Farewell to Apostate America: Tentative Exit Plan

For the sequels to this article, follow these links:
Farewell to Apostate America, part 2
Poem: Farewell to Apostate America
Obama on Secession: Farewell to Apostate America, part 3
Union vs. Constitution: Farewell to Apostate America, part 4

President Obama has already appointed two Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court[1], and he is poised to appoint more.  A distinct possibility has emerged that judicial dictatorship will impose “same-sex-marriage” on the entire nation, including some two-thirds of the States which outlaw it.[2]  We the people will then have no realistic hope of self-determination except an Article V Convention.  A Convention of States movement is well worth a try within the parameters of the entire Union.  Failing that approach, however, we could look to a Convention convened in conjunction with the formation of a downsized but upgraded new model America.

In 1973 they foisted abortion on the whole body politic, contrary to the laws enacted in all 50 States prior to Roe v. Wade.  If now, under Obama, the Court countermands the great majority of States, and strikes down the definition of marriage dating back to the origins of the human race, then our last best hope may be to subdivide the Union.

States might secede themselves, or somehow persuade the most pagan of the so-called blue States to leave of their own accord.  To save the nation, or some remnant thereof, will require disempowering the new Loyalists; meaning disenfranchising enough States so that a constitutional Amendment can be ratified, and minimal moral standards put back into place.

If the black robed usurpers cross the line, and they overtly make war on the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” then they will be the ones provoking disunion.  They will be like the British firing on the minutemen at Lexington, 1775; or like the Mexican dictator of 1836, trespassing on Texans’ rightful domain and besieging the Alamo.   Or as with P.G.T. Beauregard and the hotheads assaulting Ft. Sumter in 1861, any blood spilled will be on the heads of the usurpatory “Justices,” as well as the President(s) who appointed them and the Senators who confirmed them.

The 2012 elections  marked a decisive defeat in the war for America’s soul.  It seems the current American Union may have passed the point of no return.  While there are sound secular reasons for a political separation, this essay will emphasize the spiritual implications of national partition, i.e. divorce or (to use a more precise analogy) annulment of the marriage contract because crucial terms of the Union have been breached.

___

At the outset, it is only right and proper to give thanks to our divine Benefactor for the signal favors he gave our national cause (Annuit Coeptis) over the course of the two centuries or so following Independence in 1776.  Alas, shortly before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Supreme Court repaid our debt of gratitude to God by excluding the good Lord from public schools.  Since 1962 the list has lengthened of occasions and places in the public square where Jesus is officially unwelcome.

Still, there are not a few citizens who do thank you, O Great Helmsman of History.  While America stood with thee, you stood by us.

Next, as to the issue of where to place the blame for the recent election:  No longer do the American people as a whole exist as a whole; we are implacably divided.  Therefore, the oft expressed idea that citizens got what they deserved in the recent election does not bear scrutiny when electoral results are broken down county by county.

Take, for example, the 2012 electoral map for my home State of Washington, where by 53 to 47% the voters passed the sordid redefinition of marriage.  Ten counties voted to redefine marriage, while 29 stood in defense of traditional marriage.  Of the 20 counties east of the Cascade Mountains, only one went with same sex marriage, Whitman County (with more than 21,000 WSU students), and that by a margin of merely 76 votes.

And so, how, pray tell, can 29 counties be blamed for the sins of the other ten?  Whose fault is it really, that Seattle — probably America’s least-churched large city — exercises its clout in the State Legislature to hold Eastern Washington a political hostage?  How can we hold the citizens of Spokane County to blame (56% rejected same-sex-marriage) or neighboring Lincoln County (72% against SSM), thus accusing the victimized counties for the evil choices made over on the other side of a major mountain range, in Seattle more than 200 miles away?  In the political black hole of King County, two-thirds voted for SSM, sucking the rest of the State down with them!

At the national level, one objective of partition would be to reassert the principle of political self-determination.  Another key aim would be to restore the written U.S. Constitution, a document which at its centennial William Gladstone called, “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

We would keep the Constitution in either case, whether by expelling blue States or by withdrawing to form a new nation.  If red States exit the old Union, the Constitution can go with us; because, like air, it is available for all to breathe.  Moreover, its reinforcement will be key to the success of the experiment, for as Daniel Webster is said to have observed in 1851, a year before his death, “miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution….”

