The Sanctuary movement, secession and nullification under another label. / Is a civil war coming. Status update.

In the United States there have been a series of sanctuary movements. First there were cities and counties and states having sanctuary for undocumented immigrants where one way or the other they defy the enforcement of immigration laws.

However, seeing a good strategy there is now a sanctuary movement for the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which affirms the right to bear arms.

There is even a sanctuary city against abortion.

Let me list some links for background and then resume the discussion.

For sanctuary cities regarding immigration.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/sanctuary-cities-explained/index.html

For guns.

https://nypost.com/2019/12/21/more-than-100-virginia-cities-counties-declare-themselves-gun-sanctuaries/

For abortion

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3k3gq3/lawmakers-are-banning-abortions-in-cities-sanctuary-cities-for-the-unborn

I am not saying that the articles provided above are unbiased or broadly representative. They are there to show you that there are such movements and to give you some background.

These sanctuary movements are nullification pure and simple.  The spirit of John C. Calhoun lives in all of them.

It is profoundly anti-democratic.  Democracy isn't just supporting the government and the laws when you win, it is accepting defeat in an election and the consequences.

These movements are nothing more than the modern day version of "massive resistance." "Massive resistance" was the resistance to the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century.

Nullification is logically incoherent. If you can decide to ignore one law, why not ignore others. Also,  if laws by a national body are to be accepted upon a localities choosing then there really is no point for a national body.

Now nations do have internally autonomous regions and special acccomodations for localities. They are usually spelled out very clearly that the adjustments are for some areas of legislation and governace and not other areas. They exist because of a variety of historical factors.

Nullification is suggested whenever some law or another gets some locality upset and the local politicians seek to gain popularity by supporting it.

Nullification is secession by another way. Instead of formally seperating, you pick and choose what you want and don't want, and avoid any of the military issues. However, you are seceding from national government by parts.

There is a lot of speculation thrown out about a civil war in the United States. I am torn between seeing it as alarmism and between being alarmed myself.

I do seek the sanctuary movement is being a sort of practice for secession. It is defiance of the national law which could be a percursor for defiance of the national governement and identity.

It also gets people consciously involved with defying the national government. It is a practice session for defying the national government generally.

So is civil war coming? I don't know.  I have been seeing one element or another fall in place since Obama was re-elected president in 2012 when there were those secession petitions. Each one element in itself isn't all that significant, but accumulated one by one I think they work together to evolve in the public mind a new attitude towards national identity or more specifically the rejection of it.

If Donald Trump was impeached I think all the interstate highways in the United States would be blockaded by Trump supporters in less than 24 hours. American interstate highways go through long distances of very rural areas which are very pro-Trump. Trump supporters would regard it as the election results of 2016 being overturned. However, I think that the process of impeachment is now stalled at least until the 2020 national elections. Even then, even if the U.S. Senate is controlled by the Democrats, a 2/3rd majority is needed for impeachment. So impeachment is not happening.

If Trump is not re-elected I think secession movements will be revived from their current moribund existence, but if he is re-elected they will remain largely stagnant. I am tending at this moment of writing to think that Trump has a fairly good chance of re-election. I remember that the Democrats were very sure in 2018 there was going to be some massive "blue wave", and in the end it resulted in only getting control of the U.S. House by a slim majority.

However, there are other paths leading to secession movements taking off or a civil war like situation. This where Trump is re-elected, but the Republicans lose control of the U.S. Senate and don't regain the U.S. House. In this case the Democrats still won't be able to impeach Trump, but they will be able to subject him to all sorts of tactics to make his life miserable. There are likely to be endless congressional panels making inquiries about everyone and everything in the Trump administration. It will be ugly. Trump supporters might decide that their election victory in 2016 is being overturned and I can see that leading into real conflict.

This 2nd Amendment sanctuary movement by counties and cities versus state governments is a potential flash point for violent resistance. After this is a movement for guns and the laws are to regulate them which means there is the potential of their denial or being taken away. The possibility of violent conflict or a stand-off involving guns and threats of violence is fairly obvious.

It would be a training ground for armed resistance to a larger governmental movement and if the Democrats win the 2020 presidential election they would likely pass gun laws and I think that a movement of resistance armed with guns will be ongoing.

