Volume 8, Issue 1: Verbatim

Quotations on the Coming Break-up

Various Saints and Observers

Speculating on how the central state will crumble is one of the few pleasures of the present age. How will the social-democratic mixed economy, inherently unstable, resolve its contradictions? . . . We can't rule any scenario out, but recent events suggest that, absent serious top-down reform, a reassertion of the federal principle will topple tyranny.

The real trend in the world today is toward the decentralization of power. This has been conspicuous all over Europe, in Canada, and in the demise of the Soviet Union. Here, however, it has been held in check, thanks to the continued liberal stranglehold over policy. . . . In fact, the liberal establishment increasingly resembles nothing so much as a bitter remnant of the Socialist International. . . Are the Feds unstoppable, then? No, good things are happening out there. Above all, politicians are unable to stop the ongoing technological revolution, a powerful force for decentralization. The Industrial Revolution took workers out of their homes and put them in factories; the Computer Revolution is putting them back into their homes.

A possible upside from the dissolution of Canada could be the emergence of a new, low-tax jurisdiction on the North American continent. Any of a number of Canadian provinces, possibly including Quebec, could dramatically improve their economies simply by adopting the Hong Kong flat tax of 15%. The first province to do so could be identified from satellite photos because the moving vans would be backed up half way to the Mexican border. Best bet to undertake such a radical change: Alberta.

American government, we are told, is notable for its stability. And so it seems, at least on the surface. But stability over a long period, as the Russian tsars could tell us, is no guarantee of permanence. And the tsars fell very suddenly after ruling far longer than the U.S. government's two centuries. . . . Americans victimized or outraged by government are speaking to each other, have established lines of communication that didn't exist before, and know they aren't alone. The personal computer can take some credit for this. So can talk radio. But however it has happened, it has happened.

The prophet Jeremiah was a patriot or most ardent lover of his country, else he would hardly have deplored its calamities in strains so pathetic as these. . . . A very considerable part of his prophecy, and almost the whole book of Lamentations, are the sympathetic complaints of a religious patriot weeping over the sins and distresses of his country. . . . But what must set the point beyond all further dispute is the example of Christ himself. If he was a patriot, patriotism must be a virtue. And that he was such appears from his weeping over the approaching calamities of his country; the tears which, as man, he shed on that occasion were tears of patriotism.

In 1559 a more sinister turn was taken in the evangelical affairs. The persecuted church began to think in terms of armed resistance, even of armed revolt. The ranks of evangelicals now contained a large number of nobles, unused to suffering wrongs as patiently as the middle classes who had hitherto predominated. . . . Calvin was sounded as to his opinions on active revolt. He had already, in a letter to the church in Paris, made it clear that he was aware of the new situation brought about by the change in the composition of the church, and had spoken out strongly against the use of force: "Let it be your care to attempt nothing that is not warranted by his Word. . . It would be better for us all to be ruined than that the gospel of God should be exposed to the reproach that it has armed men for sedition and tumult."

Despite the strength of clerical support for the Confederacy, the ideological presuppositions on which the cooperation was based would eventually undermine the patriotic contributions these churchmen made. In fact, the ministers' vigorous praise of what the Confederacy was accomplishing seemed to imply that their patriotism was in some way conditional and only related to the willingness of the Southern people to adhere to the laws of God. Clergy wanted their congregations to know that their enthusiasm for the Confederate war effort was predicated not on mindless chauvinism, but rather on the fact that the South stood for true religious principles.

Once a wild dream, secessionism is now a reality of regional politics. In nearly every state in the union, some group, suburb, beach, or county wants to secede from a higher political authority. The secessionist movement comes from the grass-roots to force a revolution against the center, whether city, county, state, or federal government itself. The movement has no billionaire donor, no central organization, no national mailing list, no television channel, no national spokesman, no 800 number, and no cabal of power-brokers behind the scenes to kick out the extremists.

The people of the great nations of the past seem normally to have imagined that their pre-eminence would last forever . . . In recent years, the idea has spread widely in the West that 'progress' will be automatic without effort, that everyone will continue to grow richer and richer and that every year will show a 'rise in the standard.' We have not drawn from history the obvious conclusion that material success is the result of courage, endurance and hard work -- a conclusion nevertheless obvious from the history of the meteoric rise of our own ancestors.

Our barbarians are home products, indoctrinated at the public expense, urged on by the media systematically stage by stage, dismantling Christendom, depreciating and deprecating all its values. The whole social structure is now tumbling down, dethroning its God, undermining all its certainties. All this, wonderfully enough, is being done in the name of the health, wealth, and happiness of all mankind. That is the basic scene that seems to me will strike a future Gibbon as being characteristic of the decline and fall of Christendom.

We ask too often why cultures perish and too seldom why they survive; as though their conservation were the normal and obvious fact and their death the abnormality for which special causes must be found. It is not so. An art, a whole civilization, may at any time slip through men's fingers in a very few years and be gone beyond recovery. If we are alive when such a thing is happening we shall hardly notice it until too late; and it is most unlikely that we shall know its causes.

The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pelucid and almost gem-like perfectionthe highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determinationthat government of the people, by the people, for the people , should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.

So please let us look at these matters without emotion. Just as a passport should be looked at like a bus ticket (not part of the flag), so should boundaries be viewed as lines in sand, not in concrete. Borders have been changing since life began forming into communities on earth. They will keep on changing, whether we like it or not.

There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth;with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions.