I want to make a suggestion.  It is past time for some type of "coalition of free American states."

States have a long history of creating partnerships with each other.  Law enforcement task forces, farming cooperatives, river management boards, and collegiate sports conferences all benefit individual states through regional collaborations and are common throughout the United States.  It is also common for state attorneys general to coordinate lawsuits against the federal government.  Republican governors and Democrat governors meet at party retreats to strategize how best to advance their respective parties' interests.  And innumerable lobbying and legal groups work every year to promote the passage of nearly identical statutory language in state legislatures across the country.  

What I have in mind is more substantial — the formation of a coalition of free states whose explicit purpose is to reduce the power of the federal government over individual states and their citizens while banding together to lessen the inevitable retaliatory blows the federal government will initiate against the states in response.

Although America's constitutional form of limited government was designed specifically to maximize the liberty of citizens and maximize the power of states at the expense of the federal government, the accumulation of power has flowed only in one direction — away from individual states and individual citizens and toward the national government in D.C.  This phenomenon is so natural throughout history that it was a chief concern of the Founding Fathers themselves.  Thomas Jefferson, a shrewd student of human nature, was blunt: "Experience hath shewn [sic], that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."  

Let's be honest: the federal government hasn't looked in tip-top shape for a long time, and now it's a train wreck waiting to happen.  

It's made up of millions of petty bureaucrats who couldn't care less about "serving the public."  Rather, they use their sinecures to exert power over (and not on behalf of) Americans and turn a tidy profit in the process.  As was made clear while President Trump was in office, the president's prerogative is routinely thwarted by an unelected administrative Leviathan that has no foundation in the Constitution's division of government but does move to the Democratic Party's marching orders.  Congress is made up of below-average-intelligence scoundrels and prima donnas who pretend to be statesmen and lawmakers while outside lobbyists, corporate kingmakers, and foreign governments write the laws that punch the rest of us right in the gut.  And the federal courts have become home to too many political hacks camouflaged in priestly robes who distort the rule of law in pursuit of partisan objectives.  

Notwithstanding the timely re-emergence of fiscal conservatives every few years who promise to have an answer to America's budgetary crisis and looming financial Armageddon, nobody honestly believes there is any way to arrest America's runaway debt explosion and unfunded liabilities spiraling past 250 trillion dollars while one quarter of the money supply now in circulation has been created out of thin air in just the last year.  

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is engaged in war in some eighty countries — or nearly half the nations on the planet — and most Americans have no idea what kind of fighting is being done on their behalf or why.  They do know that while the federal government finds the logistical legerdemain to engage in global conflict, it cannot (and will not) be bothered to use any of that skill to secure the southern border — preferring instead to enable drug-traffickers and criminal gangs to wage war against American citizens while at the same time demanding that Americans relinquish their Second Amendment rights to self-protection.

But do not worry.  Have no fear.  We have an Intelligence Community in America that is keeping everyone safe by reading all of our emails and text messages, spying on our phone calls, and generally making sure that any American objecting to the State-enforced political correctness struggle sessions of the day be added to the government's growing list of "extremists."  The same bunch of propagandists who could be counted on to push the Russia hoax for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and who will now make sure that the origins of the Wuhan Virus get covered up for the political benefit of Joe Biden, are the wizards who regularly engage in national disinformation campaigns against the American people for their own good.  Was the CIA lying about Russian bounties being paid for the killing of American soldiers in Afghanistan in order to manipulate White House policy?  Sure.  Is military intelligence pushing UFO sightings today to distract the American people from emerging crises on the horizon?  Maybe.  Is there any check whatsoever on the powers of the Intelligence Community?  Not likely.  Does anyone in Congress seem to care?  Nope.

At some point, the whole federal government is at risk of crashing down under the weight of its own extravagance.  Maybe the Ponzi scheme set up by Treasury and the Fed falls over like a Jenga tower in the near future, or U.S.-NATO provocations against Russia succeed in making us the beneficiary of a cyber- or EMP attack that takes out half the nation's electrical grid, or the Democrats' dance with woke fascism finally awakens enough Americans to the abundant threats to their freedom that people start pushing back.  It's as economist Herbert Stein adroitly pointed out: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."  Then what? 

Well, it's back to first principles, and those states prepared to exist without an overarching national government will survive.  Just as it was during America's founding, personal and economic freedoms will determine everything.  Those states that respect families and religious liberty, reward knowledge and hard work, secure property rights while limiting welfare, and protect economic and intellectual liberty over regulation will dig themselves out from whatever mess lands our way.  States that abandon currency manipulation by backing money with gold and silver will prosper.  In turn, innovation and social wealth will rise.  The same foundations in liberty that made America exceptional will redound to states' future survival and success.

The Democrats are on the wrong side of liberty.  The federal government has strayed entirely too far from the clear meaning of the U.S. Constitution, and its increasingly Marxist proclivities promise only further betrayal.  For American freedom to survive, the states must again do the heavy lifting.  It's time for a "coalition of the willing" to come together again.

Image via Max Pixel.

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