WEBVTT NOTE A Plea for the Real Union 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 I want to talk about our lost and stolen heritage of states' rights. 2 00:00:12.500 --> 00:00:21.000 I want to make it clear that I am not encouraging anyone to take what may be a premature and ill-considered action 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:27.500 in regard to Fort Sumter or any other federal installation at the present time. 4 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:35.500 I do want to talk very straightforwardly about certain truths as I see them in the American situation. 5 00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:45.500 Federalism, we had a couple of years ago a celebration of the bicentennial of the American Constitution. 6 00:00:45.500 --> 00:00:50.500 As far as I know during that celebration, there was never any mention of Republicanism. 7 00:00:50.500 --> 00:00:56.500 There was never any mention of Federalism, which are the two essential characteristics of the American Constitution. 8 00:00:56.500 --> 00:01:02.500 Instead, we have a celebration of multiculturalism and big government. 9 00:01:02.500 --> 00:01:06.500 Federalism is the essence of the American system. 10 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:18.500 Federalism implies states' rights, states' rights implies, in order to mean anything, implies, in the final analysis, a right of secession. 11 00:01:18.500 --> 00:01:29.500 The cause of states' rights, to put it very bluntly, is the cause of liberty, I would suggest, as proved by American history. 12 00:01:29.500 --> 00:01:37.500 States' rights and liberty have risen and have fallen together. 13 00:01:37.500 --> 00:01:46.500 If we had been able to preserve the original union of sovereign states that was founded by our forefathers, 14 00:01:46.500 --> 00:01:53.340 There would be no question of the American Empire that we have today. 15 00:01:53.340 --> 00:01:59.300 The American Empire could not exist, would not exist if we had preserved the original 16 00:01:59.300 --> 00:02:03.740 union of the founding fathers. 17 00:02:03.740 --> 00:02:15.700 But instead we have this empire which interferes in our local and individual affairs ever more 18 00:02:15.700 --> 00:02:26.940 And we find ourselves more and more controlled by remote power, and we have an empire which 19 00:02:26.940 --> 00:02:33.860 also uses our resources to meddle in the affairs of distant peoples. 20 00:02:33.860 --> 00:02:41.660 The old union was a friendly contract between sovereign states who managed their own affairs 21 00:02:41.660 --> 00:02:45.380 Congress and who got together for purposes of defense. 22 00:02:45.380 --> 00:02:51.620 They also enjoy a complete free trade among themselves, if you recall the Constitution. 23 00:02:51.620 --> 00:02:56.460 Requires that all taxes be uniform throughout the Union, is often forgotten. 24 00:02:56.460 --> 00:03:04.020 The Constitution absolutely forbids any tax upon exports. 25 00:03:04.020 --> 00:03:11.060 It does allow the Congress to lay a small customs duty upon imports. 26 00:03:11.060 --> 00:03:16.020 This was for the purpose of raising the government's small revenue and it was considered a reasonably 27 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:18.860 fair tax. 28 00:03:18.860 --> 00:03:24.460 It was not designed to protect industry or to manipulate industry in any way. 29 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:31.980 In fact, at the Philadelphia Convention, a proposal to allow the Congress to adopt tariffs 30 00:03:31.980 --> 00:03:36.340 to protect industry was thrown out. 31 00:03:36.340 --> 00:03:46.340 Nevertheless, the idea was brought up by General Hamilton, not long after the government was founded, like so many other evil schemes. 32 00:03:46.340 --> 00:03:52.340 But it took almost 40 years for it to begin to become an established policy. 33 00:03:52.340 --> 00:04:01.340 Ever since I got the Bifidels, I've developed an unnatural relationship with my materials. 34 00:04:01.340 --> 00:04:13.380 On what the United States meant to our forebrothers was that happy union. Basil Gildersley, probably 35 00:04:13.380 --> 00:04:18.420 the greatest scholar ever produced by America, a great classicist, was born here in Charleston 36 00:04:18.420 --> 00:04:24.140 and was a Confederate soldier. And he remarked after the war that the war between the states 37 00:04:24.140 --> 00:04:26.380 was a conflict over grammar. 38 00:04:27.300 --> 00:04:30.780 It was a question of whether, which was correct, 39 00:04:30.780 --> 00:04:34.220 the United States are or the United States is. 40 00:04:36.460 --> 00:04:40.500 And if you, well, we have been using the wrong grammar 41 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:42.740 for a long time now, and if you're using the wrong grammar, 42 00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:44.960 you can't get anything correct. 43 00:04:47.660 --> 00:04:52.660 It certainly did not, the happy old union did not, 44 00:04:54.140 --> 00:05:05.140 did not mean a government that dictated the use of parking spaces in every public and private building in every town in the country. 