Manifesto: Why A Southern National Congress?
(Page 4)
The South and the American Republic.
We should never forget our Southern forebears were instrumental in winning America’s independence and in building a great republic. The contribution of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Daniel Morgan, Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and thousands of others is well known and need not be enumerated here. Suffice it to say that without the courage and sacrifice of Southern men and women, the outcome in 1781 might well have been defeat and not victory. And the role of Southern statesman after the Revolution equalled their prowess as soldiers. Washington, the epitome of a Southern gentleman, could have gathered the supreme power in his hands. When England’s King George III learned that Washington had willingly relinquished it, he exclaimed, “Why, then, he is the greatest man in the world!” And he was.
In creating the American republic, the Founders were well aware of government’s inherent tendency to usurp and abuse power. They wrote a constitution designed to limit the powers of the central government to strictly enumerated functions. It was to be the servant or agent of the people and the sovereign States that created it, charged to uphold the rule of law and safeguard the peoples’ freedoms. Peoples, States, and regions would enjoy the framework of ordered liberty. Southern men like James Madison, Henry Laurens, the Pinckneys of South Carolina, John Randolph and John Taylor of Virginia put the indelible stamp of individual liberty and limited government on the U.S. Constitution and early Republic. You can see many of them in the image below – men of the South without whom this meeting would have produced a far different outcome.
“A Republic. If you can keep it…”
When Benjamin Franklin departed the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman waiting in suspense outside asked him, “What have you given us, Dr. Franklin?” He replied, “A republic. If you can keep it.”
We are sorry to say that Franklin’s fears were well founded. Americans have failed to keep the republic he helped create. The constitution inaugurated in 1789 has expired. The mortal wound was inflicted in April 1865, to be exact. Yet those who killed it, and their heirs, have continued to prop up the rotting corpse in order to deceive a complacent and compliant America that the republic still lives, so that the ruling elites can exploit the taxpayer and the powers of government they have gathered into their hands for their own selfish ends.
Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
-- Joseph Sobran
If it’s no longer a republic, then what is it? Despite the constant propagandizing to the contrary, America is not even a democracy, much less a republic. We live under a greedy, callous, predatory elite whose only gods are money and power. The name for that form of government is “plutocracy,” government by those who control the wealth. Another appropriate term is “oligarchy,” rule by the privileged few. A new word we think also captures the essence is “corporatocracy,” coined by John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a revealing account that shows whom the Regime really serves (and you can be sure it isn’t the average working-class or middle-class taxpaying American).
Whatever term you like, in their impact on our daily lives these words signify manipulation, oppression, and exploitation. The Southern ethos of ordered liberty and limited government stands directly in the way of the consolidation of unlimited power by the central state and its minions. This is a principal reason why Southern history, heritage, and memory have been marked for extinction. Yet out of misplaced patriotism, many good Southerners continue to give their loyalty to this hostile, centralized, lawless, and Godless Regime that betrays us at every turn. However, the disasters that increasingly beset our country are forcing us all, loyalist or dissident, to face certain disturbing facts.
First, the state doesn’t protect our rights to property, it steals our property. The most apparent means is exorbitant taxation. Another is blatant seizure of our property through so-called asset forfeiture, even when no crime is proven. Another is eminent domain, especially rampant after the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo opinion. If you’re a gun owner, you can find your firearms unlawfully seized by the BATFE or local police in an emergency, leaving you defenceless amid civil disorder, just when you need them most.
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