The States are Sovereign Nations

Much controversy exists regarding the powers of states under the Constitution; however these controversies contain the common error of believing the United States to be a single nation under the Constitution, rather than each state being a separate sovereign nation unto itself-- and simply joined into a federal republic among them. This error is not surprising, since the American regime has long revised, twisted and suppressed true history, in order to support such a claim.

State sovereignty began, officially, under the U.S. Declaration of Independence, wherein the colonies were declared to be “free and independent states…” and that as free and independent states, they had the full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and “to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” This clearly defines the states to be sovereign nations—and the union among them was simply a military alliance for mutual support, rather than a conjoined effort to produce a one sovereign state (i.e. one nation) out of the thirteen colonies; rather, each colony was to be a free, sovereign and independent state.

This sovereign status was retained under the Articles of Confederation, under which each state expressly retained its sovereignty, freedom and independence; likewise, this status was universally recognized among sovereign nations of the world, under the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, in which Great Britain acknowledged each state to be a free, sovereign and independent unto itself. Thus, prior to the Constitution, each state was clearly sovereign— i.e. a sovereign state, or separate nation in the legal sense of the word. In short, each state was a separate sovereign nation—and fully intended to stay that way; any other agreements, contracts or dealings between the states, were just that—i.e. dealings between sovereign nations.

This point is key, since many people—including some recognized as Constitutional experts— believe that the Constitution formed the states into a single nation. However this belief is flawed, for the simple and obvious reason that sovereign nations cannot conjoin themselves into a single nation by anything but express, clear and direct language. For example, Article I of the Paris Peace Treaty reads as follows:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

This language presents a clear example of sovereignty being acknowledged to a new state—and relinquished by an old one; and no such language exists in the Constitution, to connote any such similar intent by the individual states. This very absence of express language precludes their having done so, and thus leaves each state’s sovereignty—i.e. its status as a separate nation— fully intact; simply put, the People of the individual states did not intend to conjoin their sovereignty into a single nation—just a federal republic of separate nations; and they fully intended to keep it that way..

For this reason, unionists find it necessary to twist the Constitution in order to find such meaning and intent, mining such passages such as the Preamble, the so-called “Supremacy Clause,” and various usages of the terms “shall” and “shall not” etc. However they all fail utterly to convey any such intent whatsoever. Again, while a nation still cannot relinquish its sovereignty by such indirect language, these interpretations are likewise clear misinterpretations of the Constitution’s actual original intent and meaning.

Let’s begin with the phrase “We the People of the United States,” which unionists commonly use in knee-jerk fashion, to indicate all persons in all states, speaking as one national body. However, sovereignty did not vest in any such a body prior to the Constitution, but solely in the People of each state existing as a separate nation. Hence, no single “People of the United States” existed, which had the sovereign authority to “ordain and establish” the Constitution; for example, the People of New York did not have the authority to speak for the people of Delaware, and vice-versa.

Rather, as has been explained elsewhere, the phrase “the People of the United States” was merely a semantic proxy-term; for the Constitution required only the ratifications of nine states to carry it into effect—and thus it was impossible to know which states would ratify. Thus the phrase “The People of the United States” held no more authority in conjoining the states, than the phrase “the People of NAFTA or NATO--” i.e. it symbolized simply a simple international organization-- not the formation of a single nation among them.

Other common arguments from the Constitution likewise fail for the same reason: i.e. they lack any sovereign context, lacking any individual state’s express intent to relinquish its sovereignty; and therefore, the states simply continued to exist as separate nations—not as parts of a single nation. In short, the Constitution is simply law; however all law is merely an instrument of a nation’s sovereign ruler—i.e. the person or person’s charged with the supreme authority of exercising power. This sovereign recognizes no superior, since any such superior would naturally be the supreme ruler.

For these reasons, therefore, proponents of a national Constitution inevitably-- and unanimously, without exception— all grasp at their final straw by playing the imperialism-card: i.e. claiming that the issue was “settled on the battlefield in 1865.” And here they fall; for the federal government initially premised its invasion on the claim that it—and the “People of the United States” that it represented-- held sovereign national sovereignty over all states, by law— i.e. that they were not simply usurping sovereignty by force. Thus, the “victory argument” is purely self-contradicting-- particularly since the Constitution was not changed after the war in order to confer sovereignty upon the United States away from the states; and therefore, the states must remain equally sovereign after the war, as before it.