___

To partition the Union is sufficiently revolutionary!  And so, without forsaking the venerable Constitution, our revolutionary purpose should be to reinforce it. Far better to restore the scepter to the written Constitution in a downsized republic, than continue with the Constitution in its diminished form; or indeed let it be emasculated still further by the Supreme Court of the 50 State Union.

Hence re-ratification of the Constitution, as purged by constitutional Amendment of its interpretative embrace of sin and usurpation, will serve as a pro-family, pro-life shibboleth.  It will favor democracy within the framework of a Republic.  It will screen out, and keep at bay, the States which prefer a loosely constructed Constitution with all the postmodern malignancies added by Federal courts.

Bedecked in black robes, Federal judges homesteading for life have set themselves up as a standing constitutional convention, minus the ratification requirements in Article V of the written Constitution.  Their de facto Amendments have imposed the following:

Militant secularism, abortion, sodomy, pornography, confiscation of private property for corporate benefit, equivalency of international jurisprudence and of citizenship for multinational corporations; and in general, arbitrary legislation that proceeds from an unelected, irremovable, life-tenured oligarchy.

Thus, two negations are necessary to restore America the Beautiful, or at least save a remnant of it: (1) a constitutional Amendment purging the pernicious developments listed above, and (2) a way of disassociating politically from any States that embrace such policies.  Otherwise do not expect again to see a good country for present or future Americans.  Neither will the world find proof in our example that a Judeo-Christian republic, governed by a written Constitution, is a realistic possibility in the 21st century.

As Christian, Jewish and other monotheistic Americans, “we must disenthrall ourselves,” and reject the notion that believers should be yoked with Belial, or justice harnessed with iniquity (2 Corinthians 6:14).  On the contrary, Jesus allowed for marital separation in the case of sexual infidelity (Matthew 19:9).  Likewise, in 2012 the electoral wins for sexual perversion have put those of us who remain faithful to the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage into an impossible position relative to an unfaithful, apostate nation.

In four of the five states where same-sex-marriage was on this year’s ballot — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington State — the voters gave their approval.  Only North Carolina banned it, after a fervent appeal from fellow State citizen, Rev. Billy Graham.  Worst, nationwide polls indicate that 50% or more of American citizens have come to support this moral abomination, mostly in the blue states.

In other words half of the Union backs (or inadvertently supports) a war against the very basis of nationhood.  As the Declaration of Independence states at the outset:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them….

By endorsing an assault on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” half the body politic is opting, in effect, to undermine the principles upon which any people is entitled to national sovereignty.  In a perverse sort of way, therefore, a national breakup befits their expressed willingness to redefine marriage in opposition to divine and natural law.

Moreover, the reelection of a President who favors the homosexual agenda and promotes abortion, one willing also to persecute the Church, suggests that the current American Union conflicts with the Cardinal Virtue of prudence.  Association with States that oppose the ordinances of the Almighty is imprudent for us and for our children and grandchildren simply because safety and folly are innately incompatible.

Another of the Cardinal Virtues, justice, is at stake according to the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.  Consider his Summa Theologica:

A tyrannical regime is not just because it is not directed to the common good…. Consequently there is no sedition in disconcerting such a regime, unless … (the cure should be worse than the malady).  Indeed it is the tyrant rather that is guilty of sedition, since he provokes discord and sedition among his subjects even as he seeks to assure his dominance.[3]

The Obama Administration’s main contributions in its first four years were acrimony and discord, rendering the nation more bitterly polarized than at any time since the Civil War.  Again the nation is confronted with outcries for secession.  There are petitions to secede from all 50 States, and 30,000 signatures have been exceeded in each of eight States – Texas leading with 120,558 signatories.[4]  Another five States have exceeded 20,000.

Crossing the official threshold of 25,000 set by the White House is another petition asking the government to punish all signatories on secession petitions.  The proposal would strip away our citizenship and deport us.  (I suppose it would be wishful thinking to imagine the Feds doing me a favor, by deporting me to a new nation coterminous with the red States.)