45 00:05:05.140 --> 00:05:17.140 It did not mean a government in which women and children were incinerated by a bunch of brutal mercenaries 46 00:05:17.140 --> 00:05:27.140 posing as a federal police force unknown to the Constitution, did not mean, as in the case of Kuwait, 47 00:05:27.140 --> 00:05:35.140 that Americans were obligated to put an oriental death spot back upon his throne. 48 00:05:35.140 --> 00:05:39.140 And I guarantee you, if George Washington had heard of any of those things, 49 00:05:39.140 --> 00:05:46.140 he would have reached for his sword to take care of the perpetrators. 50 00:05:46.140 --> 00:06:14.140 The founding fathers knew, they were very much aware, that Republican societies such as they had erected were fragile, they were always in danger of disintegration or degeneration into something less desirable. 51 00:06:14.140 --> 00:06:24.140 One of the ways in which they expected to avoid this was through federalism, the dispersal of power among the states. 52 00:06:27.140 --> 00:06:43.140 So they hoped, but self-government represented for the founding fathers not just a democratic majority voting anything it wanted, 53 00:06:43.140 --> 00:06:55.140 But what self-government meant was that the community was superior to the rulers for the first time in history. 54 00:06:55.140 --> 00:07:07.140 So they thought the rulers became the delegates of the community rather than, as in an empire like the one from which they had succeeded, 55 00:07:07.140 --> 00:07:17.140 of the community and the people being the subjects of the government. 56 00:07:17.140 --> 00:07:31.140 Here at the foreign society, the people, the community had existed for the support and the gratification of those who ruled. 57 00:07:31.140 --> 00:07:34.140 This was the definition of an empire. 58 00:07:34.140 --> 00:07:40.700 Republican America, on the other hand, was to be governed by the communities that made it up. 59 00:07:40.700 --> 00:08:03.500 In an empire, the government operates according to the interests, the ideas, even the whims of the rulers who can doubt that the American government is today an empire. 60 00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:06.260 Republicanism, as it was understood by the founders on the other hand, 61 00:08:06.260 --> 00:08:10.460 consists essentially in the inviolability of the community. 62 00:08:10.460 --> 00:08:13.020 The community takes precedence over the government. 63 00:08:13.020 --> 00:08:16.820 The purpose of the government is to serve the community. 64 00:08:16.820 --> 00:08:21.820 And political activity is directed towards the well-being of the people. 65 00:08:21.820 --> 00:08:26.980 In an empire, political activity is management-oriented, 66 00:08:26.980 --> 00:08:29.580 is directed towards managing the people 67 00:08:29.580 --> 00:08:38.100 for the benefit of their government, their rulers, who can doubt that the American government 68 00:08:38.100 --> 00:08:43.980 is today an empire by that definition. 69 00:08:43.980 --> 00:08:49.580 And the evidence mounts every day that the American people no longer think of the government 70 00:08:49.580 --> 00:09:03.580 as theirs, but as hostile, manipulative, unjust, distant, and unresponsive. 71 00:09:03.580 --> 00:09:12.580 An empire contains not citizens, but subjects, interchangeable persons who have no intrinsic 72 00:09:12.580 --> 00:09:36.580 value, except as taxpayers and cannon fodder for the empire. If the governors of the empire decide that it's more expedient for them to placate criminals rather than to punish criminals, then they may very well turn over people's communities and schools to the criminals, as has already happened in this country, 73 00:09:36.580 --> 00:09:45.580 and violate the first rule of government, which is the preservation of order. 74 00:09:45.580 --> 00:09:55.580 In an empire, people's culture may be changed by government or fiat into a trumped up multiculturalism. 75 00:09:55.580 --> 00:10:02.580 Their religion may be attacked, and the surest sign that we now live under an empire is the fact that 76 00:10:02.580 --> 00:10:06.140 that the ruling class does not live 77 00:10:07.500 --> 00:10:09.340 under the rules that they make. 78 00:10:10.700 --> 00:10:12.940 One of the hallmarks of republicanism 79 00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:16.140 was that the officeholders were temporary. 80 00:10:16.140 --> 00:10:17.740 They returned to the ranks of the people 81 00:10:17.740 --> 00:10:19.860 to live under the benefits or the burdens 82 00:10:19.860 --> 00:10:21.460 of the laws that they had made. 83 00:10:22.420 --> 00:10:24.180 Our rulers no longer do that. 84 00:10:24.180 --> 00:10:26.180 Our children are bused, theirs are not. 85 00:10:27.260 --> 00:10:29.380 If they happen to get kicked out of office, 86 00:10:29.380 --> 00:10:33.700 as they go to work for foreign governments and corporations, 87 00:10:35.220 --> 00:10:38.200 selling out the birthright of America. 88 00:10:39.140 --> 00:10:41.740 And this is very evident in the case of war 89 00:10:41.740 --> 00:10:43.920 or in international relations also. 90 00:10:45.580 --> 00:10:50.580 A republic goes to war for the benefit of its own interests 91 00:10:51.580 --> 00:10:55.100 as they are perceived. 