However, the issue of secession mostly rests on the results of the 2020 elections. There will be developments over time which I think will erode national identity or support for the nation state, but there will merely make it easier for civil war or secession when the historical window opens, but in and of themselves will not drive secession or civil war.

We just have to wait for the election results of 2020.

Helped with this CNN story about Barletta.

This is the article.

I only contributed part of the story. Wayne Lutton's speaking to the Council of Conservative Citizens and Vinson being a founding member of the League of the South.

Vinson had some really racist stuff that he wrote for the Southern Patriot, publication of the League of the South, but the article didn't cover that. Since the public doesn't know what Chronicles Magazine is, we didn't even pursue that as an item.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/25/politics/kfile-lou-barletta-american-free-press/index.html

This is the kind shout out that Kaczynski did.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/956702771797004289

I indexed the material which I provided in the 1990s and after all these years it has found a purpose. I play a long game fighting neo-Confederates.

I worked in Mountain Top on job assignment from 2013 to 2017 and a lot of people their were a little off on the idea of Hispanics being there. One of my manager's wife didn't want her daughter to learn Spanish even though the daughter wanted to. The obvious advantage to learning Spanish when living in the Western Hemisphere I think would be well obvious. The manager's wife felt that "they" should learn English. Of course it is always good to learn the language of the majority of the people where you live, I think learning Spanish is a very useful thing.

I met a Dominican there and asked right out why did he come to Hazleton instead of some place else. Did his people get lost? Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) is a depressed place with a declining population in the cities and though beautiful in many ways could be depressing also with the obvious signs of slow decay.

Many helpful people when I was there, but I would think it would be inadvisable to go there as a minority person. Also, corruption in PA is something else.

There were positive qualities. Less snobbery than Dallas and very helpful people. When driving across the country the landscape had stunning beauty. I remember one time driving on a country road on the way to Harrisburg and it was like driving through a series of pastoral oil paintings or driving through a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Racial Politics at a Virginia Flagger event in Richmond and what the "Richmond Times-Dispatch" didn't tell you.

Recently I visited Richmond, Virginia to carry out activities including counter activities against the neo-Confederates there, in particular the Sons of Confederate Veterans 2015 National Reunion from July 15th to July 19th.

We did a lot of video recording while we were there. We plan to be putting up some videos online on Youtube which will show the thinking of neo-Confederates.

The following video is a speech of Richard T. Hines at the Virginia flagger rally on the afternoon of Saturday July 18th at the Capitol Square in Richmond, Virginia. Richard T. Hines was the former managing editor of the notorious neo-Confederate magazine Southern Partisan for 20 years. He was also a lobbyist for dictators.

An article on who he is is online here: http://www.thenation.com/article/lobbyist-lost-cause/

The link to the following video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLQNSKfQwIE.

Click on the video to make it larger so you can see the entire video.



Watching the timing.

At 3:08 Hines makes brief reference to Gay pride flags to characterize those who are at the lowering of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and who wanted to see the flag lowered. He wants to characterize the anti-Confederate flag forces as pro-Gay.

At 3:16 Hines starts talking about what Conservative commentator Ann Coulter says about the Confederate flag.

At 3:26 Hines quotes Ann Coulter to say this about Nikki Haley:

"At least Nikki Haley should have waited for three or four generations before telling Southern Americans what symbols were allowable or not."

Nikki Haley was born in South Carolina and grew up there, but since her parents are immigrants Richard Hines and Ann Coulter don't think she really is Southern or American enough to make decisions about the place where she lives and despite the fact that she was elected by the residents of South Carolina to be the governor.

At 3:43 the politics of race comes up and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are denounce as shysters and Nikki Haley is denounced for merely being on the stage with them.  The fact that Nikki Haley is a potential Vice-Presidential candidate with Jeb Bush is bemoaned.

The crowd of flaggers is cheering Hines' speech.

So we have homophobia, the politics of race, an attach on Nikki Haley and Jeb Bush a leading presidential candidate, a clearly expressed Xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments, and an attack on Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Did any of this get into the Richmond Times-Dispatch coverage of the event. Not at all, not even hinted at.

This was the coverage of the rally. http://www.richmond.com/news/local/article_0624e257-8be0-5d14-8f59-86e9476b1e3f.html

Even though the opening speech was by a former editor of the Southern Partisan, the reporter puts the word "neo-Confederacy" in quotes:

"We’re here to see what motivates the Virginia Flaggers, what makes them tick,” said Sebesta, who has written studies of the “neo-Confederacy” movement.

