When Ayn Rand departed her native
Russia for the U.S.A. some 90 years ago she, in effect, went Galt. She, like millions of others, fled socialist,
feudalist and totalitarian homelands for the promise of liberty and prosperity
in America.
Though millions
more continue seek new lives on American soil each and every year, America ain’t
quit as free as she once was. In the
most recent edition of the Cato Institute’s Economic
Freedom of the World, the good old U.S. of A. has slumped into 12th
place. We are tied with our cultural and
political forerunner, the U.K. – the birthplace of classical liberalism.
In its online preface to the report, Cato
affirms the truth that, “The foundations of economic freedom are personal
choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets. As Adam Smith, Milton Friedman,
and Friedrich Hayek have stressed, freedom of exchange and market coordination
provide the fuel for economic progress. Without exchange and entrepreneurial
activity coordinated through markets, modern living standards would be
impossible.”
America’s index sagged, “Due to a
weakening rule of law, increasing regulation, and the ramifications of wars on
terrorism and drugs, the United States has seen its economic freedom score
plummet in recent years, compared to 2000 when it ranked second globally.” I don’t see much on the horizon to suggest
that things will improve anytime soon.
In fact the freedom index for the
world fell a smidge. It is down to 6.64
from its peak of 6.92 in 2007. So where
does a fella go these days if he wants to go Galt?
Let me propose that he stay put and go
nowhere. That’s right, stay home and go
Galt with your family and friends.
Secede! Secession is going Galt
on the group package plan.
A whopping
24% of Americans now
believe that State secession is a legitimate remedy to expensive, intrusive and
overbearing government. And why
not? It’s in our DNA. After all, America is a secessionist
creation. In a recent online posting, Ron
Paul explains:
Americans who embrace secession are
acting in a grand American tradition. The Declaration of Independence was
written to justify secession from Britain. Supporters of liberty should cheer
the growth in support for secession, as it is the ultimate rejection of
centralized government and the ideologies of Keynesianism, welfarism, and
militarism.
The imperial stakeholders in D.C. will
argue that secession is illegal, citing the War Between the States as precedent. However, all that war really proved in that the
side with more money, more guns and more young lives to waste will typically
defeat an opponent with less of each, particularly in a conventional war. Writing in the American Conservative,
historian Brion McClanahan asserts:
The Union, then, through a declaration
of war could attempt to force the seceded States to remain, but even if
victorious that would not solve a philosophical issue. War and violence do not
and cannot crush the natural right of self-determination. It can muddle the
picture and force the vanquished into submission so long as the boot is firmly
planted on their collective throats, but a bloody nose and a prostrate people
settles nothing.
McClanahan continues by quoting Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut –
Revolutionary patriot, a drafter of the Constitution and the third Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court.
Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut said
in 1788 that he feared a “coercion of arms” in relation to a delinquent state.
“This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, states, in
their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such bodies, but that of
an armed force. If we should attempt to execute the laws of the Union by sending
an armed force against a delinquent state, it would involve the good and the
bad, the innocent and the guilty, in the same calamity.” Ellsworth recognized,
as did the majority of the founding generation, that force did not destroy
sovereignty. It created artificial supremacy, but sovereignty, the basic tenant
of the founding, could not be surrendered in such a manner. Sovereignty, in
fact, cannot be surrendered at all; it can be delegated, as in the powers
granted to the general government in Article I, but never surrendered.
The key point is that sovereignty
resides within each and every free individual.
We can choose to delegate a bit of it to the community in order to procure
some limited goals such as collective security.
However, we can always reclaim what we have lent out when it becomes
evident that collective in failing in its obligations or even abusing its
delegated authority.
Another option is nullification. Nullification pretty much says, “I can put up
with most of this but this one law is really intolerable”. It is secession on the a la carte menu. It is going Galt one statute at a time. Nullification is successfully being accomplished
in many states, most notably in the realms of immigration (i.e. sanctuary
cities) and pot legalization. Again,
it’s going Galt from the comfort of your recliner.
Let me close with a chant form my
college days:
Go
GREEN! Go WHITE! Go GALT!
(Perhaps I was the only one in East Lansing chanting that.)
For more information on secession please
visit the Middlebury Institute.
For more information on nullification please visit the Tenth
Amendment Center.
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Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." - Paul Simon
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