Thousands of anti-war activists, including newspaper publishers and even priests, were imprisoned by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward oversaw a secret police force that arrested vast numbers of citizens for “disloyalty” and—denying them due process—left them to rot in prison.
Seward claimed that he could “ring a bell” and have anyone arrested. He apparently believed that you have to destroy civil liberties in order to save them.
Anyone recognize a pattern here?
The Southern states had sought to separate from the Union, proclaiming the right to secede. Through four years of war—at a cost of nearly 700,000 lives—the Union was torn asunder, until the issue was settled by the brute force of Northern military victory.
The notion of states’ rights has ever since been tainted by its association with slavery and secession. The Tenth Amendment is ignored and dismissed as a quaint reminder of the olden days. From Lincoln to FDR to LBJ and Obama, the federal leviathan has exploded far beyond anything the Founding Fathers ever fathomed.
Power is concentrated in DC. Money is concentrated in New York. Information—through Big Tech and the media—is concentrated on the coasts. All of this leaves Americans in Flyover Country feeling increasingly disenfranchised, powerless, and like feudal serfs, living more as subjects than citizens.
The seeds of a modern-day rebellion are being sown. Not against the Union. And not against the Constitution. In fact, exactly the opposite.
Ironically, today’s rebels are those who stand up to defend the Constitution. The tyrants who control the flow of information have undermined the First Amendment. And these same coastal elites know that, in order to advance their agenda—and to eradicate opposition from the states—they must begin by eliminating the Second Amendment.
Lenin, Hitler, Mao, and more recently Hugo Chavez followed the same course of action by banning guns. An armed citizenry is not compatible with totalitarian control. As Mao said, “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.”
An unconstitutional fourth branch of government—the infamous Deep State—is growing more and more contemptuous of the citizenry, whom they dismiss as “smelly Walmart shoppers.” Federal agencies have been weaponized against their ideological foes, using lawfare to bully them into submission. Civil liberties like habeas corpus are conveniently ignored.
Despite Obama’s ongoing attempts to fundamentally transform America, the Patriots still cling to their guns and Bibles. At last count, nearly four hundred million guns, in fact. As my Texan friends would say, “Come and take them!”
The Constitution is little more than an inconvenient nuisance to “progressives”. They ignore it and attempt to discredit it simply because it was written by white men, many of whom were slaveowners. Wherever they hold power, they refuse to enforce the law—establishing sanctuary cities for illegal aliens, legalizing drugs, banning guns, codifying racial hiring preferences, censoring free speech in collusion with Big Tech, tolerating an invasion across our southern border, and on and on.
Any intelligent observer can only conclude that the left is hell-bent on destroying America.
Like the Founding Fathers, millions of American Patriots have had enough of the “long train of abuses” from the tyrants in DC and their big-city allies. These hard-working and God-fearing Patriots understand that their best hope for liberty—and for a lasting Union—lies in the Constitution. And in the states.
The states—particularly in the South, the Midwest, and Texas—are in the early stages of fighting back. Whatever the label—Tea Party, MAGA, America First, or simply Patriots—an unmistakable movement is under way. Thus far, most of the fighting has been in the courts. But as the situation worsens, tensions are likely to escalate.
Unlike most countries, American law enforcement and—more importantly—our military take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. With the growing usurpation of unconstitutional power in DC and more frequent violations of civil liberties, are we approaching a point where law enforcement and the military will be forced to examine their oaths and take a side?
That is the scenario of my book, States of Rebellion, The Rise and Fall of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration, which imagines a fictional reign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the implementation of her radical progressive agenda. While an AOC presidency may not be a realistic concern, whether it is AOC or some other like-minded leftist, the scenario laid out in my book is frighteningly plausible, if not likely.
Tyrants never willingly relinquish power. The only way that the authorities in DC will be reformed is if that reform is forced upon them against their will.
From the states.
With an undeniable invasion taking place on the southern border, blatant election interference, violations of civil liberties through a two-tiered system of justice, restrictions on free speech, and threats to the Second Amendment, at what point will the states assert their constitutional authority and reject the destructive, illegitimate policies of the federal government?
As bad as things are today, imagine if the left’s agenda were enacted. They would pack the Supreme Court, implement the Green New Deal, grant statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, issue mandatory gun buy-back (i.e., confiscation) laws, force the closure of Fox News, completely control the flow of information, pass Medicaid For All and student loan forgiveness, bestow amnesty on illegal immigrants, and formalize our open borders.
At some point, the proverbial frog will jump out of the hot water. (I’m optimistic enough to believe that real Americans won’t just relax and get cooked).
Is it far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which the beleaguered Customs and Border Patrol would refuse misguided directives from DC and pledge their allegiance to state authorities in Texas? Or that military commanders in bases along the border would go rogue in support of the states’ efforts to stop the illegal invasion?
Or that the Flyover States, who control not only oil and gas production but also America’s critical food supplies, would refuse to fund an illegitimate, tyrannical power in DC by severing the flow of federal income tax revenue? The states’ ability to starve the beast is the ultimate, existential threat to DC.
Such moves by the states would unquestionably trigger countermoves by the federal government. Just as Lincoln refused to allow the Southern states to secede peacefully—in part because the federal government in 1860 received roughly 90% of its revenues from tariffs and could not afford to lose the income from the Southern ports—today’s federal government cannot survive without the income tax revenue from the Flyover States.
Many people claim that we are already in a cold civil war. As I wrote in States of Rebellion, though, we are dangerously close to the day when things get hot.
The election of 2024 will undoubtedly be the most important contest of our lives, and certainly the most consequential vote since the 1860 election of Lincoln. It is not hyperbole to claim that the Union—and freedom itself—hangs in the balance.
If the United States hopes to survive the coming storm, it will require courageous leadership from the states along with an ironclad commitment to the Constitution to ensure our salvation.
Fasten your chinstraps, America.