In short, the “1865 victory” argument is not an “argument” at all, but simply a fact: i.e. that the federal government was successful in its campaign to conquer sovereign nations under false claim of ownership-- and in doing so, it committed gross atrocities comparable to those of the 20^th Century World Wars… all based on an outright lie of pure greed and deception. However once this deception and junk-logic are stripped away, the federal government’s “albatross” remains: i.e. that because of this deception, the states must remain sovereign by any standard of recognition.

It would have been different, if the Union had been honest and direct, and simply announced that they were taking sovereign control over the states by force; then, the rule of imperialism would validate their position based on outcome. However the Union cannot stand both on law and brute-force, drawing from either one at convenience—i.e. first premising war on a claim of sovereignty by law, in order to gain support for such-- and then standing on brute-force victory, when such proves expedient—particularly in the sense of claiming that said victory supersedes its prior law-arguments, and voids them entirely.

On the contrary, this is a perversion of history and logic-- and war can change neither; rather, it can only suppress both, in Machiavellian fashion of “power being a justification of itself, and thus justifying any means to it.” Rather, truth will out; and thus when a nation premises its actions in law, via claim of proper national sovereignty, then it irreversibly affixes its claim not to military outcomes, but to the original validity of this claim; indeed, this hypothesis would void all national sovereignty, leaving only force. And for this reason, the United States—via the federal government-- cannot sustain any sovereign claim over the member-states, as a result of military victory over them; for its original claim of sovereignty was based in law in 1861, as the sole premise for mounting that war in the first place.

As a result, the United States as it exists today, is a quasi-dictatorship; for its primary basis of authority is purely dictated by force, rather than the actual meaning of the law itself. This is, without question, the reason why the republic has failed so badly to keep the power in check: i.e. because it was formed as a republic of sovereign states, where each had the ability to refuse any federal law-- and not a national republic of subordinate states, where each was bound to obey all federal laws as final.

Therefore when the federal government usurped national authority over the states, it likewise usurped the power to destroy any check on its power, with the sole exception of the voting majority—which, again, was never intended to be such a sole exception, when the laws were written to constrain government abuses; rather, each state was intended to remain its own sovereign authority.

For this reason, the federal government ran amuck on various ways—beginning with the war to usurp national sovereignty from the states in 1861-1865; after this, federal power became a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the U.S. government became a global empire in the name of “saving the world—“ i.e. minding everyone else’s shop rather than its own shop (which contrarian-propagandists likewise slammed as “isolationism” in standard self-fulfilling fashion).

Likewise, the population became a quarrelling bevy of factionalism, with each state and district becoming simply a faction seeking to prosper at the expense of the rest through favorable regulation; a typical result of this, is the current federal tax-law, which grew out of politicians buying votes with tax-breaks—which naturally increased taxes on everyone else; a similar consequence is the mortgage-crisis, which resulted from politicians buying votes with houses, by forcing banks give unsecured loans to their constituents in return for their vote-- at public expense. In any event, however, the fact remains that the Constitution does not create a single nation; on the contrary, the states created the Constitution—not the other way around; and in doing so, they did not surrender their own status as sovereign nations. And so, the states must remain such.

The Only Course

Today, the only logical course of action, is for the individual states to reclaim their status as sovereign nations. This can be done by the people of the state, simply asserting this status—as well as possibly by refusing any federal law. In response, the federal government will be forced to cite its authority to overrule the people of the state—and it will be unable to do so; for unlike in 1865, the federal government will be unable to silence dissenters by force, because the technology of the modern age precludes it; as proven in Iran, technologies like video-phones, the internet, and satellite-television will only cause the global hue and cry to go up. As proven even in 1968 Chicago—and again in 2009 Iran, “the whole world is watching.”

Once the federal sword is proven useless in coercing states, then it will have no more bite in deterring states from nullifying federal laws—or failing this, threatening to secede, or ultimately, seceding—in response to breaches of the Constitution or other acts of malfeasance by the federal government or other states.