The sanity of Ohio independence

Last month, I acknowledged to my father, who does not have Internet access, that I am a secessionist. His immediate reaction was that I was out of my mind. I suspect that Anonymous had the same idea in their reaction to my January 2 post giving the case for Ohio independence:

“However hard I find it to believe you're actually saying all these things, it's never going to happen. Ever. Ever. Not in 100 years. It didn't work last time.”

My comment in reply is part of the link above; but here, I suggest that, far from being insanity, my support for Ohio independence is in fact the sanest thing I can do, especially if you define insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” *

I believe as much as anyone in working within the system – when it’s not broken. In the past thirty years, the American people have disengaged themselves from politics -- just look at statistics of voter registration relative to the voting-age population, and at the percentage of registered voters who actually vote in any given election. As I argued January 2, we are not a democracy. The United States Government is a kleptocracy. I am convinced that the Federal Government has been corrupted beyond repair, and that the only way to restore accountability is to reduce the size of the nation to a more human scale.

It isn’t as though we haven’t tried to reform it. Think of the “major” third-party candidates that have run in the last forty years: John Anderson, George Wallace, Ross Perot. The most successful of them was Ross Perot. While he did receive 20% of the popular vote, he did not get even one electoral vote! This is less a defect of the Electoral College than it is a nationwide defect in the electoral system, that rigs it in favor of two large political parties whose ideas are becoming less distinct all the time. This year, we hear that Ron Paul and possibly Michael Bloomberg will be seeking the Presidency on third-party tickets. And, even if Rep. Paul or Mayor Bloomberg were to be elected, they would still have to cope with a two-party Congress that will be hostile to their leadership. We have tried the third-party and the independent Presidential candidate routes – several times – and the last time it did work was in 1860.

What else can we do? Form a lobby? Would the mainstream media even give such a lobby the time of day? How would it be financed without corrupting its principles?

Start a revolution? Thomas Jefferson thought we should have a revolution every twenty years, but to revolt against the U.S. military sounds rather suicidal to me.

So what is left? A determination by the people to pursue, nonviolently and within the rule of law, the right to peaceably leave the Union, one that was recognized by the Federal Government itself at the beginning of the Civil War (in the failure of Congress to outlaw secession outright). To say the Union is indivisible is to suggest that a State’s voluntary act to enter the Union is like an individual’s decision to join the Mafia – you can never leave it alive. It also suggests that maintaining the Union is more important than preserving the freedoms that gave it meaning.

We cannot possibly raise enough money to buy back the government, nor enough force to overcome the police and the military. Our only option is to build such a strong moral position that our opposition will collapse of its own weight, just as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia did in 1991. Look realistically at where our economy is headed, and the idea that it could (and should) happen here will not seem so far-fetched.

Here's another post that demonstrates the sanity of independence. (Michael Rozeff in LewRockwell.com)

* Attributed to Albert Einstein