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, it is not just the divisive features of a regime, but its intrinsically disordered governance, which justifies our resistance:

Obedience to secular rulers is obligatory insofar as the order of justice requires us to obey.  Consequently, when any governor holds power not justly but rather by means of usurpation, or he issues unjust ordinances, then we have no duty to obey; except perchance to avoid scandal or peril.[5]

The American Declaration of Independence affords us similar reassurance.  With moral confidence we can resist not only Obama’s regime, but also the long-term postmodernist regime, with its increasingly tyrannical Federal courts.  This year marks five decades since the Federal judiciary became the battering ram of the culture war.[6]  When “a long train of abuses and usurpations” push us toward despotism, then it is the people’s “right” and “it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”  (D. of I., paragraph 2)

And the Bible (Romans 13: 1-7) informs us about our obligation to the higher authorities, of which the highest in this country is the “supreme Law of the Land,” the Constitution.  To it we are obliged to submit, but manifestly not to usurpers who pervert the Constitution, converting its written words (like the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the case of Obamacare) into dead letters.

And yet, despite everything, if we suffer evils while they are sufferable, and if we all serve as Loyalists for apostate America; then assuredly the moral contagion will keep spreading.  It will continue to infect our kids and their kids.  Increasingly, our posterity will be victimized by the ethical corruption of public education and of other societal levers like the media and entertainment industry.

___

Do we face a moral imperative?  Yes, we are indeed obliged to rescue our progeny.  Ours is a solemn duty, and to address it let us apply Holy Scripture.  Jesus instructed his Apostles (Matthew 10:23), to flee when persecuted in one town, and to go to the next.  In 2 Corinthians 6:17, St. Paul quotes Isaiah 52:11):

Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
and touch not the unclean thing; …

There are two ways to separate from the “unclean thing:”  Either leave the Union and form a Judeo-Christian nation; or, alternatively, invite, urge, or somehow compel the pagan States to make their exit.  The latter approach might be easier to initiate via petitions, embargoes and the like; although if the offending States prove unwilling, it will be harder to achieve.

In either case, to accomplish partition peacefully we would need to convince blue-minded Americans that our presence in the Union serves only as a drag on their liberal agenda, slowing its implementation.  Therefore they might discern a self-interest in forming a blue union of their own.  Or, as seems more likely, they might reckon good riddance and show red States the exit.

But with either tactic, and keeping our options open, let us begin with an official action (see Appendix One) from which to build political resolve.  For as the Chinese proverb says, “a journey of a thousand miles first requires a single step.”

This step would look to State Legislatures, starting perhaps with one from among the aforesaid thirteen petitioning States.  The idea is to pass a resolution rebuking Maine, Maryland, and Washington State, and urging their citizens to take another look at their votes, and to consider the adverse impact upon the Union.  These are the three States whose citizens (as distinguished from courts or legislatures in six States) have redefined marriage to include the sin against nature.  Entertain no illusions: the recipient States may well rebuff the overture, reviling it as an intrusion into the affairs of a sovereign State.  Still, the publicity will help raise awareness.  It will advertise the horrendous implications of what voters in those States have done.  And it will generate populist energy whereby to move the campaign to the next level.

The overriding strategic objective of partition would be to filter out some blue States (either through their exit or ours) until the number of ratifying States equals the critical threshold of three-fourths approving  an arch-Amendment.  In addition to other reforms, the constitutional upgrade would bolster the written Constitution, restore time-tested paradigms of morality, and reinstate the prerogatives of religion in the church-state equation.

My fellow citizens:  Impious politicians and pernicious legislation from the bench are in effect pressuring us to downplay our moral and religious principles, and to compromise the cultural legacy bequeathed to us by the builders of America.  By way of provocation, now a half-century in duration, a formal annulment of the 50 State Union is very properly on the table.

Following the elections of November, 2012, the aforementioned petitioners brought the issue of peaceful secession from the Union to the official attention of the White House.  (For the Administration’s response see part 3 of this series.) Mr. Obama is the first President in 1½ centuries to provoke a clamor for secession.

