Mendenhall Essay Pt. II – The American Union Killed America

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Three months ago I contacted Pete Haworth, who runs NomocracyInPolitics.com.  I had previously contacted the editors of two other conservative major publications, I think they’re major publications, and both turned me down.  Both said it wasn’t worth doing, doing this symposium on the utility and the value of continuing the current American union.  I think that’s because no one wants to touch this nuclear bomb called secession, but we’re going to diffuse that bomb.”   Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript – Browse the Transcript archives for much more

Mike:  Three months ago I contacted Pete Haworth, who runs NomocracyInPolitics.com.  I had previously contacted the editors of two other conservative major publications, I think they’re major publications, and both turned me down.  Both said it wasn’t worth doing, doing this symposium on the utility and the value of continuing the current American union.  I think that’s because no one wants to touch this nuclear bomb called secession, but we’re going to diffuse that bomb.  We are diffusing that bomb.  We’re on essay #3.  The first was posted by the wonderful and brilliant Bruce Frohnen.  Symposium essay #2 was posted by Allen Mendenhall, “Secession and Messianic Statism, Part 1.”  Last night Part 2 was posted.  Part 2 wraps up the state of the American union.  Now, here is a further breakdown of it and what to do about it.  I’m only going to share with you maybe five percent of what Mendenhall has written.  If you don’t read anything else today, read this.  Instead of spending ten minutes forwarding around stupid Facebook memes, read this.  Instead of spending the day agonizing and worrying whether or not you’re going to be first in line to get a pair of Lebron James limited edition NBA All-Star sneakers to be revealed in New Orleans, Louisiana this Saturday, read this.

Now you can listen to a segment of this monologue from the Mike Church Show as Mike explains the advent of “the S word” and what it means for Mordor’s future

 

[reading] We have, all of us, heard the axiom that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. This axiom captures the paradoxical nature of messianic Statism that pervades the American Union: employing State mechanisms to battle alleged tyranny only generates more tyranny.

[end reading] Mike:  Folks, I shared this with you the other day when I read the preface to John Taylor of Caroline’s Tyranny Unmasked, that is has to be one of the most ridiculous things ever stated that in order to battle tyranny we’re going to let a little tyranny in.

[reading] First, let us consider welfare benefits. By doling out benefits to low-income workers and by subsidizing their basic needs, the State is, in essence, guaranteeing their continued poverty and ensuring their perpetual subservience to State power; for as low-income workers gain skills and employment and begin to earn higher wages for their labor, they also lose benefits once supplied by the State. The amount of benefits they lose from the State exceeds, in many cases, the amount of wages they can earn in the workforce. Therefore, they are better off receiving benefits without working than they are earning higher wages while working. Their standard of living increases when they do not work, or when they work little, and decreases the harder and more often they work. It is riskier, therefore, to be poor and working than it is to be poor and idle. The State, consequently, creates enthusiastic dependents of those who realize that the physical and financial costs of undergoing labor far surpass the benefits of subsidized living.

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Second, let us consider corporatism. . . . The American Union, rather than enabling competition that would prevent certain corporations from exploiting low-income workers and setting prices above levels affordable to average consumers, implements programs and policies that restrict competition and pass along costs to consumers. This would not have surprised Adam Smith, who opined that “the laudable motive of all these [economic] regulations [of corporations], is to extend our own manufacturers, not by their own improvement, but by the depression of those of all our neighbours, and by putting an end, as much as possible, to the troublesome competition of such odious and disagreeable rivals.” [end reading] Mike:  I’ve talked about this before, about how it’s a lot easier to buy yourself a politician and squash the competition than it is to advertise and market a superior product and persuade people to buy it.

Mike has been talking about many different ways to deal with the American Union & it’s attack dog, the “Federal” government – There’s Article V & Nullification too

[reading] Third, let us consider price controls. . . . Allegedly seeking to supply low-income workers with the goods they can no longer afford, the State now intervenes in other areas of industry to fix prices for other goods and services; the process of displacing burdens on the poor from one industry to another repeats itself until the pricing system writ large becomes distorted and even oppressive to low-income workers.

Employing the rhetoric of egalitarianism, tolerance, collectivism, and sympathy to gain ideological adherents, if not outright worshipers, the State, through its apostolic agents and institutions, sets in motion the forces necessary to amass “State power,” which is “the power of man over man—the wielding of coercive violence by one group over another.”

Fourth, let us consider the minimum wage. . . . Walter Williams notes that 85% of more than 100 economic studies about the effects of minimum wage find negative impacts on low-skilled workers. The evidence is clear that raising the minimum wage causes higher unemployment rates among low-skilled workers, the very class the minimum wage is supposed to protect. The minimum wage enables more skilled workers to take jobs requiring less skill but paying the same as skilled work, thereby depriving low-skilled workers of the jobs they need. . . . Minimum wage laws have eliminated jobs such as fast-food workers, ticket booth attendants at movie theaters, grocery store checkout attendants, gas station service attendants, store greeters, and so forth; consequently, minimum wage laws have not only worsened economic conditions for the poor and working classes, especially among ethnic minorities, but, in the aggregate, have also contributed to antisocial behavior as more and more businesses opt for electronic and technological services where human interaction is preferable.

