The End of Citizenship Posted by Steve Kukral on July 1, 2013 at 5:00pm View Blog How ironic that right before the 4th of July, the Supreme Court decision to not hear the California Proposition 8 appeal, because the appellants lacked “standing,” effectively ends the seminal idea of the American Revolution, namely that government derives its power from the people. When the people pass a law through the initiative process, which in California was established specifically to allow the sovereign people to overrule the wishes of their political leaders, and then those sovereign people don’t have “standing” to appeal an adverse court ruling their political leaders refuse to appeal, the people are not sovereign, and the rulers are. We have passed from being citizens to being subjects. What are the implications for this shift, which directly affect the Tea Party movement? One of these implications is that the effort to change the system from within the system, i.e., mobilizing voters to elect candidates, is doomed. California voters successfully added language to their state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Their sovereign decision was overturned by nine men and women in black robes because they deemed those voters to lack standing. Who could possibly have more standing than the voters? What else can the voters try to do that can later be overturned and not appealed because our lords and rulers deem we lack “standing?” Who knows, and the trickledown effect of this ruling will be more “who cares, why bother, they’re going to do what they want anyway regardless of what we want” attitude on the part of voters and even less participation in politics then we see now. This strikes right at the heart of the Tea Party’s electoral strategy—if the outcomes of elections have no real consequences in terms of policy, why bother trying to win elections? Look at what is going on with immigration and see who has led the charge—former Tea Party darling Marco Rubio. Another implication is the final nail in the coffin of the idea of a federal republic that is a compact between sovereign states and the central government those sovereign states created. What should have stayed solely within the State of California went national, and the wishes of the people of California (the state) were overruled in favor of the wishes of 9 men and women in black. California is no longer sovereign. True, the idea of the states as sovereign entities has been greatly diminished over the last century, but until this ruling it at least got lip service. There can be no doubt that the states are not free from what the federal government wants or says. Local Tea Party strategies of gradually winning over state legislatures to re-assert their authority and independence vis-à-vis the federal government are also probably doomed—look how many Republican governors have taken Obamacare money despite strong Tea Party support to get elected. True, this may be another proof that elections don’t matter, but I think it is more a case of the federal government overwhelming the weaker states that are already inextricably entwined as junior partners with the federal government. Where does the Tea Party go from here? Many won’t want to give up on elections—I understand that, though I am convinced they are a waste of time, effort and money for the Tea Party and all who believe in liberty and the founding principles; the realization that the belief that the people are sovereign is wrong in current day America is hard to accept, even though the evidence is overwhelming. Stimulus, TARP, immigration, Obamacare all demonstrate that what the people want matters not a fig to our mandarins in DC; the Proposition 8 ruling shows what the mandarins really think of the people and their sovereign power. Still, if not elections and a take-back-America strategy, then what? I don’t know, because there is really no good answer to this. Boycotts? Of what? Civil disobedience? Over what? Judson had posted the question in an earlier post whether it was time for a red America and a blue America. I think the answer to that question is “yes” and is ultimately where we’re going to end up, because, to quote Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Substitute “progressive” for slave and “conservative” for free, and the quote applies to today. Lincoln was wrong about the Union dissolving—it did and took four long years of bloody combat and many more years of reconstruction to put it back together. We want to avoid violence and bloodshed at almost any cost, but we need to start thinking about how to peacefully remove ourselves politically from the corrupt and corrosive autocratic state the federal government and the Tweedledum and Tweedledee political parties are almost finished creating.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 01:35:32 +0000
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