name of George Wartley from upstate New York.
Currently I am the executive director of Oklahoma Liberty, and I don't know how many of you
have been following the news in Oklahoma, but we are beginning to ratchet up the rhetoric,
if you will, there in the state.
We're a headliner sort of organization.
for advancing ideas out there that resonate very, very well with the community in Oklahoma.
I don't know, how many of you have been to Oklahoma?
Good?
Well, you have probably seen that not as there are only just one church on every corner,
but there's probably two or three churches on every corner in Oklahoma.
It's a very Christian state, and therefore, this message of secession and unenable rights
resonates very, very well there.
And so we're able to contextualize and compartmentalize secession and these other companion ideas of
nullification and interposition into this idea of natural rights and it's very easily
accepted out there.
And so we're making some real hay out there regarding secession conversations but nullification
specifically.
I'm here really because I make my living sort of crafting messages.
I try to figure out ways to get the message across about a concept or a philosophy or
a piece of legislation.
That's what I do for a living.
And my job in Oklahoma is to try to stir people to consider something different.
My favorite topic is secession.
I talk about it all the time on the air.
Professor McClanahan will go into his legality.
Ryan will go into an example of self-determination.
What I want to do with this very small section I have is to talk about secession not being
a dirty four-letter word. And I chose that specifically because we've been trained to
sort of look at it this way. And I'm going to speak a little bit more extemporaneously than my
the scholars in the room here. I'll be glad to answer any questions or talk afterwards. But I'm
going to speak a little bit more extemporaneously because I'm trying to message even with you folks
You're here because you're interested in the topic of secession.
So some of my comments are going to be extemporaneous, and some of them will be right from my scripture.
But let me begin with a statement. Secession is not a dirty four-letter word.
My primary focus during my little time here is to address the importance of words as change agents.
They're change agents in any major political move throughout history.
Words have always preceded those changes, right?
However, it's important to get the words right.
And against the counsel of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and Sean Hannity, I committed the
mortal sin of most conservatives, I read Saul Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals.
I actually read it.
And you know, it's a great book.
One chapter in particular, he discusses the words, he has a chapter called The Power of
of Words, it is not just that in communication as in thought we must ever strive towards
simplicity, it is more than that. It is a determination not to detour around reality.
This is my favorite line in this chapter, to pander to those who have no stomach for
for Straight Language and insist upon bland, non-controversial sauces is a waste of time.
And I got to tell you, on the ground, I see this, pandering by changing the definition
of terms that really are change agents is a waste of time.
It takes away the power of the word.
So secession is just one of those powers.
Elinsky goes on to describe this by his description of the use of the word power.
This is what he says, striving to avoid force and vigor and simplicity of the word power.
We soon become averse to thinking in vigorous, simple, honest terms.
When I started the organization I did in Maryland, I fled from Maryland down to Oklahoma here
about eight months ago, by the way, because Maryland is a lost state in terms of political,
real political change to the positive.
There's a lot of political change going up there to the negative.
So we left Maryland to come down here and to Oklahoma.
Now when I started the group up there, the first thing I said to the group when we started
this idea of trying to think back, think about taking back power from government, I said
this, it takes power to reduce power.
And isn't that true?
It takes power.
You can't reduce power by carrying signs.
You can't reduce power by writing letters to the editor.
You can't reduce powers by writing books about power.
You actually have to take power in order to reduce power in the context of where we're
fighting right now in this current 21st century.
So power is a very, very important word, is a term.
Words have power and there can be no substitute for the right word.
And I believe firmly that secession is the right word for this time.
It is the word we cannot back down on.
We cannot lose this.
And I will tell you, against the counsel of many people in my talk radio career, I've
been told, don't use secession, don't talk about secession.
Can we use withdraw, or how about separation?
Can we find another way to describe this?
And I say, no, no.
Why?
Because there's power in words.
Words have power.
They do a couple of things.
They draw your attention to something, right?
So even in this room, when we talk about secession and we talk about the potential of a state
or a few states withdrawing, seceding from the union, that makes us all a little bit
nervous, right?
We don't know what happens.
We know former examples where it didn't happen, however, we forget a couple of examples where
it did work well.
When we left Great Britain, right, that was a good secession, yay, secession on that one.
How about in 1787 when we essentially seceded from the Articles of Confederation?
A good one.
Nobody hung, nobody shot, nobody tried for treason, secession is not a bad word.
It forces you to draw your attention.
It provokes you to think perhaps a little differently about the idea.
I'm going to play a little game here.
Who said the following things?
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
You are like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside
are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean.
Who said that?
Jesus, that's right.
Tough words, right? Whitewashed tombs. Everybody knew what that meant. It was not a favorable
term to be called a whitewashed sepulcher. Who said this, crouch down and lick the hands
which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you. Samuel Adams. Listen to those words.
Words down and lick the hands that feed you.
Deliberate choice of terms.
Now, he could have said, you know, we don't like King George, he's not that good, let's
keep asking him to give us more liberty.
But he said, no, stop crouching down, this is another one.
One death is a tragedy.
One million is a statistic, Stalin, right?
All of these words had a couple of things in common.
They shocked, they stirred, and they forced a reaction.
Secession is that exact same word, and so I just make the appeal, especially to those
who are writing on this and they're scholars, don't give up the word.
