Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century PDF
Preview Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century
IlETHINIGNG the AMERICAUNN ION TWENTY forthe FIRST CENTURY llETHINICTNG the AMERICAUNN ION TWENTY forthe f IRSTC ENTURY Edited and with an Introduction by DONALD LIVINGSTON PELICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY Gretna 2012 Copyright© 2012 By Donald Livingston All rights reserved The word "Pelican"a nd the depiction of a pelican are trademarks of PelicanP ublishingC ompany,I nc., and are registeredi n the U.S.P atent and TrademarkO ffice. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rethinking the American union for the twenty-first century/ edited and with an introduction by Donald Livingston. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58980-957-4 (hardcover: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1- 4556-1546-9 (e-book) 1. Federal government--United States. 2. Nullification (States' rights) 3. States' rights (American politics) 4. Secession--United States. 5. Republicanism--United States. 6. United States--Politics and government--Philosophy. I. Livingston, Donald W. JK311.R47 2011 320.473'049--dc23 2011041868 Printed in the United States of America Published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc. 1000 Burmaster Street, Gretna, Louisiana 70053 For Harry Teasley, a friend of liberty Contents Preface 9 Contributors 11 Introduction: The Old Assumptions No Longer Apply 15 Donald Livingston Secession: A Constitutional Remedy that Protects Fundamental Liberties 31 Kent Masterson Brown The Founding Fathers of Constitutional Subversion 63 Thomas DiLorenzo The Tenth Amendment Awakening, the Supreme Court Be Damned 83 Marshall DeRosa American Republicanism and the Forgotten Question of Size 125 Donald Livingston "To the Size of States There Is a Limit": Measurements for the Success of a State 167 Kirkpatrick Sale Too Big to Fail? Lessons from the Demise of the Soviet Union 177 Yuri Maltsev Most Likely to Secede: U.S. Empire and the Emerging Vermont Independence Effort 195 Rob Williams Notes 233 Index 263 Preface This book grew out of a conference sponsored by the Abbeville Institute on "State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order" held in Charleston, South Carolina on February 4-7, 2010. Scholars from across the ideological spectrum, from left to right, examined the modern paradigm of centralization that has Jed to the creation of vast scale unitary states and to the consequent Joss of a human scale in political association. In discussions after the conference, a number of us thought a book on the topic we had explored would be beneficial at a time when many of our political and cultural elites are shifting their allegiance to supranational and subnational entities and when the nineteenth-century nationalist language of large unitary states "one and indivisible" is losing its salience. To a perplexed public, these essays might provide fresh insights into our condition. The essays were commissioned especially for the volume. We are grateful to acknowledge the Teasley Foundation, which from the beginning has generously supported the Abbeville Institute with scholarships for college and graduate students and which provided the financial support for the conference. We are grateful also to the Watson-Brown Foundation and to the Mary Elizabeth Sanders Foundation for funding student scholarships over the years. And the Institute is especially grateful for the friendship and support of the Rockford Institute. Each contributor to this volume would have a number of scholars to recognize in gratitude, but space does not permit such a listing. As editor, however, I must acknowledge three Abbeville colleagues whose work on the neglected topic of the 9 IO RETHINKINGT HE AMERICANU NION constitutionality of State nullification undergirds the spirit of this study: Thomas Woods, Nullification: How to Resist Tyranny in the 21st Century; Marco Bassani, Liberty, State, and Union: The Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson; and the magisterial two-volume study of W.K irk Wood, Nullification: A Constitutional History, 1776-1833. To these we should add the work of our friend William Watkins, Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy. These four works comprise the definitive study on the constitutionality of State nullification-a dormant part of the American political tradition that has once again become topical. Lastly, I would like to recognize the great Calhoun scholar, Clyde Wilson, Distinguished Emeritus of the University of South Carolina and M. E. Bradford Distinguished Fellow of the Abbeville Institute, who had been ploughing the ground long before many of us came to plant. -Donald Livingston Emeritus, Emory University
The list of books you might like
