Nearly 154 years ago our nation underwent the tragic event that was the American Civil War. The Civil War has been called a rebellion by those who fought to preserve the union and a revolution by those who sought to secede from the nation that was the United States. Hundreds of thousands of men died in that titanic struggle. We may have been a country made up of states when the war began but by the time the great war ended we were a nation, indivisable.

Now we hear echoes of the past as some call for outright secession while others are satisfied with a de facto form of secession, a secession of the individual from any federal government control and influence. The echoes are becoming louder not quite to a crescendo but loud enough to be heard.

For those who call for disunion now; they are just as much a traitor as they were back in the 1850’s, when secessionists grew in strength and our country was almost ripped asunder.

The traitorous activity that goes on now does not reach the literal level of criminal treason but the actions of those who seek to divide the nation into 50 states who are sovereign and independent of the federal government are using the same tactics that John C. Calhoun made popular back in the 19th Century. His ideas of using Nullification and interposition are growing more popular today in the attempts of many states to nullify and invalidate federal laws

There are traitors among us who seek to destroy our nation. They are willing to use any tactic imaginable. These so-called conservatives are part of a large conspiracy. We now have members of Congress who believe that they can starve the beast that they call the Federal Government. By lowering taxes, they can starve the programs that they want to get rid of. By failing to fund departments like Homeland Security they believe they are starving the beast that is our government. By having a never ending war, wars starve the beast. Wars costs a lot of money and without enough revenue, social programs don’t have sufficient funding. With perpetual wars government does not have the money to pay for infrastructure improvement.  They view our government as being too invasive and controlling in our daily lives.

In point of fact, they want to return the government to what it was like before Franklin Roosevelt became President. For some they want to bring America back to when we had a Confederacy, to when we had the Articles of Confederation. In their speeches protesting the imagined evils of too much government they use the ideas of the Anti-Federalists back in the time when the thirteen former colonies of the British Empire were arguing about whether or not to ratify the Constitution.

For liberals and progressives their actions are viewed as a vast right wing conspiracy. The conservatives of today have a plan. The Federalist society helps by putting legal justifications together to have a legal framework to change the United States Supreme Court.

Media outlets are increasingly owned by conservative reactionaries. We have Fox News on television and talk radio to spew their well organized daily barrage of messaging through entities like Clear Channel communications. We all know the name of Rush Limbaugh, who gives the daily message to his followers. Mark Levin of talk radio and of the Heritage foundation writes best sellers talking about the evils of big government and the need to self govern. He preaches the dogma of how the Constitution has been emasculated and perverted from its original intent. Levin speaks to how our states our sovereign.

Conservatives have think tanks and foundations to provide both political talking points of the day to the overall strategy of the day.

ALEC is funded and managed by the Koch brothers. Lawyers working for ALEC organize proposed legislation to further weaken state government rules and regulations. These new legislative proposals designed by ALEC seek to destroy what is the United States of America as well.

The Mises Institute is less well known but their institute has their sermons on how to become individual secessionists. They are of the Austrian school on economics but it is their study of John C. Calhoun’s works on state sovereignty and secession that are particularly troubling.

These traitors among us want to give power back to the states. They have resurrected the idea of state sovereignty to emasculate the Federal Government.

Their bottom line goal is to no longer have a nation but to have 50 states where each state can determine for itself what type of rules and laws there will be. If you listen to enough libertarians, states would not have many rules and laws because each citizen of the state would self govern their behavior and acts. The only limit on an individuals freedom would be when and if a person physically harmed another person.

But let us get back to the worst part of this conspiracy, their plan on how to destroy our nation by encouraging secession. Polling has been done in 2008 and in 2014 regarding the public’s view of secession. Zogby found in 2008 that 22% of Americans believed that a state or region has the right to secede. In 2014 the figure had risen to 23.9% who stated that a state may secede if they felt it was necessary. These figures can be partially rationalized away as reasons for the support of the idea arise from frustrations regarding gridlock and the loss of faith in government. The larger number of those who support the concept see government as being too large and as an institution that overreaches into our individual lives.

