What Is A State And Why Should You Care?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – What is a state?  Why do we care what a state is?  Why should it matter?  That’s an even better question.  This is part of the intellectual due diligence process that we should go through in these instances and remind your fellow citizens.  Why do we have states?  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  What I was trying to explain, and the question I was asking about the state was: What is a state?  Why do we care what a state is?  Why should it matter?  That’s an even better question.  This is part of the intellectual due diligence process that we should go through in these instances and remind your fellow citizens.  Why do we have states?  A state is nothing more than a geographical area that is defined by borders and boundaries and populated by people who are willing to call that state by its own name, are willing to govern themselves inside those borders and boundaries, are willing to be bound by the laws of that state and by the laws passed inside those borders and boundaries, and claim themselves to be sovereign, meaning that it is their will that they are acting upon.  It is not the will of anyone else from the outside.  It’s their will that they’re acting upon.

We prefer republican forms of government, and that’s why the Constitution guarantees republican government.  That doesn’t mean Republican Party government.  That means power divided where most of it is concentrated — it’s not really concentrated.  If there is any concentration of it, it is in the counties and the cities.  A state, then, is people.  It is the people of a state that make the state up.  It’s not its legislature.  It’s not its assembly.  It’s not its needful or useful government buildings.  It’s not its tax code.  It’s not its governor’s mansion.  It’s not any of its legislatures.  It is the people of that state that make up a state.  The manner in which they choose to govern themselves is the manner in which they choose to govern themselves.  That is their choice, as it is their right.  That is the American system.  That is how the American system would have defined these things.

To say then that the people inside of a state cannot govern themselves and cannot have their own ballot initiatives and can’t write their own rules, and also to say that they are not free to determine newcomers into their midst is to say that they’re not sovereign.  [mocking] “They don’t have the right to deny anybody.”  Yes, they do.  Can they deny criminals?  A criminal doesn’t have a right to relocate somewhere?  What if he wants to go to jail in Florida?  As a matter of fact, that’s the point of having a state, to choose whether or not one wishes rampant immigration and migration, or whether one is ready to pull the drawbridge up, build a moat around it and say: That’s it; no one else gets in or out.  Of course, that’s not the preferred situation.  Certainly I believe most people are of the opinion, certainly in the 21^st century, that immigrating in between states is somewhat of a right.  That’s not the historical perspective and certainly not the historical point of view.

When you define a state, a state is, again, people.  People make up a state.  If the State of California, meaning the people of California, Colorado, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, if they choose or decide that they wish to not have certain forms of social contract relationships in their state, namely same-sex marriages, that is their prerogative.  There is nothing in the federal constitution that forbids them from doing so.  They’re not denying the relationship.  They’re denying the legality or to confer the legality upon a relationship. There is a vast difference there.

I just want to review this again.  The fact that the SCOTUS is hearing this is unconstitutional in and of itself.  This is something that individuals and individual states should be working out.  [mocking] “Come on, you can’t make a comparison between dry and wet counties.”  Why can’t you?  It’s the same principle.  I can take you to places in Louisiana where there is a parish.  On the parish border where the people of said parish live, on the other side of that parish border is another parish.  In Parish A, there’s alcohol purchasing power; you can purchase and sell.  In Parish B, there is what is known as a dry parish.  They have these all over Texas.  In other states there are dry counties.  No one seems to deny that the people of any individual county can choose whether or not they want to be teetotalers or not, do they?  How do they have the authority to determine one in the former and not determine social contracts in the latter?

I would suggest to you that if you can make it so that one may not participate legally in the sale or purchasing of alcohol or other products, that is an act of sovereignty, that is an act of sovereignty just like saying we don’t allow certain social contracts here.  [mocking] “That must mean that you’re for it, you bigot.”  It simply means that the reason why you have divided government is to divide the power up, to divide the authority.  What works in one place in Maryland may not work in a place in Texas.  That is the only point, to declare this same-sex marriage issue as a universality, I think, is not for courts to decide, and certainly isn’t for the Supreme Court to decide.

Dana Milbank says this cannot be stopped by the courts.  You may as well just say then the age of atheism and anarchy is at hand, and that no force on Earth can stop the last vestiges or can stop the martyrdom that is about to occur to the Christian people that refuse to go along with the secularization of everything they and their ancestors have ever known, as makes up traditional life.  That’s basically, I believe, and many people believe, where this is going, which is why many people are trying to assert themselves where they live and are trying to keep these issues closest to where they live.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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