{"id":254426,"date":"2016-07-07T06:49:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T06:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/breaking-away-from-the-centralized-state\/"},"modified":"2016-07-07T06:49:38","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T06:49:38","slug":"breaking-away-from-the-centralized-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/breaking-away-from-the-centralized-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Away From the Centralized State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Despite every attempt in the world by left-wing elites in both parties to throw this subject into the dustbin of history, I\u2019m going to bring it up anyways. I\u2019ll cut straight to the chase: The United States is too large and too centralized.<\/p>\n

Although one in four<\/a> Americans are open to the idea of secession, there is almost no idea in America that is more condemned by elites more than this one. As time has passed, it has become a near unquestioned assumption that centralization is a desirable and progressive force, whereas decentralization and secession represent retrogression and backwardness.<\/p>\n

But America has not always been characterized by political centralization, and it has not always been unfashionable to support politics on a smaller scale. It doesn\u2019t have to be unfashionable today, either.<\/p>\n

Tocqueville\u2019s American Decentralization<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the United States to study its prisons and thereafter returned back to Europe with knowledge of the United States extensive enough to publish his two-volume book Democracy in America<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>This book is considered both then and now to be a classic work of political science and history and helped to attain Tocqueville the reputation as a highly astute observer of the nineteenth century America.<\/p>\n

And like so many during his age, Tocqueville was a proponent of decentralization. In particular, Tocqueville admired the framers of the Constitution for the way in which they carefully crafted powers between federal and state governments, whereby governing authority remained primarily with the states as opposed to the federal government. The decentralized management of political and social affairs, which, according to Tocqueville, was rooted in American tradition tracing back to the Puritans and certain municipalities in England, remained a critical feature of American society.<\/p>\n

Why are the most advertised Gold and Silver coins NOT the best way to invest?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, so great were the powers of the states that they \u2013 not a monolithic \u201cAmerican people\u201d \u2013 had created the Union. And since the Union comprised of sovereign states (which in joining together had forfeited neither their independence nor their nationality) the federal compact could be dissolved at will. In other words, the Union was not perpetually binding. Tocqueville observed:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to a condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thus, upon a thorough and impartial study of the early nineteenth-century American landscape, Tocqueville could not help but conclude that the states were sovereign. Such sovereignty was not only a critical feature of the new Constitution but was also so engrained into American custom that it was akin to a father\u2019s authority in the family. \u201cThe sovereignty of the states,\u201d wrote Tocqueville, \u201cis sustained by memories, habits, local prejudices, regional and familial self-interest; in short, by all things that make the patriotic instinct such a powerful force in the heart of man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also important, of course, were towns and counties. For Tocqueville also recognized that local institutions are the natural outcome of a free society. Just as liberty begets local institutions, so too is the fostering of local institutions critical to the preservation of liberty. \u201cIt is at the local level,\u201d wrote Tocqueville, \u201cthat the strength of a free people lies. Local institutions are to liberty what elementary schools are to knowledge; they bring it within reach of the people, allow them to savior its peaceful use, and accustom them to rely on it.\u201d Thus, Tocqueville did not believe it was a coincidence that localities were the foundation of American political economy.\u00a0 To the contrary, local institutions are the only associations that are \u201cso apart of nature\u201d that whenever men come together they tend to spontaneously arise.<\/p>\n

In many regards, as was pointed out<\/a> by L. Joseph Herbert, Tocqueville\u2019s American decentralization is not unlike the Catholic Church\u2019s teaching of the subsidiary. First coined in Pope Leo XI\u2019s Quadragesimo Anno<\/em><\/a> (1931),<\/em> this principle held that matters ought to be handled by the least centralized authority as competently possible. Whenever plausible, political decisions should be decided at a local level \u2013 by individuals, families, and local political and civil associations \u2013 rather than by a central authority.<\/p>\n

Lastly, when looking at the United States, Tocqueville noted that American political decentralization accorded with the diversity of customs found throughout the nation. In this regard, political decentralization fostered the diversity of customs and discouraged cultural uniformity. Unlike lawmakers in the United States, those in centralized nations were \u201cobliged to give laws a uniform character that does not comport with the diversity of places and customs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decentralization: The Path Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, however, the decentralized America observed by Tocqueville has been long lost. No aspect of life is left untouched by federal authorities. The federal government, for instance, has taken upon itself to impose a new definition of marriage onto the entire country; to replace education by parents, churches, and communities with education by the federal government; to replace local charity with a compulsory and federalized welfare state.<\/p>\n

And this isn\u2019t even the beginning.<\/p>\n

Indeed, everything must be under direct control of the modern centralized state. All are encouraged to embrace the new wave of cultural leftism currently engulfing western civilization\u2013 a wave which seeks to homogenize all peoples and cultures under the mantra of \u201cdiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

And speaking of \u201cdiversity.\u201d What passes as \u201cdiversity\u201d today is far different than the type noticed by Tocqueville within the United States in the 1830s. As Lew Rockwell astutely wrote in his recent article The Unique Evil of the Left<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2026the left\u2019s version of diversity amounts to uniformity of an especially insidious kind. No one may hold a dissenting view about the desirability of \u2018diversity\u2019 itself, of course, and \u2018diverse\u2019 college faculties are chosen not for their diversity of viewpoints but precisely for their dreary sameness: left-liberals of all shapes and sizes. What\u2019s more, by demanding \u2018diversity\u2019 and proportional representation in as many institutions as possible, the left aims to make all of America exactly the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rather than letting people \u201clive and let live\u201d by fostering small groupings and alliances akin to the kinds Tocqueville admired in early America, the centralizing left thus seeks to substitute the local with the distant. Seeking what Rockwell calls the \u201cfundamental transformation of society,\u201d the centralizing left seek to crush local allegiances and replace them with allegiance to centralization. Rockwell wrote:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn place of naturally occurring groupings and allegiances, it demands the substitution of artificial constructs. In place of the concrete and specific, the Burkean \u2018little platoons\u2019 that emerge organically, it imposes remote and artificial substitutes that emerge from the heads of intellectuals. It prefers the distant central government to the local neighborhood, the school board president over the head of household.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thus, for those of us who believe in liberty, it would be wise to consider carefully the words of Tocqueville and others who shed light on the superiority of decentralized political structures. Indeed, the centralized state is not an outcome of the free social order. It is instead, as Rockwell has articulated, a replacement of the concrete and specific with remote and artificial substitutes that emerge from the heads of intellectuals, the type who believe themselves capable of ushering in a utopia by giving a small number of people power over a vast federal apparatus.<\/p>\n

In contrast, however, we can boldly proclaim rationales for breaking away from the modern centralized state, with all of its wars, it\u2019s money-printing, its crony capitalism, its assault on traditional culture. All of this assuming, of course, that Tocqueville was right in arguing that local institutions arise organically from a free social order and are essential for the flourishing of civilization.<\/p>\n

Left-wing elites want us to stay quiet about this subject. They don\u2019t deem it a worthy serious discussion. But really, what\u2019s so bad about politics on a smaller scale?<\/p>\n

The Best of Darrell Falconburg<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite every attempt in the world by left-wing elites in both parties to throw this subject into the dustbin of history, I\u2019m going to bring it up anyways. I\u2019ll cut straight to the chase: The United States is too large and too centralized. Although one in four Americans are open to the idea of secession, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-254426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}