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Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 06:54 PM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

To some in our country the term “states rights” are dirty words. To others, it is a constitutional principle underpinning and protecting our freedom.

Southern statesmen and political leaders from John C. Calhoun to Nikki Haley have been advocates for states rights. One of the major factors behind the so-called “Civil War” involved states rights. Although the North won the war through a policy of “total destruction” waged against both military units and the civilian population, the controversy over states rights continues to fester and intensify.

President Lincoln slammed the door on states rights and opened the door to a strong central government through the shedding of blood.

Not unlike Lincoln, the Obama Administration is totally ignoring the Constitutional limitations placed on the President. His attorney General is selectively enforcing laws based on race and political considerations.

South Carolina is resisting the mandatory requirement to buy health insurance imposed under Obamacare. The state is also doing what it can to resist the National Labor Relations Board ruling that Boeing cannot manufacture certain products in South Carolina solely because we are a right-to-work state.   Due to a holdover from the Jim Crow days imposed by Democrats, all reapportionment redistricting decisions made by South Carolina lawmakers must be approved by the Obama Justice Department. Most states have no such federal mandate.

Since 1865, the powers of the federal government over states, local governments and the people have grown.

The current critical situation was predicted by Historian John Fiske in a writing titled The Critical Period of American History 1783-1789.

If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid!) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost as that of the department of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England – on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired.

A strong central government seems like a good thing to the beneficiaries, but is tyranny for its victims. The nation as a whole learned little from the abuses of  federal powers by President Lincoln. There are several reasons why only a remnant of surviving Southerners learned the bitter lessons of tyrannical power imposed on citizens by a central government out of control.

In warfare, the winner writes the history and identifies “war criminals.” Individuals who commit war crimes on the winning side do not record or boast of their exploits. In the aftermath of the so-called “Civil War” the South was devastated, impoverished, demoralized and occupied by hostile forces for more than a decade. The goal of the victims was survival, not debate.

America is now faced with a President who is in a position and has the capability to do to the entire nation what Lincoln did to the South.

It is tragic that the once great political party that called themselves Democrats has been taken over by Saul Alinsky followers using the Rules for Radicals advocated by Alinsky to seize power and terrorize political opponents.

Saul Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909 and died in California in 1972. His life was devoted to organizing a revolution in America. By profession he was a community organizer, the same term used by his disciple Barack Obama to describe himself.

Alinsky became a social intimate with the Al Capone mob. In his view, criminality was not a character problem but a result of the social environment, in particular the system of private property and individual rights which radicals like Alinsky were determined to change.

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