92 00:10:55.100 --> 00:10:57.780 An empire goes to war because that is one of the things 93 00:10:57.780 --> 00:10:59.060 that empires do. 94 00:10:59.060 --> 00:11:06.500 is one of the things that irresponsible rulers do. So that in an empire you can have a situation 95 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:14.260 where warfare and foreign policy reflects the vagaries of mind of the rulers and not the 96 00:11:14.260 --> 00:11:21.460 interests of the society. You can have, for instance, a ruler who can proclaim that it is the 97 00:11:22.500 --> 00:11:27.300 duty of Americans to propagate global democracy in a new world order 98 00:11:27.300 --> 00:11:55.380 by contrast, the old union, the true union, Thomas Jemerson remarked in his first Inaugural 99 00:11:55.380 --> 00:12:12.380 And he asked rhetorically, Everson said, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? 100 00:12:12.380 --> 00:12:22.380 Still one thing more, he said, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 101 00:12:22.380 --> 00:12:34.380 which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits and shall not take from them out of labor the bread that it is earned. 102 00:12:34.380 --> 00:12:46.380 This is the sum of good government, a rather far way we are from that today, I would think. 103 00:12:46.380 --> 00:12:57.380 Jefferson went on to talk about how do you preserve the sum of good government and the things that you must do or not do in order to maintain it. 104 00:12:57.380 --> 00:13:09.380 And he suggested we must preserve the right of election, although he said not a word about the sacred two-party system, preserve equal justice under the law, 105 00:13:09.380 --> 00:13:17.460 rely upon the militia rather than a peace and standing army, by all means avoid government debt, 106 00:13:19.940 --> 00:13:23.940 preserve freedom of speech, of religion, the right of trial by jury, 107 00:13:25.620 --> 00:13:31.700 avoid entangling alliances with foreign powers, and Jefferson said most important 108 00:13:31.700 --> 00:13:54.700 To the preservation of the sum of good government is the support of the state governments and all of their rights as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks of our liberties, the surest bulwarks of our liberties. 109 00:13:54.700 --> 00:14:01.700 There is a very moderate and sophisticated literature which tells us that Jefferson was really not very serious about states rights. 110 00:14:01.700 --> 00:14:10.700 That was an incidental thing. What he was really interested in was equality or some other things. 111 00:14:10.700 --> 00:14:20.700 This is not true. It was well understood at the time and for a generation or two after that. 112 00:14:20.700 --> 00:14:28.700 The main point of Jefferson's platform in American public life was states' rights. 113 00:14:28.700 --> 00:14:39.700 He was the author of the Kentucky Resolution, which outlined that a state may nullify unconstitutional federal law. 114 00:14:39.700 --> 00:14:43.700 The state is the judge of the constitutionality. 115 00:14:43.700 --> 00:14:57.700 And, in fact, late in his life, well, people denied that Jefferson had written the Kentucky Resolution after he had died until his son-in-law produced the original draft, which was even stronger than what was adopted. 116 00:14:57.700 --> 00:15:07.700 But late in his life, Jefferson very specifically recommended that this be done again against the Virginia nullify the federal internal improvements legislation, 117 00:15:07.700 --> 00:15:15.700 almost exactly the same thing that Calhoun in South Carolina did, about ten years later. 118 00:15:17.700 --> 00:15:28.700 It was understood that the principles of 98, the Kentucky resolutions, were the main point of Jefferson's public position. 119 00:15:28.700 --> 00:15:33.700 John C. Calhoun said, speaking in exactly the same tradition a few years later, 120 00:15:33.700 --> 00:15:39.700 The question is in truth between the people of the states and the Supreme Court. 121 00:15:39.700 --> 00:15:47.700 We contend that the great conservative principle of our system is in the people of the states, 122 00:15:47.700 --> 00:15:56.700 as parties to the constitutional compact, and our opponents contend that it is in the Supreme Court. 123 00:15:56.700 --> 00:16:07.700 Without a full practical recognition of the rights and sovereignty of the states, our liberty must perish. 124 00:16:07.700 --> 00:16:16.700 States' rights will be found in all cases of difficulty and danger to be the only conservative principle in our system, 125 00:16:16.700 --> 00:16:23.700 the only one that can oppose an effective check to power. 126 00:16:23.700 --> 00:16:37.700 By a conservative principle, Calhoun means not in terms of left or right, liberal or conservative, but he means that which conserves, that which saves, preserves the essence of the system. 127 00:16:37.700 --> 00:16:44.700 I don't really need to dwell on what a contrast that is with the present situation. 128 00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:54.700 The R.S. McDonnell, our greatest constitutional scholar, says not long ago, 129 00:16:54.700 --> 00:17:04.700 Political scientists and historians are in agreement that federalism is the greatest contribution of the founding fathers to the science of government. 130 00:17:04.700 --> 00:17:15.700 It is also the only feature of the Constitution that has been successfully exported and can be employed to protect liberty elsewhere in the world. 131 00:17:15.700 --> 00:17:23.700 Yet, what we invented and others imitate no longer exists on its native shore. 