Thursday, April 08, 2010


By Walter
E. Williams




Here’s the
question asked in my September 2000 column, titled “It’s Time To Part
Company”: “If one group of people prefers government control and
management of people’s lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to
be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one
another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their
preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go
their separate ways?”

The problem that our nation faces is very much like a marriage where one
partner has broken, and has no intention of keeping, the marital vows.
Of course, the marriage can remain intact and one party tries to impose
his will on the other and engage in the deviousness of one-upsmanship.
Rather than submission by one party or domestic violence, a more
peaceable alternative is separation.

I believe we are nearing a point where there are enough irreconcilable
differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans
and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the
only peaceable alternative.

Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights
protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly
violated by a government instituted to protect them. The
Democrat-controlled Washington is simply an escalation of a process that
has been in full stride for at least two decades. There is no evidence
that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional
abrogation have any intention of mending their ways.

You say, “Williams, what do you mean by constitutional abrogation?”
Let’s look at just some of the magnitude of the violations. Article I,
Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is
authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is authority for
Congress to tax and spend for: prescription drugs, Social Security,
public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food
stamps and other activities that represent roughly two-thirds of the
federal budget.

Neither is there authority for congressional mandates to the states and
people about how they may use their land, the speed at which they can
drive, whether a library has wheelchair ramps and the gallons of water
used per toilet flush. The list of congressional violations of both the
letter and spirit of the Constitution is virtually without end. Our
derelict Supreme Court has given Congress sanction to do anything upon
which they can muster a majority vote.

James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in
Federalist Paper No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed
Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which
are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The
former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace,
negotiation, and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the
several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary
course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of
the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the
State.”

Americans who wish to live free have several options. We can submit to
those who have constitutional contempt and want to run our lives. We can
resist, fight and risk bloodshed and death in an attempt to force
America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and human rights. We can seek
a peaceful resolution of our irreconcilable differences by separating.

Some independence movements, such as our 1776 war with England and our
1861 War Between the States, have been violent, but they need not be. In
1905, Norway seceded from Sweden; Panama seceded from Columbia (1903),
and West Virginia from Virginia (1863). Nonetheless, violent secession
can lead to great friendships. England is probably our greatest ally.

The bottom line question for all of us is: Should we part company or
continue trying to forcibly impose our wills on one another? My
preference is a restoration of the constitutional values of limited
government that made us a great n