There’s a reason why secessionist talk still runs through American discourse–America was born of secession. Today, what’s looked at as fringe, was mainstream when the country was founded and for about 60 years. Then it all started to break down. The breakdown proceeded through the Civil War and then accelerated in the late 19th Century.
There’s a very practical down-to-earth reason secession remains of interest: Large, centrally-controlled entities simply don’t work in the long-run, they are ultimately highly inefficient (even though appearing for awhile to be efficient) and they tend to break up on their own anyway. Actually large, centrally-controlled organization as a process is mostly an artifact of 19th and 20th century industrialization. We’re beginning to see how that has likely run its course for both business and government. It is gasping for air in the throes of its own disassembly.
It should be obvious that America was not founded as a large, centrally-controlled anything. The states were meant to be their own mini-countries, the “laboratories of Democracy,” tied together in a loose federation having minimal centralized and very limited functions. That distribution of power and control was meant to be the strength of America, with individual freedom and liberty the hallmark of our former country.
That model changed after the Civil War and into the industrial age as the power aggrandizers and despots started seeking ways to drive centralized control into the country and the move towards “nationalization” proceeded. That’s when references to the United States changed from “are” (as in “the united States are…”) to “is.” It was becoming a single “thing.”
The distorted homogenization and nationalization of the country has proceeded virtually unfettered throughout the 20th century as opportunists took advantage at every turn of fortune and misfortune to make nationalism the centerpiece of the citizen’s thoughts of their former state and country.
The weakness and danger in having large, centralized control structures in banking, finance, and economic planning of any type are being revealed daily. The same is also being exposed in the inherent weaknesses of such structures of governance. Such systems sometimes fail early, when allowed to, and indeed can appear to be highly successful for a time. If propped up and artificially maintained for too long, when they do fail, it is catastrophic because it fails everywhere, all at once.
Today, most Americans erroneously think in completely nationalistic terms about the United States as “…one nation, under God, indivisible…” Even the Pledge of Allegiance, from which the term flows, was the creation of a Fabian Christian Socialist by the name of Francis J. Bellamy whose mission was to get Americans to think in more nationalistic, socialist terms. The phrase, “and to the Republic, for which it stands…” is completely oxymoronic to the line that follows it, “…one nation…,” with virtually no one questioning the obvious fallacy. Long practice and constant recitation have embedded it deep into the consciousness of the population in a way that will make most react violently to the truth of its origin and meaning.
It would appear Bellamy and many others have succeeded. It is complete historic irony that most people think it approaches blasphemy not to stand and commit such a nationalistic act as reciting the “pledge” en masse and on-command. Even the original “Bellamy Salute” to the flag would be frightening to people today as a picture of American schoolchildren in the 1930s shows. Yet because the image was changed by having children place their hands over their heart, the Pledge is acceptable!
Speaking ill of the “pledge” can start a fight with almost any citizen today. The brainwashing is that complete. Just think about how your mind is already working for ways to justify maintaining “our sense of the nation” rather than “our country” and particularly the state where you live. The States were founded to be the original countries and the superior entities to a federal government. There was no legal nation configured in the Constitution but a Union of States. There is a larger distinction than many fail to realize.
A population that thinks in nationalistic terms is much easier to control as it behaves in massively conforming ways easier to manipulate and frighten into following the central “authority,” usually with unthinking obedience. However, that is not the country the founders intended or in any way wanted or, for that matter, died to secure. That is specifically the transition from a country to a nationalist governance they sought to avoid.
For the moment, the nationalists have won. Nationalism has spread to virtually every corner of thought and speech throughout the country. Just as “our Democracy” has substituted for “our Republic.” The Nationalists have succeeded in their quest to invert and pervert the meaning of the “E Pluribus Unum” from the “Nation of Principle” into the “defacto legal Nation of governance.”
The true independent, free-thinking and law-abiding American is now looked upon as, at minimum, highly unusual. At worst, they are looked upon as actually dangerous to “social order” when they don’t “buy-in” hook, line and sinker to the Nationalist agenda. That is the result of 150 years of creeping, insidious nationalism. There is hope, though, found in the ongoing failure and natural disassembly of the current centralized system of control and power. A hope that a return to historic and fundamental American values will be resurrected. At this point, it is only a hope.