The big difference is that by having urged a righteous path on the slavery issue, President-elect Abraham Lincoln incited secessionists even before he took office.  By contrast, the Obama Administration has been pushing us further and further along an impious path.  And the Supreme Court has been proceeding along the same route for five decades (1962-2012).[6]

We are not slaveholders who want to secede, but rather citizens who seek to avoid being enslaved by the culture of death.  We fear lest our posterity share in the shipwreck of a nation adrift without its Judeo-Christian anchor.

Those blue States which advocate the paganizing of public morality, the continuation of judicial oligarchy, of congressional incumbent protection plans, more outsourcing of jobs, and  surrender of political / economic sovereignty to globalism — let them have the their own union.  Meanwhile, we would claim the rest: a smaller but unsullied American union, with the scepter restored to the venerable written Constitution (as opposed to the “living, breathing” version), and with laws befitting a Judeo-Christian republic.

From the standpoint of the restored States of America (RSA), the prodigal States would be seen much as the Declaration of Independence viewed Great Britain in 1776:

We must, therefore, … hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind,
Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

If, at some point in the future, one or more of the forthcoming foreign States, or some portion thereof, pursue the course of repentance and cultural reform; and if they desire statehood in our downsized Union, they could, of course, apply.  Their readmission would be contingent — as during the Reconstruction era[7] — upon ratifying the Constitution as amended.

In addition, some conservative provinces and/or territories in Canada might opt to be co-States with Alaska or Montana, rather than remain Provinces under Ottawa.  It would be expedient, also, to welcome into the revitalized American republic such hostage regions as Eastern Washington.  Its 20 counties (the projected State of Lincoln) have for decades been held captive to the politics of a few big counties west of the “Cascade curtain.”  State level secessionist movements in Eastern Oregon, and Northern California/Southern Oregon — the long proposed State Of Jefferson) — might also seek refuge in our reconstituted republic.

The nineteen or so counties of Jefferson could provide a land corridor to the Pacific, penetrating the blue barrier that runs roughly from Mt. Baker near the British Columbia border almost to the Salton Sea in southeastern California.  Another corridor (its formation may be more problematic politically) would be Orange County flanked by Riverside County in Southern California.

In the Eastern part of the country, the map of 2012 electoral results, county by county, provides a general idea of where boundaries might ideally be drawn relative to the Appalachian Mts. and the Great Lakes.  The same national map of red vs. blue counties is suggestive of migration patterns that would surely soar after partition.

Hopefully annulling the old Union could be arranged without the sort of antipathy and bloodshed that accompanied the India/Pakistan breakup of 1947, or our own Civil War, 1861-65.  The history of more recent breakups is encouraging.  In 1989 five of the six states of the Warsaw Pact held in bond by the old Soviet Union broke away with comparatively little bloodshed, overthrowing their puppet governments in the process.  Rumania was the exception, with 1104 deaths.

In 1991, featuring a total population equivalent to the USA, the Soviet Union fragmented into 15 independent nations.  Dissolution of the USSR gave rise to massive migration of ethnic Russians back to Russia, but relatively little loss of life.

The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 was much more costly with deaths well in excess of 100,000.

But more recently, in 1993, the division of Czechoslovakia into two nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was accomplished bloodlessly.  Appropriately it was dubbed “the Velvet Divorce.”

Similarly, the secession of Montenegro from Serbia was accomplished peacefully in a 2006 referendum governed by EU rules.

If annulment of our marriage with “blue-State” America proceeds without civil war, the upshot will in some ways be positive economically.  A common market and monetary standards could be negotiated (keep the dollar?), but with a view to learn from mistakes made in setting up the European Union and the Euro.  The issue of sharing liability for the national debt might be settled by bargaining with the old Union to honor existing entitlements (like Social Security and military retirement pensions) which citizens of the new nation will want to continue receiving.

Also access to the transcontinental railroads that pass through our territory could be granted in exchange for our own access to port facilities on Puget Sound and at Long Beach CA.  Our ports on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard would give us access to eastward shipping.  And a new treaty with Mexico might grant access via Arizona to Puerto Penasco, and/or other port facilities that develop on the Gulf of California.

Among the economic effects, a boom in housing is likely, insofar as many families would be ready and willing to sell out and purchase new homes in their preferred nation.  A thriving housing market would thus be a salutary bi-product of migration in both directions.  One of my teenage cousins is ecstatic about the post-election petitions for secession:  “I’m definitely stoked to see how this all turns out,” he wrote.  “If another country can form with the original foundations of America, I’d move in a heartbeat.”

