Sobran on Secession: Henry Would be at Arms Already

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I find more opposition to you people to the idea of the states as sovereign entities than I do among libtards.  I get more mail challenging me on the supremacy and the sovereignty of the states that created the Constitution from “conservatives” than I do from liberals.  The liberals will just usually, in an unintelligent manner, quote Lincoln or the Civil War.  The conservatives that are opposed to this, they go all the way back and say, “No, ’76 never happened the way you and Gutzman and Woods and the rest of your little merry band of Founding Fathers studiers, it never happened that way.” Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I have an article that was posted at The Imaginative Conservative website.  This was way back in the ‘90s.  It’s Joe Sobran, who was one of the greatest and best intellectual minds of the modern conservative intellectual movement, which we are sorely in need of new recruits.  Sobran wrote about the right to secede.

[reading]

How can the federal government be prevented from usurping powers that the Constitution doesn’t grant to it? It’s an alarming fact that few Americans ask this question anymore. Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. [Mike: Sobran was correct about this, by the by.] Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves nothing. If there was a right of secession before that war, it should be just as valid now. It wasn’t negated because Northern munitions factories were more efficient than Southern ones.

Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to “alter or abolish” – by force, if necessary, a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes “secession” sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming independence. The original 13 states formed a “Confederation,” under which each state retained its “sovereignty, freedom and independence.” [Mike: Those are Franklin’s words.] The Constitution didn’t change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were “granted” and “delegated” by the states, which implies that the states were prior and superior to the federal government.

As a practical matter, the Civil War established the supremacy of the federal government over the formerly sovereign states. The states lost any power of resisting the federal government’s usurpations, and the long decline toward a totally consolidated central federal government began. By 1973, the federal government was so powerful that the U.S. Supreme Court could insult the Constitution by striking down the abortion laws of all 50 states; and there was nothing that the states, long since robbed of the right to secede, could do about it. That outrage was made possible by Lincoln’s triumphant war against the states, which was really his dark victory over the Constitution he was sworn to preserve.

[end reading]

Mike:  Correct, a totally correct view and reading there.  I have an idea that, combined with Boehner’s chicanery in purging Rep. Justin Amash, Rep. Walter Jones, Rep. David Schweikert and a few other rebels in the House of Representin’, that this is going to incite, rev up, not going to temper anyone that was considering the act of promoting the act of secession in their state, anyone that was considering other actions they can take inside their state to force the states to reclaim their sovereignties and to get back to the practice of governing themselves.

I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I find more opposition to you people to the idea of the states as sovereign entities than I do among libtards.  I get more mail challenging me on the supremacy and the sovereignty of the states that created the Constitution from “conservatives” than I do from liberals.  The liberals will just usually, in an unintelligent manner, quote Lincoln or the Civil War.  The conservatives that are opposed to this, they go all the way back and say, [mocking] “No, ’76 never happened the way you and Gutzman and Woods and the rest of your little merry band of Founding Fathers studiers, it never happened that way.”  I actually had a guy yesterday, in a very vile attempt at discourse with this gentlemen, inform me that none of that matters because that was then and this is now.  I’d read his discourse on the air but I don’t want to embarrass him.

That was then and this is now.  We are so evolved in our existence today that we can totally ignore and reject the wisdom and I would say the historically astute actions of the men that are called Founders.  The only thing they’re useful for is romantic, poetic prose.  It looks really good on our Facebook pages but seeks to do nothing short of preserving the punishing, corrupted federal leviathan that we are possessed of today.  I believe, as I try to make myself one of the more modern authorities on the patriot known as Patrick Henry, I believe that Mr. Henry, not only for political but religious reasons, would have already been gathering militia up in an attempt or in an effort to resist what it is that we are currently talking about.  I say talking and doing nothing more than talking about on radio and internet sites.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

ClintStroman

See Full Bio