Otherwise the entire report was the uncritical repeating of the assertions of the Virginia flaggers.

I was in communication with the reporters at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and sent them considerable documentation about the Sons of Confederate Veterans none of it made it into their paper.

Generally the Richmond media is sympathetic to the Confederacy. We hope to have more videos online from the visit as time goes on.

"Gawker" has article on League of the South

Gawker, an online news source, had an article on the League of the South. It is online here:

http://gawker.com/inside-the-american-id-chilling-with-the-south-s-new-s-1547070777

A reporter for Gawker went to a League of the South protest against immigration and Republican Florida U.S. Senator Marcio Rubio for his policies regarding immigration. The League of the South billboard with the word "SECEDE" has attracted local attention which is what billboards are designed to do, but in this case there is extra attention since you don't often see a billboard urging secession.

Link to League of the South web page on demonstration.  Link to Facebook page on demonstration.

Link to League of the South web page about the billboard.

What is of notice regarding the billboard is that the League of the South has the money to pay for it. Billboards cost a lot of money. I thought the League of the South was just a remnant of former self and would be just fading away over time. They have a physical headquarters also.  So they seem to be persisting, perhaps growing..

They also seem to have become activist group rather than a perpetual study committee.

Adam Weinstein also notes how the League of the South manages the media.

The way I met Hill was this: I started talking to Snuffy Smith with the Liberian flag, and three minutes later, Hill came urgently striding over like a recess teacher on the playground. "Media?" he asked. "Talk to me. Talk to me."

Michael Hill actually denied being neo-Confederate to the reporter. Which shows that neo-Confederates will say anything if it is expedient. Weinstein reports:

As suspect as that talk may sound, Hill insists his group is not neo-Confederate: "We're not so blind as to think that we can turn back the clock and have things the way that it was 100, 150 years ago, and we don't want to do that. We're men and women who live in the age that we've been placed, and we're not romantic dreamers of some idyllic past or something like that." 

Hill's Facebook page suggests otherwise. In late January, for example, he posted a note celebrating the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. "[L]et us emulate them and continue the honorable cause that motivated these two noble Southern men—the survival, well being, and independence of the Southern people," he wrote.

The following day was MLK Day, so Hill added another thought. "Note: If you wish to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. please go elsewhere. He is not one of us," he wrote of the Atlanta-born Southern preacher.

The read learns that the neo-Confederate movement can be less than candid.

Weinstein reports Hill Facebook posting the next day where Hill makes his views clear: 

On this day when the racial propagandizing of America reaches it[s] ugly zenith, I offer a simple photo graph of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1952 and ask you to contrast it with the same city today. Or with Detroit, Memphis, Birmingham, etc, etc. When will we stop believing lies and turn this situation around for the very preservation of our civilization?

Weinstein is perceptive enough to see how neo-Confederacy could have popular appeal and that people should not just laugh them off:

Perhaps this scene reinforces the League's reputation as a comical fringe element, a gaggle of old racist Lost Cause types who dream of the Confederate battle flag again gracing their statehouses, who lament the Union's retardation of their familial livelihoods. And their manhoods. "There were more men in America in 1776 than there are today," Hill recently wrote on Facebook. "[I]t can be changed, you know. Just 'man up,' as they say!"

But intellectual elites and newsmen caricature this movement at their own peril. One of the most famous Southern revivalists of the last century wrote a conservative manifesto titled "Ideas Have Consequences," and in America, in 2014, the League of the South's ideas are not without consequence.

Beyond its race-tinged Dixie jingoism, much of the League's public rhetoric is in line with a wider American attitude. It emphasizes truly small government—the dictatorship of the individual, the republic of the family, the overthrow of the cultural and bureaucratic forces that the League believes threaten our insular networks and affinity groups.

This dovetails not simply with neo-Confederacy and conservatism but with a broader, bipartisan disillusionment with government and mass media—the contemporary ethos that elevates selves and loved ones above the din of 308 million meatsticks screaming, stamping, belching, reaching nothing but the most tenuous consensus on anything enduring. Get government out of the way. Abolish artificial ties with strangers. Focus on the immediate, the personal, the deeply felt—"faith, family, and folk," as the League puts it.