___

If reds and blues can part company more agreeably than did the Blue and the Gray in Jeff Davis’ day, let it be with a farewell blessing rather than a clenched fist.  Also, though we go our separate ways, the door to reunion should be left open by treaty.  Over time, ratification by ratification, the prodigal States should be free to return and reunite under the restored written Constitution.

Marriage counselors find that up to 10 percent of former spouses remarry, and restored marriages fare better on average than second marriages to other partners.  If couples can enjoy a successful remarriage to each other, it can likewise occur on a grander scale.  Sometimes a cooling off time makes the renewed relationship happier than would have been the case without an interval of separation for reflection and dissipation of anger.

In the case of a sub-divided and subsequently reunited USA, the same dynamic might apply, with improvement but, of course, not perfection.  After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the reconstituted Union carried on after the eleven ex-Confederate States ratified the 14th Amendment, although the legacy of racism lingered until well after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

In the downsized but upgraded new Union, the legacy of paganism will not evaporate into thin air.  How could it, given the “dictatorship of relativism” dominating the West?  However our restored republic, under a written Constitution to which the scepter has been returned, will give us a fighting chance.

In 1990, after 45 years, the five Marxist states of East Germany united once again with West Berlin, and with West Germany’s ten non-Communist states.  History offers case studies of sub-divided nations coming together again, decades or even centuries later, by coalescing around one component of the old union. (For historical examples see below, Appendix Two).

A cardinal condition for formation of the RSA, and for alienated States to rejoin, would be that each member State embrace the written U.S. Constitution as amended.  One arch-Amendment would reaffirm the preeminence of the written Constitution over treaties and international protocols, lest any economic concord with the old Union encroach on our new national sovereignty. Another provision would put the written Constitution back on the throne, subordinating the out of control courts.

Restoring the scepter to the written Constitution will require its reinforcement in two ways: authorizing a reformed Congress to nullify past judicial usurpations, and ending the 50 year old custom of routinely amending and legislating from the bench.[8]

Another aim of one arch-Amendment will be to brace the supreme law of the land against uniquely postmodern threats, including the “tsunami of secularization” sweeping over the Western world.

An Article V convention would serve also to signify juridical continuity between the old Union and the newly formed RSA.  It will be easiest during the transition period [1] to convene such a convention, [2] to fill it with suitable delegates, and [3] to ratify its proposed arch-amendment.  Though perhaps not quite impossible in the context of unyielding polarization within the 50 State Union, the convention procedures under Article V would be immeasurably more feasible during start-up of the downsized republic.

Since we would be working with the same venerable Constitution, retained in written form, the ratification process would remain unchanged — three-fourths of the States.  If, say, a score of States secede and re-adopt the Constitution, then it would require 15 of the same 20 States to approve its reinforcing Amendment.

And so, by the grace of God and a good strategy, let us look to the future.  Since Obama’s America has lost the moral stature to run the world, the breakup of the USA will do the world a signal service and enhance hope.  The rump America(s) that remain will have to downsize their military-industrial complexes, and will be compelled by economic necessity to withdraw from some of the 130 or so nations that currently host American troops.

With a less aggressive foreign policy, the world would be rid of Hillary Clinton and her ilk pressuring Third World countries into facilitating abortions.  Nor would the downsized version of pagan America’s State Department be pushing so intrusively and forcefully for sodomite-friendly regimes, nor for “Americanization” of foreign cultures.

Allow me to conclude on a personal note.  When I graduated from high school, President Kennedy was in office, national morale was high, and partition would have seemed utterly incongruous to the issues and challenges of the day.  But now instead of Camelot we have Mordor, of which the Obama Administration is but one manifestation.

Pervasive and deeply rooted evils call for extreme measures.  Radical problems require radical solutions.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. [Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865]

President Lincoln fought to free the slaves and preserve the Union.  But the old American Union appears to have degraded beyond redemption, and its leaders are putting us and our children under a curse.  Let us pray that God provide us a peaceful way to escape, and to start the American experiment anew.