132 00:17:23.700 --> 00:17:35.340 The very simple proposition that our founding fathers understood and that indeed underscored 133 00:17:35.340 --> 00:17:42.100 everything that they did, that the only way to preserve liberty is to check governmental 134 00:17:42.100 --> 00:17:44.380 power. 135 00:17:44.380 --> 00:17:50.300 The only way to check governmental power is to divide and disperse it. 136 00:17:50.300 --> 00:18:01.300 Many of the founders hoped that the federal system would do this, would allow expansion of the country without centralization. 137 00:18:01.300 --> 00:18:09.300 We have to, and this was the whole point of the ninth and tenth amendments, we have to base the fact that this has failed, it did not work. 138 00:18:09.300 --> 00:18:14.300 That was their main advice. It was also hoped that the different branches of the federal government, 139 00:18:14.300 --> 00:18:27.300 The division of powers between the executive, the judicial, and the legislature would perform the purpose of checks and balances. 140 00:18:27.300 --> 00:18:34.300 We should face the fact that this does not work. It ceased to work a long time ago. 141 00:18:34.300 --> 00:18:39.300 There is no serious conflict of power between the three branches of the federal government. 142 00:18:39.300 --> 00:18:46.300 The Supreme Court does not check the President or the Congress. The Supreme Court checks us. 143 00:18:52.300 --> 00:19:00.300 All of the branches of the federal government are directed towards checking the states and the people of the states. 144 00:19:00.300 --> 00:19:04.300 The federal government will never check itself. 145 00:19:04.300 --> 00:19:10.300 As Calhoun says again, power can only be opposed by power. 146 00:19:14.300 --> 00:19:20.300 Federalism may constitute the only hope. 147 00:19:20.300 --> 00:19:27.300 And there is no genuine federalism unless it is backed up by, ultimately by the right of secession. 148 00:19:27.300 --> 00:19:32.300 Otherwise it has no final force. 149 00:19:32.300 --> 00:19:57.300 And interestingly, of course, the recognition of the right of secession generally obviates its use because if the ruling powers really have to acknowledge that people can leave, can withdraw, then they have every incentive to behave themselves, that they do not have otherwise. 150 00:20:02.300 --> 00:20:08.300 Federalism has talked about a great deal. There's a whole shelf of books in the library about it. 151 00:20:08.300 --> 00:20:19.300 It's one of the least understood, it seems to me, of all political phenomenon, both theoretically and practically. 152 00:20:19.300 --> 00:20:28.300 And we should be aware of the many phony forms that are floating around. 153 00:20:28.300 --> 00:20:35.300 In true federalism, we use that power comes from the roots up. 154 00:20:35.300 --> 00:20:44.300 And if people in Washington are talking about letting the states of the Union do this or that, that is not federalism. 155 00:20:44.300 --> 00:20:48.300 That's just another form of federal administration. 156 00:20:48.300 --> 00:20:56.300 True federalism is when the states say to the federal government, you may not do this. 157 00:20:56.300 --> 00:21:05.300 Your limits have been reached. Stop. That is genuine Federalism. Forget any of the rest of it. 158 00:21:08.300 --> 00:21:22.300 If we agree with the most political philosophers that there is a, in every society, a sovereign somewhere, a final authority, an ultimate power, 159 00:21:22.300 --> 00:21:28.300 Then that sheds light, sheds light on the concept of states' rights. 160 00:21:28.300 --> 00:21:46.300 If there is a sovereign, which I think is an accurate conception, in every society, somewhere, there is a power that has the ultimate say-so when everything else is said and done, when you reach the bottom line, somebody who has the last word. 161 00:21:46.300 --> 00:21:59.300 The sovereign can delegate powers as the states did to the federal government, but it cannot give them up. 162 00:21:59.300 --> 00:22:04.300 Americans have always agreed that the people are sovereign. 163 00:22:04.300 --> 00:22:12.300 As I say, America is a republican system and not a monarchy or an aristocracy. 164 00:22:12.300 --> 00:22:17.980 The term people is not self-defining, however. What do we mean by the people? 165 00:22:20.540 --> 00:22:26.620 A mere 51% electoral majority will not work when you're talking about the sovereign, 166 00:22:27.340 --> 00:22:33.340 because there's nothing ultimate about the people. It can change in 24 hours, 167 00:22:35.820 --> 00:22:41.580 and frequently does. Nor, when we talk about the people, do we mean, I think, that if a million 168 00:22:41.580 --> 00:22:59.660 In the American system, plainly and simply, the people means only one thing, it can't 169 00:22:59.660 --> 00:23:03.540 mean only one thing in a constitutional sense. 170 00:23:03.540 --> 00:23:11.540 It means the people of the states as living historical corporate communities. 171 00:23:11.540 --> 00:23:15.540 The whole of the Constitution rests on this. 172 00:23:15.540 --> 00:23:23.540 The Constitution exists because of its acceptance, its ratification by the people of the states. 173 00:23:23.540 --> 00:23:31.540 The states are said to be indestructible and they are represented in the Senate and in the Electoral Committee, to some degree in the House of Representatives. 