Gosh, what's a serious discussion
these days? I don't suppose you'd use a blog. That’s slightly above an MTV talk
show format, and way below an article in The
Economist. The blog doesn't seem
like a serious forum. There are serious discussions all the time. At this
point, the most serious of them should occur while consuming alcohol and
tobacco. But all the folks I would like to have this conversation, a beer, and
a cigar with are busy with their families right now, so the blog will have to
do.
Where should the pressure for
secession start?
Well, I suppose it should start with
guys like me who are both fed up with the way things are, and have the courage
to take little steps, at least, to get them changed. Notice I said little steps. Little guys like me aren't
going to accomplish anything remarkable by starting an armed insurrection. In
fact, little guys like me probably couldn’t even start an armed insurrection if they tried. They could only create an "incident" that the feds could use to justify further depredations.
Remember the days around Waco and
the Oklahoma City bombing? I was in grad school and was studying the rhetoric
of the militia movement back then, so I know a little about it. Success in the
secession movement is unlikely in any case, but failure is certain if we go the
route of a self-proclaimed rebellion without the support of state and local
government. A dude, or even a bunch of
dudes in camouflage shorts who play with cheap copies of an AR (or even the
expensive real thing) on the weekend or who build fertilizer bombs are only
going to make things worse, not better. Just ask Guy Fawkes, or Timothy McVeigh.
Where should the concrete steps
towards secession take place?
In Topeka, at the Statehouse.
Remember, little guys can only make things worse on their own. Unless there's a
huge catastrophe that turns our world into Mad Max's, we're going to have to
work through channels. The state has plenary power. We're going to secede from
the United States, not start a revolution like a bunch of Marxists/Maoists. We
have to start by winning control in Topeka.
What's the first step in
Topeka?
It's simple: the legislature
needs to to set up a "Sovereignty Commission" to study the options.
The Commission will develop and recommend the economic and political steps that
need to be taken to protect the citizens of Kansas from federal depredations. Secession need not be a foregone conclusion
when the Commission is set up (we’ll look at “nullification” separately), but
certainly, the Commission's considerations must include withdrawal from the
union on terms that (for the Kansans' part) would allow us to live peaceably
alongside those states that choose to remain in the union. The Commission will
encourage and coordinate with similar commissions in other states. The
Commission will also plan on how to defend the state if it is subject to
foreign aggression following secession (e.g., the possibility of establishing
an official state militia on the Swiss model).
There's no room in the
Kansas budget for a new Commission, is there?
It would be cheap to
fund such a Commission, at least in its early stages. All the legislature needs
to start with are two paid employees, the seven or eight volunteer Commission
members, and some money to award grants to economists and the like for the real
work of drafting the report. It would probably mean a state expenditure of less
than $1 million. I'll bet we spend less on this important project than on Sam
Brownback's jet fuel. If we're really worried about where the money will come
from, then pay for the Commission by discontinuing state printing of the
hard-copy official court reporters. They're expensive, nobody uses them for
legal research anymore, and they're not handsomely bound, so they don't even
work as decorations on a bookshelf.
Does the Curmudgeon want
to be on the Commission?
Nope. I'm not looking
for a job as the executive director, or even a nonpaid appointment to the
Commission. I value my privacy and my family’s private life, and I would accept
no part in public life, given disclosure requirements as they are today.
Well, then, couldn’t the
Koch brothers fund it?
Of course not. They're
NeoCons. They are too heavily invested in the way things are to be interested
in any real and meaningful change.
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