Independence is drawing academic interest

Alan Caruba at LewRockwell.com has read the book Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, a scholarly anthology edited by Donald Livingston of Emory University in Atlanta, to be published in October by Pelican Press.

After reading the book, Mr. Caruba observes that "clearly the central government has grown so large, so unwieldy, so wasteful, and so unresponsive to the problems and costs it has imposed that people are beginning to wonder why 435 Representatives in the House and 100 in the Senate should control the lives, the economy, and the education of more than 300 million people in fifty sovereign States.
The President virtually makes law with 'executive orders' and the nine members of the Supreme Court exercises final authority of the constitutionality of laws. Congress is so divided by raw partisanship it is barely functioning."

“The only remedy,” says Prof. Livingston “is territorial division of the Union through secession into a number of different and independent political units.”

Professor Livingston then observes that the "arrogant social engineers" on the U.S. Supreme Court feel free to strike down state laws at will. He urges the states to "reassert their sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and recall those powers they have allowed to slip out of their hands to the central government."



Mr Caruba continues:

This is not a call for anarchy. It is the realization that the modern presidency has aggregated to itself powers it does not have or, in the case of Libya, is ignoring the War Powers Act that limits its ability to engage the nation in conflicts Congress does not ultimately authorize.
 
It is the realization that every United Nations treaty the United States signs deprives it of its sovereign rights.

It is a call for consideration that regional groups of States with common interests might provide better government within such groups, leaving to the central government the responsibility to protect the nation via a common military, conduct foreign affairs, and return to the gold standard that would protect the value of a common currency...

When one-in-five Americans give credence to the right of secession, it is clear that the problems being experienced in all fifty States, the massive regulation of all activities within those States, the imposition of a centralized “core” curriculum to be taught in all schools, is arousing a rediscovered sense of liberty among Americans.

Mr. Caruba and Prof. Livingston provide further evidence that an idea that was considered wacky three years ago has entered respectable public debate, precisely because the usurpations of this President and the neglect of this and the previous Congresses to check those usurpations have awakened the American people to the fact that more drastic measures will become necessary, if we are to regain our liberties.

For myself, I would prefer that Ohio go it on its own as an independent Republic. With 11.5 million people, a land area of 40,000 square miles, and what would be about the 20th largest economy in the world if no larger state seceded, we would actually be a bit larger than the average nation out there today. However, I can see some advantages to forming a very loose "Confederation of the Great Lakes," but only if it follows the example of Switzerland and writes a constitution that consciously keeps the confederate government as weak as possible.

The window is opening for a serious discussion of independence in Ohio. My question to the reader is, how do we most effectively introduce it?