Rather Than Repeat Myself

     – which is what you expected from me on America’s 250th Independence Day, isn’t it? – allow me a few thoughts snatched out of the luminiferous ether, and a handful of links.

     First, Happy Independence Day. The United States has survived quite a lot, especially if you count all the hubris-powered blunders American politicians have produced. Part of the reason is Americans’ resilience: our stubborn habit of growling at our troubles, bearing down, and pushing through. Not to put too fine a point on it:

1. The politicians fuck things up,
2. Disaster ensues;
3. Ordinary Americans take care of business.

     It would be nice to think it’s ingrained in us, but the developments of the post-World War II decades suggest that it’s not ingrained in all of us. An increasing number of our people believe that “our” governments really are “here to help.” Worse, those folks think they have a right to be bailed out of their own, homemade troubles, whenever, wherever, and to whatever depth.

     I could go on about that, but I’ll spare you. Celebrate what we’ve been through as much as what we have.

     Second, beware. The forces hostile to freedom are more numerous and more active than at any previous time in the nation’s history. While some of those forces are essentially mindless, others are quite purposeful. The men who guide them know what they’re doing.

     There are convulsions on the horizon. The first of them will arrive with the midterm elections, which are certain to be infected by every sort of fraud. If the pattern of previous years is repeated, those who have supervisory authority over those elections will either wring their hands and moan, or will be found complicit in the fraud.

     Third, remember this above all else:

Freedom is not given.
It is not granted.
It is not “voted.”
It is taken.

     In the usual case, it’s taken by force of arms. The oppressed must rise up and defeat the oppressors. If you’ve wondered why half a billion Europeans, the stock from which most Americans are descended, can’t seem to throw off the yokes “their” governments have fixed upon them, reflect on how completely they’ve been seduced by welfarism on the one hand, and disarmed on the other.

     The great majority of White Americans are too proud to accept government handouts. That’s admirable. But a growing fraction of our people do accept them, and would regard anyone opposed to those handouts as an enemy. One of the best things anyone can do in the cause of freedom is to help others toward self-reliance. Every mendicant removed from the State’s teat is another potential freedom fighter.

     Then, after you’ve got him to stand on his own feet like a proper American, take him to the shooting range! Let the sound of freedom ring in his ears, and yours. Then get him heeled up, which really should be regarded as every able-bodied American’s civic duty.

     Fourth and last, a few links:

• For Independence Day
• For Independence Day Part 2
• For Independence Day Part 3: When It Came
• Two For Independence Day
• From My Cold Dead Hand

     Now enjoy the weekend. I plan to do so. I’ll see you on Monday.

Secession: The Prospects

     Esteemed Co-Conspirator Linda Fox thinks it’s a real possibility. So does Robert Lopez at American Greatness. And in all candor, I once thought it might come to pass. In brief, it seemed to me to be the solution to America’s political, economic, cultural, and sectarian tensions that was most likely to work long-term.

     But I don’t think so any longer. A commenter to the Lopez essay delineates some of the reasons:

     The only flaw I can see to the "separate ways" argument is a fatal one.

     No matter what you do, no matter what you try, do you really think these people will leave you alone?

     A major part of the draw of American leftism is the false sense of moral and intellectual superiority it confers to its devotees. But what good is that if you don't have a captive audience of people into whose faces you can rub your superiority? If you can't reach them, then how can you lord over them? Tell them how to live? What to eat? When they can leave their homes? Whether they're permitted to worship? How can you censor them, take away their right to self defense, and punish them?

     How can you keep humiliating them and mocking them with sham elections that serve to reinforce their helplessness before your power?

     We lost the culture wars because every time we gave in to what the leftists demanded and asked, "Now will you leave us alone?" they attacked another institution.

     They will never leave you alone.

     So you might as well fight them where you are. This is our country. Our Constitution, our Republic. Not theirs. Why cede it to them? Fight.

     He’s right about the political / psychological dynamic. The Left’s quasi-religious belief in its right to rule, owing to its presumption of moral and intellectual superiority to the rest of us, would demand that it force us to bow before it once again. Apart from that, power-seekers always seek more power, which would militate against secession a priori and would fuel a lust for infiltration and reconquest a posteriori. That lust would be encouraged and aided by any “blue remnant” populations that choose to remain in the “red” nation.

     At least as compelling is the dynamic that arises from the multiply interconnected continental economy. A secession that would create two political entities side by side, would also guarantee that one would be more prosperous than the other. The emotional response of the less successful polity would be a degree of envy and resentment that would guarantee conflict. As the Left has been fostering envy and resentment for many decades, a clash would inevitably follow. Irresistible pressure against the more successful nation-state’s borders would be the least of the consequences.

     Finally, there’s the military aspect of things. “Red America” is where most of the nation’s military assets reside, including the majority of its strategic weapons. “Blue America would never let those go without a fight...possibly a fight that would involve the use of those strategic weapons. I don’t think I need to sketch out how terrible that would be.

     Mike Hendrix puts it well:

     FederalGovCo will never, ever, EVER peaceably agree to cede its power over half the country by partitioning it off and just letting all that territory, all that infrastructure, all those military installations, and all those taxpayer dollars stroll away unmolested. In fact, now that we’ve taken the final steps towards Commie dictatorship with the recent fraudulent “election,” I’d say the bloated, illegitimate central government’s iron grip is far likelier to tighten than to relax.

     So I don’t see secession as a plausible course for the future.

---

     There have been secessions and partitions that have endured. However, in the usual case the partition of an existing nation into two or more parts has been imposed upon it by outside forces that could not be gainsaid. The United States has taken part in the engineering of such partitions. What power could impose its will on the U.S.? A state whose internal affairs are as disordered as is the norm today would never even conceive of the notion. As for a coalition of similarly minded nations, such alliances don’t come together for such a purpose. (The nations that united to fight in the World Wars of last century did so to protect and advance their several, respective economic and territorial interests, nothing more. America wouldn’t have gone to war in Europe were it not for the prospect of reduced access to Europe’s markets.)

     So even were there a sincere and potent secessionist movement abroad in the U.S., it would be unlikely to achieve its objective. Should it manage to do so, it would be even less likely to stand apart for long. While there have been mutterings about it in a few state legislatures, Texas most prominent among them, it looks highly improbable in the foreseeable future.

     We’re going to need to learn to get along.