174 00:23:31.540 --> 00:23:42.540 In fact, there is no point in the Constitution of the United States where a simple majority of the people rules on anything. 175 00:23:42.540 --> 00:23:48.540 There is no point in which the states are not represented as such. 176 00:23:48.540 --> 00:23:58.540 It is only by reference to the people of the states that we can say in America that the final sovereign is spoken on anything. 177 00:23:58.540 --> 00:24:07.540 And it is still quite evident that three-fourths of the states who may amend the Constitution may do anything. 178 00:24:07.540 --> 00:24:16.540 Three-fourths of the states may abolish the Supreme Court, may abolish the income tax, may indeed dissolve the Union. 179 00:24:16.540 --> 00:24:23.540 If they so agree, there is nothing to prevent that. 180 00:24:23.540 --> 00:24:29.540 I'm suggesting that that power still exists in the American system. 181 00:24:29.540 --> 00:24:33.540 It is certainly in abeyance, but it is still there. 182 00:24:33.540 --> 00:24:40.540 What is lacking is, of course, the will to exercise it. 183 00:24:40.540 --> 00:24:45.540 As James Madison says, 184 00:24:45.540 --> 00:25:01.540 The meaning of the Constitution is to be sought not in the opinions or intentions of the body which planned and proposed it, but in those of the state conventions where it received all the authority which it possesses. 185 00:25:01.540 --> 00:25:09.540 We have in fact, as Calhoun suggested, have allowed the sovereign power to be exercised by the Supreme Court. 186 00:25:09.540 --> 00:25:16.660 Allen said the choice was either the states or the Supreme Court. If you, if 187 00:25:16.660 --> 00:25:21.220 somebody, either one of those two things is going to make the final decision, we 188 00:25:21.220 --> 00:25:28.500 have allowed it to be done by the Supreme Court. Five black-robed justices may go 189 00:25:28.500 --> 00:25:35.500 into the closet and commune with the guides and come out and tell us what we 190 00:25:35.500 --> 00:25:51.500 We must do, and we must obey, no matter how absurd their interpretation is in the life of the Constitution, no matter how in conflict their interpretation is with the will of the people. 191 00:25:51.500 --> 00:25:58.500 This is what we have allowed. 192 00:25:58.500 --> 00:26:02.240 But the fundamental of the American system is still there. 193 00:26:03.780 --> 00:26:07.940 Each state still retains its sovereign constitution, 194 00:26:07.940 --> 00:26:12.940 making power, if it will exercise it. 195 00:26:15.420 --> 00:26:18.860 As the states did in the American Revolution, 196 00:26:18.860 --> 00:26:22.780 by throwing off the royal authority 197 00:26:22.780 --> 00:26:24.740 and assuming their own sovereignty, 198 00:26:24.740 --> 00:26:29.740 and making their own constitutions 199 00:26:29.740 --> 00:26:33.740 and ratifying the Constitution of the United States, 200 00:26:33.740 --> 00:26:38.740 which was in effect making it a part of their constitution, 201 00:26:38.740 --> 00:26:44.740 historical and constitutional understanding. 202 00:26:44.740 --> 00:26:53.740 A little commentary on the history of South Carolina, 203 00:26:53.740 --> 00:26:59.740 which in many respects is typical of all of the states, which I know of. 204 00:26:59.740 --> 00:27:05.740 Galhoun, as Galhoun referred to, our gallant little state. 205 00:27:05.740 --> 00:27:15.740 In 1719, the Lord's proprietors were the owners of Carolina. 206 00:27:15.740 --> 00:27:21.740 They became high ed, they attempted to abolish the assembly, the elected assembly 207 00:27:21.740 --> 00:27:28.700 assembly the South Carolinians had enjoyed. They attempted to gross the lands which the South 208 00:27:28.700 --> 00:27:34.700 Carolinians had won in Indian wars by their own efforts. The people of South Carolina acting 209 00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:39.900 through their legislature, which they had chosen through a governor, which they chose themselves 210 00:27:39.900 --> 00:27:50.460 and through their own militia, threw the proprietors out. And an exercise of their sovereignty. 211 00:27:51.740 --> 00:27:57.740 They subsequently gave their allegiance to the British Crown. 212 00:27:57.740 --> 00:28:07.740 One historian has commentated on this. It was a thoroughly orthodox English Revolution, seeking to conserve, not to destroy. 213 00:28:07.740 --> 00:28:13.740 They advised substantial citizens for the definite purpose of correcting their grievances. 214 00:28:13.740 --> 00:28:25.740 Or as Mel Bradford, most of you know, or know of, you should say, about the American Revolution, it was not a revolution made, but a revolution averted. 215 00:28:25.740 --> 00:28:35.740 In 1776, the people of South Carolina, acting through their legislature, their own chosen governor, their militia, 216 00:28:35.740 --> 00:28:43.740 ejected the royal governor, made their own constitution and assumed their own sovereignty. 217 00:28:43.740 --> 00:28:46.740 And this was before the Declaration of Independence. 218 00:28:46.740 --> 00:28:51.740 Months before the Declaration of Independence or any notion of the Union of the Colonies, 219 00:28:51.740 --> 00:28:56.740 this was true of all of the states, five years before the Articles of Confederation, 220 00:28:56.740 --> 00:29:02.740 the state of South Carolina was sovereign and exercising all sovereign powers. 221 00:29:02.740 --> 00:29:14.740 War, diplomacy, taxation, the execution of felons, exercising every sovereign power. 