Brock Townsend posted this over at Borepatch’s place, and I thought that it applied to what we see in America today. Tell me what you think:
When certain sovereign and independent states form a union with limited
powers for some general purpose, and any one or more of them, in the
progress of time, suffer unjust and oppressive grievances for which
there is no redress but in a withdrawal from the association, is such
withdrawal an insurrection? If so, then of what advantage is a compact
of union to states? Within the Union are oppressions and grievances; the
attempt to go out brings war and subjugation. The ambitious and
aggressive states obtain possession of the central authority which,
having grown strong in the lapse of time, asserts its entire sovereignty
over the states.
Whichever of them denies it and seeks to retire
is declared to be guilty of insurrection, its citizens are stigmatized
as “rebels”, as if they revolted against a master, and a war of
subjugation is begun. If this action is once tolerated, where will it
end? Where is constitutional liberty? What strength is there in bills of
rights-in limitation of power? What new hope for mankind is to be found
in written constitutions, what remedy which did not exist under kings
of emperors? If the doctrines thus announced by the government of the
United States are conceded, then look through either end of the
political telescope, and one sees only an empire, and the once famous
Declaration of Independence trodden in the dust of as a “glittering
generality,” and the compact of the union denounced as a “flaunting
lie”.
Those who submit to such consequence without resistance are
not worthy the liberties and rights to which they were born, and
deserve to be made slaves. Such must be the verdict of mankind.
–Jefferson Davis’ farewell speech to the United States Senate, January 21, 1861