Fifth, let us consider education. Attempting to secure “equal” and “fair” access to higher education, the State has established federal benefits and incentives such as student loans. By making these loans easily available to those who are least likely to pay them off, the State enables colleges and universities (many of which are State institutions and most of which are dependent upon State resources and benefits) to raise tuition levels until higher education becomes unaffordable to even upper-class citizens. The more available and extensive student loans become, the more students grow dependent upon State resources. The paternalistic assumption that the State knows best what education low-income workers need to excel and compete in the workforce results in the infantilization and perpetual dependency of young people upon State largesse. Rather than freeing low-income workers to pursue their desired professions and interests, student loans force low-income workers to continue to pursue future programs that maximize State power. So, the State burdens young people with heavy debt, a condition that can be used to recruit more State workers, who, in turn, become complicit in State power. The State informs those who are burdened by student loan debt that their debts may be forgiven or reduced in exchange for military or government service. Through this process, the promises that student loans liberate young people by guaranteeing them a proper education in fact bring about the reverse: dependency, servitude, and limited options for career, family, and professional development. I could continue with examples, but I think I have made my point.

Employing the rhetoric of egalitarianism, tolerance, collectivism, and sympathy to gain ideological adherents, if not outright worshipers, the State, through its apostolic agents and institutions, sets in motion the forces necessary to amass “State power,” which is “the power of man over man—the wielding of coercive violence by one group over another.” The more people the State can impoverish, the more dependents the State can control—the more power, in other words, the State can sustain. The very security of the State requires a professional military peopled by millions, to say nothing of the hundreds of billions of dollars that must be spent to support military technologies and to pursue aggressive political strategies around the globe.

[Mike: Then he describes a little bit more about the military-industrial complex.]

There is no template or master plan for reversing course and minimizing the power of massive, centralized governments that take the form of nation states, and in particular of the American Union that has assumed trillions of dollars of debt, strained relationships with foreign peoples, and developed secretive and invasive intelligence agencies. The American Union has become coercive and hostile to liberty. Because “liberty is not merely one particular value,” but “the source and condition of most moral values,” those who favor secession and the gradual dismantling of the American Union ought to do so on the basis of liberty, albeit not some abstract notion of liberty that is all sail and no anchor.

A more decentralized system in which knowledge is dispersed among innumerable individuals exercising their agency among a range of economic options is more compatible with liberty than the current, centralized American Union. Seceding territories could facilitate the process of gradual decentralization.  The long-term success of any seceded territory would depend not only upon what liberties it could guarantee, but also upon the stability and order that must be drawn from the traditions and institutions that have grown out of the common experience of members of the community.

We may take comfort in the fact that, in the past, free societies have “often emerged from adversity with renewed strength.” Secession is meant to free local communities from the adversity that is imposed upon them by outside forces and to enable the native autonomy necessary to advance culturally specific programs for individual liberty that are in keeping with regional identities. The danger in a colossal “democracy” such as the American Union, which encompasses vast and culturally distinct territories, is that unique customs and mores become subsumed by the ideological programs of an elite few in large and concentrated populations. The American Union proves that democracy alone does not secure liberty. Hayek tried to warn that he had “seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant” and that “to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”

The smaller the political unit, the more likely it is for those within the unit to know what is best for them in light of their practices, beliefs, and ambitions. “Knowledge exists only as the knowledge of individuals,” and as more individuals are added to the political unit, the less guided toward the specific ends of a community aggregated knowledge becomes, and the more likely it is for individuals’ disparate aims to work at cross-purposes and to generate the coercion of the more powerful against the least powerful. By localizing power and dispersing it across a broad spectrum of human activity that is outside the control of a centralized State, secession could bring about the pluralism necessary to recognize and secure the distinct values of distinct communities. The conception of government as restricted and concentrated within localized social and religious associations is compatible with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity and reflects the general organization of Protestant Congregationalist churches.

The individualist, accordingly, does not lobby for government to war against poverty and does not protest the failure of massive or abstract institutions to control and direct the affairs of the less fortunate. Rather, the individualist invites the homeless into his house, assists in the soup kitchen, builds homes and provides services for his fellow man, sits shoulder to shoulder with members of his church body, and cultivates understanding among his friends and neighbors and civility among his enemies. The individualist values personal relationships and seeks to feel the problems felt by those he knows and loves. Messianic Statism undermines such individualism and extols the State as the remedy to all social and economic problems; the Statist has, he presumes, done well and acted morally by promoting the power of the State to intervene in the lives of the poor, but the Statist has not walked among the poor, has not shouldered their burdens or felt their pains, has not personally demonstrated to them the value and fulfillment that work can bring, nor the responsibilities that leadership and ownership require.

Most American critiques of secession accent its perceived racial associations with the Confederate States of America, ignoring other secession movements that both preceded and followed the American Civil War, or the War Between the States, as well as the countless secession movements throughout history and in various parts of the globe. This trend, which holds purchase only in the American Union and surrounding nation-states, may be reversing to the extent that wealthy entrepreneurs such as Timothy C. Draper and Peter Thiel have begun to advocate for secession or something like it. If the signifier “secession” has been stigmatized, it is because those who are against it know how appealing it can be, and hence how subversive it can be for their secular religion of Statism.

[end reading] End Mike Church Show Transcript – Part I of The American Union Killed America – Read Part II here