White House Responds to Secession Petitions… and It’s About What You’d Expect

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS

[private FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK]

[/private]

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – We were told on November 7^th or 8^th when these petitions first hit the WhiteHouse.gov website, that these were  just temper tantrums from sore losers who would move on.  The White House posted the little response that these people would move on, that the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that had asked about secession would crawl back in their caves and we’d nevermore hear about this silliness because we all know that Lincoln settled this back in 1865.  We all know that we’re all prisoners here and we can never escape North America Island.  We’re all one joined at the hip.  Because we’ve all paid into Social Security, none of us can ever get out. Sign up for a Founders Pass here to watch the rest of today’s Founders Television and check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Mike:  If you’re one of 38,691 folks who signed Michael E. of Slidell, Louisiana’s petition for Louisiana to peacefully secede from the union, you’ll be happy to know that President Obama has dispatched his top fourth great advisor, a gentleman by the name of Jon Carson, to compose a response to the petition.  Wouldn’t you know, shock of all shock — let’s do a little Latin today.  Mirabile dictu, speak of miracles, we find our answer comes from none other than the Gettysburg Address.  [laughing]  Not ratifying, not the state you were in when you ascended to become a member of the union, it comes from the Gettysburg Address.  I was reading this and thinking to myself: If I was going to write a placebo piece to explain why Michael E. and his buddies down in Louisiana needed to shut the hell up and get in line — you can’t secede and you will obey your federal overlords — this is probably what I would write.  I’ll get into the actual language of it.

There’s another, I think equally provocative, thing that is happening out there.  Today is January the 14^th.  We were told on November 7^th or 8^th when these petitions first hit the WhiteHouse.gov website, that these were  just temper tantrums from sore losers who would move on.  The White House posted the little response that these people would move on, that the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that had asked about secession would crawl back in their caves and we’d nevermore hear about this silliness because we all know that Lincoln settled this back in 1865.  We all know that we’re all prisoners here and we can never escape North America island.  We’re all one joined at the hip.  Because we’ve all paid into Social Security, none of us can ever get out.

I am happy to report that that is not the case.  If anything, there’s more animation towards the idea now, and with the animation comes an avalanche of written, verbal, and filmed material, some of them emanating from my website at MikeChurch.com, some from others.  The conversation is ongoing.  Here’s the danger, the really dangerous predicament if you’re one of the teat-sucklers that’s getting part of the $3.7 trillion from the federal government of these United States.  If enough people unlearn the propaganda that’s been crammed into their brains, and if they unlearn and then relearn — in other words, unplug the matrix cable out of the back of your head, become a member of the self-governing people of these United States instead of a sherson from the United State — if they unlearn propaganda, if they unlearn the perversion of history, and relearn that self-government is exactly that — you cannot have self-government and you’re not free if you are no longer free and independent to choose your form.  It’s as simple as that.  There is no other explanation.  You should accept no other explanation.

As Jefferson said, you don’t go running around changing your government for light and transient causes.  I don’t believe that anyone thinks today that the current corrupt pickle we seem to be unable to extricate ourselves from, that that is a light and transient cause.  This might be the heaviest and the most serious cause.  As a matter of fact, I would venture to say that it is more serious and less transient than the causes, to use Jefferson’s words, that impelled them to the separation back in 1776.  If we were impelled to separation, the list of accusations — there were 80-plus accusations in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration.  The list of grievances that we would petition the government for a redress of and the reasons we were impelled to the separation, we would run out of time.  You’d just have to generalize them and set a goal that you only really need to state the ones that are most serious.  If you want to state them all, you probably want to generalize them into a couple different categories.  You can probably get away with, the final draft Declaration that you know and love today I believe contains 37 complaints aimed at the Parliament of England and the King of Great Britain.  Our list would far exceed that.  It’s not a light and transient cause.  There aren’t fewer people that are throwing hissy fits and temper tantrums, as I think EJ Dionne or one of those columnists at the Washington Post said is what amounted to the petitions that were put on the WhiteHouse.gov website.

I also am cognizant of and well aware, without anyone sending me mail or tweets and what have you, that no one has to petition the President of the United States to leave.  That in and of itself is ridiculous.  Although having met Michael E., a gentleman who wishes to remain anonymous who started the Louisiana petition, I know his reasons why he did it.  It wasn’t to obtain permission; it was to start the conversation.  I believe that that conversation is ongoing, as it should be.  AG, did you read this?

