www.thornwalker.com/ditch/nowicki_secession_lte.htm
To Mr. Nowicki's
column.
Comment?
To the editor ...
Mr. Nowicki writes that "conservatives dislike liberals because conservatives don't appreciate being constantly slandered and harassed; but liberals hate conservatives just for breathing." Has Mr. Nowicki ever heard of Ann Coulter?
(Unsigned)
November 14, 2004
Mr. Nowicki replies
I have indeed heard of Miss Coulter.
I don't think she hates liberals for being liberal, i.e., wrong. I think she hates them for their nasty attitudes toward conservatives, and for their undeserved high opinion of themselves.
Today, November 2, 2004, Americans go to the polls to fight yet another Civil War — a major battle is fought every four years. They won't use bullets and bombs. (They use those on other people, these days.) Americans will use ballots. But Americans are engaged in a war, nevertheless. It is a war fought 365 days a year, 24/7. And now, Election Day itself is expanding beyond the day designated for the battle royale, with people lined up for hours to vote in advance polls, days before. The war now spills over the borders of the United States itself, as absentee voters cast their ballots. Tens of thousands will be involved today to "get out the vote" and to see that votes are cast according to the rules. But amazingly enough, and despite all this effort, few Americans are aware that whoever wins is unlikely to represent them. Unless they have Paid to Play. At best, any ordinary American will receive for his vote only a facsimile, a cartoon, that represents his or her interests. This is worse than a waste of time and treasure. War is futile. War is a tragedy. Only those whose business is War profit from War. These are not slogans. These are Truth. Let's call the whole thing off. Please let's do secede. Let us withdraw. Let them go their way, we'll go ours. I'm glad I am not an American on this day of their democracy. God help them. God help us.
Morley Evans
November 2, 2004
www.morleyevans.com
Can't say I agree with much of what Mr. Nowicki writes. If I hadn't read his article on The Last Ditch, I'd swear that he's a closet Republican. For one thing, both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives alike (disgruntled paleoconservatives notwithstanding) worship the federal government. Sure, they gripe when their guy isn't power. However, this does not mean that Republicans support secession anymore than the liberals do. They're proud to count Lincoln as a member of their party. To a man, republicrats believe that Lincoln was eminently justified in waging war on the southern states. I can almost guarantee that the thought of secession never crosses any Republican minds.
My second point is this: Let's say the "red states" secede and what was formerly the United States of American becomes the Blue States and the Red States. What problem does this solve? Would living in the Red States be any better? I think you're kidding yourself if you think that it would. Republican control of Congress and the White House in recent decades has seen nothing but an expansion in the size and power of centralized government. Viewing the "left" and "right" as polar opposites only obfuscates the real issue: statism. Statism is a bi-partisan issue.
If the anarchists seceded, I'd be all for it. However, when you talk about the welfare/warfare-state socialists that masquerade as conservatives, you can count me out.
Andrew Mancini
November 3, 2004
We would ordinarily consider balkanism deleterious, but it may be the only way we avert real conflict in the end — and that only for a time.
My concern with the balkanism solution is that a false sense of security in this pluralistic arrangement could be dangerous. It is facile, though no less true that conflict later is always preferable to conflict now. But my reasoning that when we balkanize we cannot then relax is merely this: "proposition nations" like the New U.S.A and the former Soviet Union have a difficult time tolerating international plurality. They are not by nature introspective, isolationist states. Rather, the United States is now exporting democracy in the same way that the Soviet Union exported socialism (communism, if you will). The public pretexts for such policy are only slightly different between the two empires. Federal transparency is an illusion. We know no more about the machinations of our malfeasant government than did the hapless subjects of the Kremlin.
There is no avoiding, but only delaying, the war between God and Satan. I know these seem like simplistic, reductionistic terms, but leftists view the ideological conflict in this light, as do many neoconservative evangelicals, which is why they are so eager to export very expensive shrapnel and blood to Iraq. I am a Theonomist. But we hold dear the principle that Theonomy can only be valid if the governed consent to it, and that jihads of any religious or ideological stripe are not only antinomian, but subhuman. Other than in direct defense, wars are started by dead men, not living ones. Living men cherish life. There are many forms of war: economic, spiritual, etc. If we are not content to convince men, rather than to bludgeon them, we will all drown in an ocean of blood. That being said, a nation (that is a "people" — or "sib" in Weberian terms) has a right and a duty to preserve its life-ways, institutions, and identity. This is what makes an international plurality of states not only a necessity of peace but ultimately a requirement of existence. This is why autocratic corporatism (international plutocracy) is such a bane. It undermines identity and makes nation-states cosmopolitan ones, which requires the expansion and the subduing of markets to get what they have abandoned producing. The usual means for achieving this a war that is conducted under ideological pretexts.
It is written into the nature of proposition nations that they must subdue the world to "truth," and oceans of blood were spilled in the past century to evangelize the "truth" of universal totalitarian statist brotherhood, otherwise known as democracy (not to be confused with republican government). Balkanization is a way to delay for a generation the coming conflict. But the evangelizers of the "truth" will never be satisfied with the world containing states that live in the "darkness of ignorance." Good and evil must of necessity clash.
It is fascinating to watch the public "debate" over how to solve Islamic terrorism be transformed into a debate about "tolerance" versus "religious extremism." The intelligentsia of Empire cannot let the debate center on Islam exclusively. They must reframe it as Enlightenment versus Ignorance. Reich and Hitchens have already made the connection. Now the enemy is within, as well as without. This refocusing of the empires propaganda reached a temporary zenith under Clinton and the Reno justice department, whose energies were spent rooting out "right wing extremism." In his eight years the militia movement was put to flight. The multicult makeover of the Republicans that is now underway will result in (again) the gaze of our security apparatus being turned inward, and focused on the enemy of religious intolerance. The USA PATRIOT Act assured that the means of domestic espionage have now reached full technological and procedural maturity. When the focus of MiniTrue turns to "right wing religious extremism" again, it will not be as civil, as polite as in the past.
These developments are among the reasons why I feel it is imperative that the contiguous agricultural states unify if this balkanization occurs. One thing is certain, you cannot eat an automobile, and this is a powerful weapon. Also, anything that can be done to increase ethanol production in those areas must be done quickly. There will be a parting. Whether it will ultimately be friendly depends more on our opponents than us.
Mark Godfrey
November 11, 2004
www.markgodfrey.com/blog/weblog.php
To Mr. Nowicki's column.