222 00:29:14.740 --> 00:29:18.740 And as was being described at the Historical Society this evening, 223 00:29:18.740 --> 00:29:23.740 about a week before the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776, 224 00:29:23.740 --> 00:29:29.740 the South Carolina forces at Fort Moultrie repulsed the British fleet and established, 225 00:29:29.740 --> 00:29:51.740 and self-government. There were a few military experts who had been sent down by the Congress to inform Colonel Moultrie that his palmetto log for it was not defensible and it should be abandoned. 226 00:29:51.740 --> 00:30:00.740 Colonel Moultrie told him to get lost and went about his business, an early example of Federal interference. 227 00:30:00.740 --> 00:30:08.740 And of course, he was perfectly right and won the battle. 228 00:30:08.740 --> 00:30:16.740 And we might think just a little about the later attempt to exercise the same sovereignty 229 00:30:16.740 --> 00:30:24.740 in the middle of the 19th century, which was a deal as successful and met with a much heavier opposition. 230 00:30:24.740 --> 00:30:29.740 We usually think of Fort Sumter in terms of the first incident of the war, 231 00:30:29.740 --> 00:30:34.740 and the surrender of course, Fort Sumter was occupied by the South for all the rest of the war, 232 00:30:34.740 --> 00:30:44.740 and it was bombarded by fleets and by land mercilessly for almost four years. 233 00:30:44.740 --> 00:30:50.140 For years, it was literally reduced to rubble, although it was never given up, never abandoned, 234 00:30:50.140 --> 00:30:55.940 until it was taken from the rear. 235 00:30:55.940 --> 00:31:04.940 And while this was going on, the army also, including using some of the largest artillery 236 00:31:04.940 --> 00:31:11.700 in the world, amused itself by lobbing shells into Charleston, the lower part of the city 237 00:31:11.700 --> 00:31:25.700 that they preach, causing numerous civilian casualties and destruction of property. Leviathan can be very nasty when he is frustrated and thwarted. 238 00:31:25.700 --> 00:31:51.700 States' rights, I'm suggesting, is fundamental to the idea of liberty, but also what is not quite the same thing, fundamental to the idea of democracy or republicanism or government of the people or whatever you wish to call it, which Americans presumably believe in. 239 00:31:51.700 --> 00:32:00.700 Government rests upon the consent of the government, as Mr. Rockwell said at the opening of this meeting. 240 00:32:00.700 --> 00:32:09.700 This is the key part of the Declaration of Independence, and not the little decorating bit about equality. 241 00:32:09.700 --> 00:32:20.700 The consent of the government. Government is legitimate, just to the extent that it rests upon consent. 242 00:32:20.700 --> 00:32:26.700 That is to say, the people accede to the government. 243 00:32:26.700 --> 00:32:36.700 The opposite of to accede is to secede, to withdraw, to withdraw consent. 244 00:32:36.700 --> 00:32:43.700 The right of self-government ultimately rests on the right to withdraw consent 245 00:32:43.700 --> 00:32:53.700 from an oppressive government in the final analysis, that is the only thing that can restrain a repressive government. 246 00:32:53.700 --> 00:33:03.700 And our forefathers did not regard the American Revolution as a one-time event, which all of our sort of folklore, 247 00:33:03.700 --> 00:33:12.100 Federalist, nationalist folklore suggests that the American Revolution had occurred at one time, 248 00:33:12.100 --> 00:33:16.500 then the people gave their consent to the government and the government is forever. 249 00:33:20.740 --> 00:33:28.100 Not at all. The consent of the government was a recurrent or an ongoing process. Thomas Jefferson 250 00:33:28.100 --> 00:33:33.540 referred specifically to the succession of the colonies from Great Britain. This is the first 251 00:33:33.540 --> 00:33:45.540 First, political use of the term. Americans invented the idea of political secession. Americans invented it. They brought it forward. 252 00:33:45.540 --> 00:33:57.540 And very clearly, if you read Jefferson and the other better of the founders, what they want to preserve is not the union, but the principle of self-government. 253 00:33:57.540 --> 00:34:02.540 And Jefferson is perfectly willing to entertain that probably in the future, in fact, America will break up. 254 00:34:02.540 --> 00:34:23.540 The point is not the union, the point is self-government, and whatever is the best way to preserve self-government, whether it's either one union or two confederacies or more, that is the principle to be preserved, or not the government and the union in itself. 255 00:34:23.540 --> 00:34:35.040 As Mr. Ostrowski described this morning, this whole notion of states' rights and the original 256 00:34:35.040 --> 00:34:38.980 nature of the American government, there's no doubt about this to any honest matter, despite 257 00:34:38.980 --> 00:34:51.340 the fact that we have a vast literature built up to sort of justify the nationalist interpretation. 258 00:34:51.340 --> 00:34:58.620 And the question of state sovereignty is not altered by the fact that there are now fifty states in the Union. 259 00:34:58.620 --> 00:35:08.020 The Constitution, very wisely, probably provided that new states may be admitted to the Union. 