In a truly federal structure, any constituent member — whether a state or province or canton or whatever -- has the constitutional right — rooted ultimately in the sacred right of self-preservation and self-protection -- to block or to bar from the election ballot candidates it deems inimical to its interests.
This fundamental political right -- once clear and universally understood in America — is now unclear because, in the 1860s — by force of arms rather than by voluntary consent — the United States stopped being a free republic and became instead a centralized and consolidated "indivisible" empire.
In 1860, Southern states barred Lincoln from appearing on their ballots because Lincoln, of the new and expressly abolitionist --Jacobin and Red -- Republican Party, represented a mortal threat to the South's system of Christian ordered-liberty, a threat the reality of which subsequent events fully and bloodily confirmed. Southern debarment of Lincoln —though merely symbolic because of abolition's overwhelming unpopularity in the South -- nevertheless sent an unmistakable message of sectional defiance that itself signaled deep infelicity within the Union and presaged secessionist fracturing from it.
Today, Colorado and Maine and ten other states have moved to block Trump from their ballots, and those motions have triggered countermotions against Biden by Missouri and Florida and others. Predictably, proponents on both sides are threatening and counter-threatening and finger-wagging. And sure signs of America's intellectual and moral decline are the pitifully weak legal claims and "constitutional" grounds being forwarded.
Blue states are invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, with its "insurrection" clause, as grounds for barring Trump. Red states are invoking Article 4 of the Constitution, which requires the departments of the United States, including the Executive, to defend the states from foreign invasion.
In our late and lawless and terminally corrupt imperial times — I say to those who still care about the original letter and intent of the U.S. Constitution, consider that, in actual legal-political scientific truth: no state, through its government as established by its people, need give ANY reason for striking a candidate from the ballot voted on by its citizens; and consider too, that the 14th Amendment —the standard sophistic go-to for liberals since Brown and Roe -- is itself unconstitutional, and therefore cannot rightly be a legal ground for anything, because, as historian Forrest McDonald has cogently argued, it was adopted in a manner contrary in several respects to the amendment adoption requirements set down in the original constitution.
Also, the Article 4 argument by Republicans about state borders and foreign invasion — being far too little and far too late - - comes AFTER the number of illegal aliens who have entered the interior of the U.S. under the Biden administration has risen to exceed now the combined population of 22 states plus the District of Columbia.
Finally, the Supreme Court, contrary to widespread but constitutionally ignorant popular opinion and Court precedent, has no constitutional authority by which to rule whether states, by their proper organs of government, can exclude candidates from their ballots. And, at any rate, after the recent overturn of Roe by Dobbs, many "progressives" — lest we forget -- vowed implacable contempt and inobeisance to the "conservative" Court.
But in this, the now FINAL stage of the Yankee United States Empire, all that really matters to the political parties concerned, as Calhoun predicted long ago, are power and its possession, including all the honors and emoluments of government. And this is so, of course, despite all their disingenuous and hypocritical and cynical platitudinous pretense of concern for law and for right. And this is especially true of the Dems, who vowed "Never again!" in 2016, when Trump was elected the first time. Indeed, as I argued after the election theft and usurpation by Biden in 2020, the Dems — being now fundamentally totalitarian and UNDEMOCRATIC –- will never again willingly give up political office and power.
And so, politically, socially, and economically, this year — 2024 — will be a year of fundamental and final institutional meltdown across America.
As this year passes, there will be escalating chaos and unravelling and anarchy — and likely tyranny too —across America. The recent ballot-blocking is a clear sign, as it was in 1860, that mighty tumult leading to disunion is now just around the corner.
When that happens, the newly separated states, blue and red, will — being then unchecked by the other — become even more "progressive" and more conservative respectively. And as corruption and chaos and de-legitimation finally consume what is left of the "federal" government, the states — and particularly the red states -- will survive and serve as shields for their people.
And as the Yankee Empire collapses, and as the disunited states take stock of their situations, and then as new and multiple American unions are formed, mass refugeeing from the dysfunctional and tyrannical Marxist blue states to red states by citizens— red, purple, and blue -- will surge — and illegals, too, will finally be reckoned with -- as Americans decide anew how they will live.
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Winston McCuen is a metaphysician and political philosopher and Christian apologist. He is a Reformed believer, native South Carolinian, proud son of the Confederacy, and outspoken Southern patriot He holds a Ph.D. and an MA, in philosophy from Emory University, is a John C. Calhoun scholar, and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Furman University in history and philosophy. Formerly a welding instructor, philosophy instructor and Latin teacher, he holds multiple welding certifications and is a senior certified nuclear metallurgical welding engineer.
