Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century

272 Pages·2012·2.532 MB·English

by  Donald W. Livingston, Kent Brown, Marshall L. DeRosa, Thomas Di Lorenzo, Yuri N. Maltsev, Kirkpatrick Sale, Rob Williams

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