The word is an important word.
It was used over a million times after Barack Obama's re-election.
When a million people signed out of the White House website and said, please let us succeed,
of course we know that's not how you do it.
I mean, you secede, you just secede, you don't ask for permission, right?
But, a million people, the word entered into our vocabulary,
it sort of entered into the public discourse for the first time, certainly in my generation.
And I represent some of the white hairs in here.
We probably, when was the last time you heard secession that popularly spoken of?
Words are really important. Change words are used to inspire.
You miss 100% of the shots that you don't take, said Wayne Gretzky.
Makes sense to us.
If you don't take the shot, you're going to miss it every time.
General George Patton was full of provocative change words and quotes.
Here are a couple of his more memorable phrases.
Live for something rather than die for nothing.
Right?
Now to the troops, that meant something.
In case of doubt, attack.
That's what Patton said, don't, those aren't wallowing your doubt, just go.
Change words.
A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten
minutes later.
Profound.
I'm going to read a speech here that you all are going to remember, but I want you to really
focus on the power of words in this speech.
I'm going to pull a Marco Rubio here.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.
But when shall we be stronger?
Will it be next week or the next year?
Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in
every house?
Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?
Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying sublimely on our backs and hugging
the delusive phantom of hope until our enemies shall have us bound hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means with which the God of nature
hath placed in our power.
Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty and in such a country as
is that which we possess are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone.
There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations and who will raise up friends to fight the battle with us.
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone.
It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
Besides, sir, we have no election.
If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest.
There is no retreat but in submission and slavery.
Our chains are forged, their clanking may be heard from the plains of Boston.
The war is inevitable.
And let it come.
I repeat, let it come.
We all know that.
Patrick Henry.
Saint John's.
Imagine if you were in the audience there.
Those words would have meaning to you in ways that they don't in a paper or even in a book,
and that is not to slight anybody who does that for a profession.
But these words have power, and we cannot give up.
Secession is not a dirty four-letter word.
Change words force us to stop and react.
This is the business of messaging.
They cause you to stop and listen.
Every campaign, and I've worked on a number of national campaigns while working as a senior
legislative assistant in Congress, and I'll tell you folks, we spent hours and rooms messaging
what words are going to connect.
What words are really going to have the impact that we hope they'll have to move the voter,
to get the voter to stop and say, you know, I think I'm going to look into this guy or
gal a little differently.
We spent hours working on certain words that we could get out into the public.
And my contention here is secession is just another one of those words.
Right now in Oklahoma, we're in the process of messaging, nullification, and interposition.
I cannot tell you how many legislators that I run into tell me this, can we come up with
a different word, please?
Does it have to be nullification?
And I say, yes, it has to be nullification.
Why?
Because it stops people to think and consider, what are you doing?
That messaging worked.
We passed our legislation out of the House of Representatives in Oklahoma by an overwhelming
majority of 72 to 20.
The idea of nullification in the legislature of Oklahoma is becoming commonplace.
In fact, Tom Woods is coming into the Senate on Wednesday to counter a guy who the opponents
become a dirty word because, as we all know, we were raised in a public education system that said the War of Northern Aggression was all about slavery and if we ever succeed again, if that ever comes up again, well, get out the shackles, because we're going to start tying people up right away, baloney, baloney, we've got to defend that word because we can point to 1787 as a peaceful secession, right? Nobody was hung. So the word is powerful.
We have to get it back on our terms, and again, we saw this in the Obama re-election.
Here's one thing for sure, the 40 and under crowd are comfortable with change words.
And there's some 40 and under crowd age in this room here.
They're comfortable with change.
Us all gray hairs, we can't change, come on, that's the way we've always done it.
We've got to do it that way.
Be prepared, there's a tidal wave of change coming and we better get out in front of it.
We better start embracing it, we better start understanding the under 40 crowd, they are
prepared for these kinds of changes.
Look at how they think about marriage, look at how they think about the male-female distinctives,
look at how they view drugs, look at how they view work, libertarianism, the false left-right
republican-democrat paradigm, Christianity, a whole range of ideas.
They have a whole different view than those of us who have salty hair.
And they're willing to do things different, and they're coming into power.
I suggest that as the mature people, we help guide.
We fulfill our role as mentors.
And part of that is not being afraid of the message behind secession.
Finally, secession lends itself to a populist discussion.
And we all know populism is always behind major societal changes, from the civil rights
movement to the labor movements in Poland to the Lithuanian secession movement to Catalonia
and now populism is always behind it. There's always that populist sort of Elmer Gantry character
in the background screaming out, we've got to change, we've got to change. Secession fits
right into populism. Why? Because it tells Washington D.C. you've gone too far and now
we are going to rethink our relationship with you. Because we are not a nation, we are a
We are a union. We must remember that. That we are a union. And that's a critical distinction as I talk around the state of Oklahoma.
If I get any commentary back from people, it's when I tell them the difference between a nation and a union.
And suddenly the borders of Oklahoma matter, and they begin to think, we really can stop Washington, D.C.
Of course you can. We always could.
So, I wanted to finish with that and I want to conclude by asking you to join this effort,
this growing effort with Mike Church on radio, Brian's going to speak, Ryan's going to speak.
Join this movement of people that are pushing a new message that secession is not a dirty
four-letter word.
Thank you very much.