In the recent decade we have seen neo-Confederate ideas slip into the mainstream such as nullification. Weinstein realizes that the neo-Confederate movement has a potential to be a serious problem. 

Richard Weaver who wrote "Ideas Have Consequences" also wrote a key founding book of the neo-Confederate movement, "The Southern Tradition at Bay," edited by M.E. Bradford and George Core. Core and Bradford explained in the book that Richard Weaver's conservative ideas were neo-Confederate ideas reformulated to appeal to broader audiences.

The article has, if I understand the indicators by it, 29,000+ readers and has been shared. So it does help people become aware of the neo-Confederate movement and be warned. However, it also helps the League of the South get new members.  However, I think that this article is overall good in that it is an accurate portrayal of the League of the South revealing that they have a racist agenda and also importantly that they try to not represent it to the media. Importantly, Weinstein sees that the neo-Confederate movement could have a broader appeal and is a potential menace. 

League of the South gets major press coverage for demonstration, helps let general public know that neo-Confederates are bigots. UPDATE: More news coverage

The League of the South (LOS) protest in Murfreesboro, Tennessee got coverage in The Tennessean, the major daily for Nashville, TN. There was even a counter protest.  The article is online at:

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20131012/NEWS01/310120087/Counter-protesters-outnumber-League-of-the-South-rally-attendees

In the article the LOS shamelessly claims that  they aren't racist, but I don't think they are fooling anyone.

This is the Southern Nationalist blog on the event.
http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2013/10/11/southern-nationalists-protest-mass-immigration-in-tennessee/

Evidently there has been some other coverage in other significant media.

Middle Tennessee Public Radio
http://wmot.org/post/demonstrators-counter-demonstrators-face-murfreesboro

The student paper at Middle State Tennessee University covered the protest.
http://www.dnj.com/viewart/20131012/SIDELINES01/131012001/The-League-of-the-South-protests-in-Murfreesboro

The only unfortunate thing is that The Tennessean article didn't mention the anti-Jihad signs like the other articles, but they all mentioned the anti-Somalia sentiments. I think Muslims will realize it is an anti-Muslim event. Perhaps it will get coverage nationally in the Muslim media. I can only hope so. After reading The Tennessean article any immigrant from any country will realize that neo-Confederates are against them personally.

What is great about this type of media coverage is that members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) will be having to say to people, "Oh we are not like them," in reference to the LOS and realize that the people they are talking to aren't entirely convinced.

It also educates a lot of people that neo-Confederates may have a fairly obvious racial agenda but they will deny it regardless of the evidence. This will undermine the UDC and SCV when they are busy denying being racist.

I can only hope that the LOS and SNN continue these protests. In a year they will accomplish more to change public opinion against the Confederacy than the NAACP has done in ten years.

After the Uvalde, GA protest, I thought that though these protests were doing something to alert the public against neo-Confederacy, it was going to be rather minor in impact. The coverage was in local papers with small circulations. The Tennessee protest got major media coverage which alerted a lot of people about the neo-Confederates.

Hopefully the future protests of the LOS will get major coverage. However, this so far has represented a lot of activism for the LOS and it might be that they will tire out and go back to conferences and papers and essays. Michael Hill is probably thinking of an essay or lecture about the Southern Agrarians, "The Empire," and what Allen Tate and Richard Weaver thought about Muslims or Africa or Somalis or something and it is time for another conference and they will do a protest again some indefinite time in the future. I really fear that they are tired out and they won't have another protest.

I probably should have had all my blogging on these protests with the theme that I was really, really, outraged, yes outraged, angrily outraged by these protests, and that would encourage them to continue protesting, but it is hard to do when you are laughing.

The most amusing thing is that the LOS and the SNN haven't realized that they are being used. Pro-immigration forces would love to have the LOS and the SNN be the face of the anti-immigrant movement in the United States. Why do they think The Tennessean is covering the protest?

Already some anti-immigration groups are probably working to disassociate themselves from the image of the LOS and SNN and complaining that the LOS and SNN protests are being give undue coverage in The Tennessean.

UPDATE: There continues to be more news coverage. It might get regional coverage in the South. I can only hope.

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/D4/20131013/NEWS/310130045/Opponents-League-South-outnumber-supporters-protest