260 00:35:08.020 --> 00:35:10.940 The Union is expandable. 261 00:35:10.940 --> 00:35:15.100 The Congress may admit new states to the Union. 262 00:35:15.100 --> 00:35:19.140 But the Congress does not create a state, or the Federal Government does not create a state. 263 00:35:19.140 --> 00:35:30.140 The state creates itself. The state can only be created by the act of a sovereign people, not by law of the federal government. 264 00:35:30.140 --> 00:35:38.140 A people adopt their own constitution. They incorporate themselves into a political community. 265 00:35:38.140 --> 00:35:45.140 The federal government may admit them to the Union or not, but it does not create a state. 266 00:35:45.140 --> 00:35:54.140 if you believe in that the people are sovereign and give their consent to the government. 267 00:35:54.140 --> 00:35:59.140 This is just as true of Idaho as of South Carolina. 268 00:36:03.140 --> 00:36:06.140 Our forefathers understood this perfectly. 269 00:36:09.140 --> 00:36:14.140 The United States has always spoken of it in the plural until the Civil War. 270 00:36:15.140 --> 00:36:26.140 The Bill of Rights was understood as a restriction on the Federal Government, despite what lies and semantics you may get from the courts and the scholars these days. 271 00:36:26.140 --> 00:36:33.140 This is absolutely clear, read the language. The Bill of Rights, Congress shall make no law. Congress shall make no law. 272 00:36:33.140 --> 00:36:41.140 All rights not delegated are reserved to the states and the people. That could be clearer than that. 273 00:36:41.140 --> 00:36:45.860 And it was also, they were also clear about the understanding of American history. 274 00:36:45.860 --> 00:36:49.540 When the government had first begun, General Hamilton had come along 275 00:36:49.540 --> 00:36:53.860 with all sorts of schemes that were bent on stretching the federal government 276 00:36:53.860 --> 00:36:58.260 further than it was supposed to go. General Hamilton was defeated by Jefferson 277 00:36:58.260 --> 00:37:02.820 and his friends in 1800 and sent home. And that idea was supposed to have been 278 00:37:02.820 --> 00:37:08.500 put to rest. This is the way people understood the history until the Civil War. 279 00:37:08.500 --> 00:37:13.700 And this was certainly not just a Southern conception. 280 00:37:13.700 --> 00:37:18.820 Tocqueville, the great French observer, says in his book in the 1830s, 281 00:37:18.820 --> 00:37:23.300 the union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states, 282 00:37:23.300 --> 00:37:27.940 and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, 283 00:37:27.940 --> 00:37:33.300 nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. 284 00:37:33.300 --> 00:37:36.980 If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, 285 00:37:36.980 --> 00:37:40.740 It would be difficult to disprove its right to do so. 286 00:37:40.740 --> 00:37:47.700 And Tocqueville was only stating what everybody understood as a simple fact at the time. 287 00:37:51.700 --> 00:37:58.740 Lord Acton, the great British historian of liberty, writes to General Lee shortly after the war, 288 00:37:59.460 --> 00:38:05.940 that the fief of the Athlomatics is a greater setback for the cause of constitutional liberty 289 00:38:05.940 --> 00:38:14.940 And Waterloo was a victory. Waterloo was a victory for constitutional liberty because it put the end to an expanding empire. 290 00:38:15.940 --> 00:38:21.940 Appomattox was a loss for constitutional liberty because it established an empire. 291 00:38:24.940 --> 00:38:32.940 Acting as on the say of all Czechs on power, federalism has been the most efficacious and the most continual. 292 00:38:32.940 --> 00:38:48.940 The theory, which gave to the people of the states the same right of last resort against Washington as against Great Britain, possessed an independent force of its own northern statesmen of great authority maintained it. 293 00:38:48.940 --> 00:39:02.940 Its treatment by Calhoun and by Stevens forms an essential constituent of the progress of democratic thinking, as much so as Rousseau or Jefferson. 294 00:39:06.940 --> 00:39:17.940 You have to resort to a great deal of semantics, legalisms, or outright lying and distortion in order to refute that proposition. 295 00:39:18.940 --> 00:39:31.940 So, a very politically incorrect term, states' rights. States' rights have certainly fallen into disuse. 296 00:39:31.940 --> 00:39:40.940 This is not because, I suggest, this is not because they are unsound in history, 297 00:39:40.940 --> 00:39:53.940 and History, about the cause they are unsound in constitutional law, about the cause they are unsound in political philosophy and democratic theory. 298 00:39:53.940 --> 00:40:02.940 They fall into disuse for a couple of reasons. For one, they were suppressed by a force in the last century. 299 00:40:02.940 --> 00:40:07.940 A force can settle questions of power, but it cannot settle questions right or wrong. 300 00:40:07.940 --> 00:40:20.940 And it's also true that the trend of civilization for the past century or more has been centralization or consolidation. 301 00:40:20.940 --> 00:40:27.940 Read the Founding Fathers and you see one of their great concerns is what they call consolidation, the centralization of power. 302 00:40:27.940 --> 00:40:36.940 This is something to be feared. It was a danger, a temptation, but something to be feared and avoided if at all possible. 