Beginning anew is a necessity being blocked, or even worse debased, by political polarization and strident secularization in the Union.  In a new American union, higher political principles, and restoring prerogatives to the old time religion, would be implicit to the process of renewal.  While reasserting our Judeo-Christian heritage along with the written Constitution – its scepter restored – we must in some respects wipe the slate clean:

• Restore Congress to preeminence as the Legislative Branch, not as a place for incumbent politicians to homestead while unelected Judges legislate from the bench.  Revive the House of Representatives, via rapid rotation in office, as the engine of democracy.
• Close the offices of the two major political parties and freeze their assets.  Outlaw the operations of all existing parties.  Let new political parties form afresh on a level political playing field.
• Build an economy for the people, not for multinational corporations doggedly outsourcing our jobs.
• Liberate the public square from “the dictatorship of relativism” as Pope Benedict has termed it.  Fortify the Constitution against the “tsunami of secularism.”  Let the new government clear away what cloaks or blocks “religion and morality,” described in our first President’s Farewell Address as the two “great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”

___

Appendix One.

Prototype resolution by a State Legislature reproving States whose voters sanctioned same-sex-marriage.  This resolution will be obsolete, however, if and when the Federal Courts “pull a Roe” and mandate SSM nationally.

Whereas, on Nov. 6, 2012, the States of Maine, Maryland, and Washington did provide the electorate an opportunity to uphold the sanctity and beauty of marriage;

Whereas, these citizens voted instead to twist the institution, and to redefine marriage to include homosexual unions, contrary to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God;”

Whereas, evils and misfortunes are sure to accompany official approval of immoral conduct;

Whereas, we desire to disassociate ourselves from such a demoralizing decision, and to urge repentance and a political turnabout;

Be it therefore resolved, that the State of ____ hereby requests the aforesaid three States to contemplate the adverse impact upon our entire Union whenever one or more States distort marriage; and

Be it further resolved, that we implore every authority within the United States — Federal, State and local — to preserve, protect and defend the integrity of marriage exclusively between one man and one woman.

Appendix Two.

Twelve historical examples of national fragmentation, followed by reunification in roughly the same geographic location.

Germany, 1945-1990.  The country was split into eastern and western zones after WW II.  After 4½ decades, citizens began dismantling the Berlin Wall (November, 1989), and the five Landers of the former E. Germany were allowed to reunite with the ten Landers of West Germany on 3 October 1990.  Germany’s Capitol relocated from Bonn to Berlin.

Vichy France, July 1940 to August 1944.  A rump French state, with its capitol at Vichy, maintained a facade of independence.  Paris in the Nazi occupied zone, along with Marseilles and Lyon in Vichy France — the misnamed “free zone” — became principal centers of the French Resistance.  La Résistance played a key role in the Allied invasion on D-Day, 1944, and contributed greatly to the reunification of France under Charles DeGaulle’s provisional government, 20 August, 1944.

American Civil War.  Subdivision of the country into two independent nations (1861-65) was never recognized by Lincoln’s government, which remained in control of nineteen States, plus West Virginia and much of the four Border States of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware.  Between July 1866 and July 1870, the eleven States of the Confederacy were reunited with the USA, first as territories in five military districts (in all but Tennessee), and finally as restored States.

France, 1429.  The Hundred Years War was going badly for the French, with most of the lands north of the Loire River under English control.  The uncrowned French King, the Dauphin (the future Charles VII) made his capitol at Chalon, since Paris itself was under enemy control.  From this rump French domain, St. Joan of Arc made her miraculous appearance.  After her notable victories, and Charles’ crowning at Rheims, Joan’s martyrdom inspired the French to a string of additional military triumphs.  The Burgundians, long allies of the English, went over to King Charles, and by 1453 France was (except for Calais) reunited.

Japan.  Beginning with the Onin War (1467-77) the Sengoku period lasted 1-1/3 centuries.  Japan remained divided into numerous prefectures headed by their respective Daimyos until Japan was formally reunified under Tokugawa Ieyasu, 1603.