AG:  Yeah, I browsed over it.

Mike:  Did it remind you of a fifth grade Civil War project that you might have turned in?

AG:  Not really.  I don’t know my thoughts on the whole issue.

Mike:  This is the White House’s official response written by Jon Carson:

[reading]

Thank you for using the White House’s online petitions platform to participate in your government. [Mike: I feel better already, how about you? I’ve participated in my government. Woo-hoo!]

In a nation of 300 million people — each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. [Mike: There’s part of the problem right there. We’re not supposed to have a democracy. We’re supposed to have representative republicanism.] And that’s a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for the liberties we often take for granted.

But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don’t let that debate tear us apart. Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States “in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. [Mike: There’s an admission that we allegedly have self-government. Then Mr. Carson will lower the boom on anyone that thinks that self-government means choosing the forms of government. You only have self-government in that you can do whatever you want as long as the imperial and perpetual governors say you can. Is that self-government or is that delusion? Is that a perversion of self-government?]

They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot [Mike: First of all, they never would have called it a national government and they never, ever would have termed it as changeable through the power of the ballot, sir. They left instructions in Article V on how to alter it. It’s called the amendment process. It doesn’t have a darn thing to do with ballots. Once everyone is voting and we have universal, worldwide suffrage, everything could be done through the ballot. You know what else can be done through the ballot? Your liberty can be taken away. Your property can be taken from you through the ballot. Does that sound like free government, self-government? I’m going to vote for someone to come steal my car? I’m going to vote for someone to come steal my home? It’s a shame the mob didn’t think of this.] — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. [Mike: They most certainly did, sir.]

As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, [Mike: By the way, Lincoln is basically quoting, almost verbatim, Andrew Jackson, and Jackson was almost quoting verbatim Daniel Webster. How ironic that Jackson, the southern Old Hickory, former champion of states and people in the states, ultimately winds up using, just to settle a score with John C. Calhoun, the words of Daniel Webster. Webster lives long enough to basically recant most of what he says in his tirade on the floor of the Senate in 1832.] “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.”

[end reading]

Mike:  Do you know what perpetual meant in the 18^th century?  Perpetual meant the agreement doesn’t end on July the 5^th, 1797, ten years from today.  That’s what perpetual meant.  We’re not going to set a date for the end of the agreement, which is not to say that the agreement between consenting parties cannot end.  Here’s a good example: When most of us get married, you don’t marry for a term.  Your marriage to your wife — especially if it’s outside of the Catholic Church, or The Church that was begun by Christ’s disciples — if it’s outside of the Catholic Church, is there a term that is set or is it said to be infinite?  There’s also a difference between the use of the term infinite and the use of the term perpetual.  Tom Woods has explained in a paper that he has written what perpetual in the 18^th century meant.  It just meant that we’re not going to put a date certain for this thing to end. Back to the White House response on secession:

[reading]

In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. [Mike: So at the point of a gun and a bayonet, those that chose the right of self-government were told that they didn’t have that right. So a war, in other words, a conquering war, settled the score once and for all. You’re not allowed to leave or we will have another war and we will kill you, or we will imprison you, or we will invade your land, occupy your territories, and station the same troops we have in 175 countries around the world in your little thing that you think is a country, your little state, as Lincoln called them, counties.] And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

[end reading]

Mike:  Again, as Professor Gutzman has pointed out, he’s referring to the Texas v. White House.  In Texas v. White, all that was settled was that there can’t be a light and transient cause.  I won’t read the rest of this.  You can read it for yourself.  Mr. Carson has one more interesting paragraph and his response to the Louisiana and other petitions posted at WhiteHouse.gov. petitions to secede from the United States.

[reading]

So let’s be clear: No one disputes that our country faces big challenges, and the recent election followed a vigorous debate about how they should be addressed. As President Obama said the night he won re-election, “We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future.”

Whether it’s figuring out how to strengthen our economy, reduce our deficit in a responsible way, or protect our country, we will need to work together — and hear from one another — in order to find the best way to move forward. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to learn more about the President’s ideas and share more of your own.

[end reading]

Mike:  One of the ways to work together and to figure out the best way to move forward is maybe to rethink how things are organized.  Human scale tells us that the whole operation is totally out of scale.  We’re told if you bring up human scale, you will then bring down the 101^st Airborne on your head.

End Mike Church Show Transcript