303 00:40:36.940 --> 00:40:46.940 is a great evil, while the trend of history has been, seemingly for a long time now, in favor of consolidation. 304 00:40:46.940 --> 00:41:04.940 We appear to have reached a point in history where we have reason to believe that perhaps that trend is coming to an end. 305 00:41:04.940 --> 00:41:15.940 All over the western world, we found an impulse towards the devolution of power, the break-up of large states. 306 00:41:15.940 --> 00:41:27.940 I was visited by some people from Ireland not long ago, and in Ireland they had a grassroots movement that tried to avoid the government, 307 00:41:27.940 --> 00:41:34.900 completely in recent, some settlement of their problems, and they came up with a report which 308 00:41:34.900 --> 00:41:41.460 was very specifically referred to John C. Calhoun and the concurrent majority, and both the government 309 00:41:41.460 --> 00:41:46.500 and the press over there went crazy. They couldn't, what is this? How can you learn anything from this 310 00:41:46.500 --> 00:41:54.260 old slaver crap? But they, you know, they stuck to their guns. It was very clear. Scotland, Quebec, 311 00:41:54.260 --> 00:42:02.340 Anyway, I'm suggesting that we have some reason to believe that the world is changing as some of the 312 00:42:02.340 --> 00:42:12.740 forces of history may be finally on our side for a while. The period of consolidation may be coming 313 00:42:12.740 --> 00:42:21.140 to an end. We may indeed have reason to hope for a new flowering of freedom, of communities, of 314 00:42:21.140 --> 00:42:33.140 of individuals, of small states, and after all, we often forget that freedom is the hallmark of Western man. 315 00:42:33.140 --> 00:42:44.140 Freedom is what Western civilization is about preeminently, something that our leaders certainly have today observed. 316 00:42:44.140 --> 00:42:54.140 We also have the great advantage of the comprehensive wisdom of Austrian economics, which our forefathers did not have. 317 00:42:54.140 --> 00:43:00.140 So we're not in a bad position in many ways. 318 00:43:00.140 --> 00:43:08.140 And if we're going to talk about federalism, we mean the states, and the states are all that we have. 319 00:43:08.140 --> 00:43:19.140 And I understand that the politicians who run the states are in every respect as despicable as the politicians who run the federal governments. 320 00:43:19.140 --> 00:43:34.140 However, they are closer to be reached. The states exist. They are realities. They are what we've got. And they can, it seems to be, be made use of. 321 00:43:34.140 --> 00:43:50.140 It would indeed be a shame and a tragedy if in this period of devolution Americans did not look back to their ancient, unprovable founding tradition of state rights. 322 00:43:50.140 --> 00:43:56.140 We don't have to resort to revolution, which is just a somewhat more drastic step. 323 00:43:56.140 --> 00:44:07.140 We did not have to resort to anarchic individualism in order to cripple Leviathan. 324 00:44:07.140 --> 00:44:10.140 We have the states ready-made. 325 00:44:10.140 --> 00:44:18.140 That can be employed for that purpose if we have the will to do so. 326 00:44:18.140 --> 00:44:33.140 So, I'm suggesting maybe what we ought to do is go back to our states and begin to work upon the people they're really involved to govern themselves. 327 00:44:33.140 --> 00:44:38.140 And concentrate perhaps upon that and ignore certain other things that have occupied us. 328 00:44:38.140 --> 00:44:44.140 For instance, do we really care whether the Republican Party succeeds or fails? 329 00:44:44.140 --> 00:44:56.140 Or do we really care whether Newt Kindredge's futuristic predictions are fulfilled or not? 330 00:44:56.140 --> 00:45:04.140 Or do we really care whether the Congress cuts the rate of growth in the welfare budget by 1% or 2%? 331 00:45:04.140 --> 00:45:13.140 Maybe we should think about some other things that we can have some effect on that will make a difference in the long run. 332 00:45:13.140 --> 00:45:34.140 are lost, instilled in heritage of state rights, a term that was once an everyday term in America, a household word, and yet it is hardly heard, hardly dared to be spoken of. 333 00:45:34.140 --> 00:45:51.140 If we can do that, if we can really restore the old, the true American Union of self-governing states in place of the present imperial America, that will be a wonderful thing. 334 00:45:51.140 --> 00:46:00.140 There's no need to fool ourselves that it will be easy. It will not be easy. But we can make a start, and we have made a start. 335 00:46:00.140 --> 00:46:24.140 The first step is to free ourselves of the superstition of consolidation, the superstitious belief in a wise and good federal government and that the inevitable trend is always towards more and more centralization. 336 00:46:24.140 --> 00:46:33.180 That is a superstition, a falsehood that we have lived under for far, far too long. 337 00:46:33.180 --> 00:46:37.900 We have to free ourselves of that superstition and we will make a great step forward. 338 00:46:37.900 --> 00:46:42.820 And I take it that is what we have been doing this particular weekend. 339 00:46:42.820 --> 00:46:46.820 And the fact that we are doing that is a great step forward in itself. 340 00:46:47.820 --> 00:46:49.820 Thank you very much.