Italy.  After the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, AD 476, the Lombards moved in to pick up the pieces.  They reunited Italy from 568-774 with the exception of the Papal States and of footholds by the Byzantine Empire.  Then, for 1086 years, 774-1860, Italy was again divided.  Around one surviving fragment of Lombardy in the north (see map), which later became the Dutchy of Savoy, and still later the Kingdom of Piedmont/Sardinia, the other fragments would one day coalesce.  Under Sardinia’s leadership in 1859-60, Italy was finally reunited.

Spain.  The Visigothic Kingdom fell to an invasion and Moorish (Islamic) occupation in c. 712.  A fragment, Asturias, survived as a small Christian kingdom in the northwest.  From Asturias (see map) sprang forth the Reconquista, a 7½ century crusade to recover the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors.  It culminated in 1492 with the reunification of Christian Spain.

Britain.  Saxon heptarchy overrun by the Viking invasions, beginning in 793.  Wessex in the south held out against the Danelaw, most heroically under King Alfred (871-899).  In 1042, England reunited under Alfred’s distant grandson, King Edward the Confessor.

Roman Empire.  Diocletian’s tetrarchy, theoretically a fourfold reorganization of the twelve dioceses of the Roman Empire, soon degenerated into rival regimes.  The three northeastern dioceses, consisting of the prefecture under Constantius, succeeded by his son Constantine, reunited the empire in a three-stage campaign, AD 312-324.

China:  Breakup of the Han Dynasty led to the period of Three Kingdoms, AD 220-280.  The three rival states going from east, to southeast to northeast (see map) were, Shu, Wu and Wei/Jin.  Eventually the latter absorbed the other two and China was reunited into the Jin Dynasty.

China:  Warring States Period.  Breakdown of Chinese political unity, 475 B.C., until reunification under the state of Qin in 221 B.C.

Israel/Juda.  In 722 BC the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, decimating the twelve tribes, and leaving Juda and the Levites as a remnant in the south.  Juda in turn was overrun, first by the Babylonians, and four centuries later by the Greeks (Seleucid regime).  But the rebellion of the Maccabees restored Israel, with her first century B.C. boundaries (see map) approximating Israel/Juda prior to the Assyrian conquest.

___

 Endnotes

[1] Obama appointees to U.S. Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor (2009) and Elena Kagan (2010).
[2] Thirty States ban same sex marriage in their respective constitutions, including California notwithstanding that State officials in league with the Federal Courts have preempted its enforcement.
[3] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II 42, Benziger Bros. edition, 1947).  Just prior to this passage, Aquinas’ reply to objection two makes a distinction between different kinds of discord, justifiable insurrection vs. sedition: “Discord from what is not evidently good, may be without sin.  But discord from what is evidently good, cannot be without sin: and sedition is discord of this kind, for it is contrary to the unity of the multitude, which is a manifest good.”
[4] At this writing, the States exceeding 30,000 signatures are: Texas, 120,558 signatures; Louisiana, 36,996; Florida, 35,326; Georgia, 32,465; Tennessee, 31,494; North Carolina, 30,817; Alabama, 30,590.
States exceeding 20,000 signatures:  S. Carolina 25,058; Arizona, 23,509; Arkansas, 23,158; Colorado, 22,304; Indiana, 21,594; Missouri, 20,257.
[5] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 2a2ae, question 104, article 6, 3rd reply:  “…principibus saecularibus intantum homo obedire tenetur, inquantum ordo iustitiae requirit.  Et ideo si non habeant iustum principatum sed usurpatum, vel si iniusta praecipiant, non tenentur eis subditi obedire: nisi forte per accidens, propter vitandum scandalum vel periculum.”
[6] Engle v. Vitale 370 US 421 (June 25, 1962).  Specifically related to government composed school prayer, but it set precedent for a host of anti-religious rulings.  It opened the floodgates to the “tsunami of secularization” in the public schools.
[7] Ratification of the 14th Amendment (passed by Congress, June 15, 1866) was prerequisite to readmission of the former Confederate States during the years 1866-1870
[8] Brown v. Board of Education, (May 1954) should be regarded as non-negotiable, however, and ought to remain in force.  See my prototype of an arch-amendment, section 4:3.

______
For the sequels to this article, follow these links:

Farewell to Apostate America, part 2
Poem: Farewell to Apostate America
Obama on Secession: Farewell to Apostate America, part 3
Union vs. Constitution: Farewell to Apostate America, part 4