If you really listen to the likes of those who extol the virtues of secession, they pervert the original beliefs of the founders and stress the Anti-Federalist arguments of people like Brutus.

Brutus was a spokesperson who was against ratifying the Constitution. Brutus, of whom the noted reactionary conservative Mark Levin, likes to quote, stated the following during the discussions and arguments that went on during the ratification process: “The government is to possess absolute and uncontrollable power, legislative, executive and judicial, with respect to every object to which it extends, for by the last clause of section 8th, article 1st, it is declared ” that the Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution, in the government of the United States; or in any department or office thereof.” And by the 6th article, it is declared “that this constitution, and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and the treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States shall be the law of the land, and judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution, or law of any state to the contrary not withstanding.”

Brutus understood the power of the Constitution that was being ratified and he was against it. Those who supported a confederacy under their articles lost the debate and the Constitution was ratified and it became the law of the land.

Next came the arguments regarding states separating from the United States which led to the Civil War. Madison was still alive in 1833 when the theoretic idea of nullification came to the forefront. Madison in a letter to Daniel Webster, voiced his disapproval of nullification. He stated further that he opposed any secession. If secession was permitted it was another name for revolution. When he stated that only if the people were being so oppressed that they felt that the only way to respond was to revolt was it okay.

But sorry, slavery was and is immoral. Maintaining the peculiar institution of slavery does not reach the level of oppression necessary to justify a revolution.

Nothing reaches the level of oppression today that would justify a revolution. What we have instead is a minority of citizens rejecting the rule of the majority. Our system or any system of government can not survive without the governing body abiding by majority rule. Those who lose an argument have a chance to bring back the issue that they lost out on if the public changes their opinion and what was the minority opinion has now become the ideas that the majority of the citizens of America agree upon.

Our actual founders had some interesting comments about whether secession is proper and a truthful use of power. John Marshall early on said that the Constitution converted what was a league of states into a government.

You can compare that statement to what Jefferson said in our Declaration of Independence, when he spoke of the necessity of breaking the political bond between the colonies and England. When the South declared their right to secede they may have claimed that they were being oppressed but in fact they were the ones who fired the first shot that started the Civil War, and they were the ones that oppressed their slaves.

Now people like Ron Paul and Governor Perry talk about secession. Ron Paul on November 12, 2012 actually said, ” Free people have the right to Secede.”

Reactionary conservatives in the name of liberty and self government want a third try at the apple. The first try was defeated when the Constitution was ratified. The second try was when Secession and state sovereignty were defeated in the Civil War.

The current attempt at emasculating our federal government and our union is based upon lies. Lies that they tell us in trying to hood wink us into believing that the founders established a system of government whereby the states were sovereign. False, yes the Articles of Confederation did that but the Constitution repudiated that and established a Federal Republic.

Libertarians and others who would benefit from a lack of rule sets and laws seek to not only limit government but to create states that would make it possible for the citizens of each state to have their own rules and laws different from what the laws of the nation provide all of us citizens. When they talk about the primacy of property rights over equality for all, they remind us of a prior era when only the few had the power over the many. Too many of our fellow citizens have died to make men and women free. For those who would change the country to something we are not are the traitors who are among us. They mask their intent by claiming that liberty is being  denied but what they want to give us is tyranny. They don’t believe in the rule of the Majority. What the traitors among us want to do is to return America to a time and place where our freedoms were limited to the ones with property and deny the rest of us any say in what the general welfare of all of the people is.  What reactionary conservatives really promise us is a land of 50 states where anarchy is possible with us being ruled by authoritarians who claim to know what is best for us. The idea of self governing is a fiction. All of us are imperfect. We need laws to protect us. We need a nation that is indivisible for all with justice, and liberty for all.