And the only way to return to that is to decentralize much of the federal government. The more power and involvement the federal government becomes the worse it is going to get. Increased power and scope of the federal government is the steroid put into tribalism as it then becomes all important to have "my" guy ruling the country as opposed to "theirs". If the federal government was largely there to just protect the rights of the people and focus on foreign policy we would have much less division and more importantly less wars abroad as that would be the key policies elected into office. Sometimes it seems as if much of the division on domestic policy is intentionally instigated in order to divert attention away from the horrors our government enacts overseas.
There are too many flaws in that logic to take all of them apart but I want to hit the big ones if possible.
Increased power and scope of the federal government became necessary when state and local governments like the ones in your state started intentionally looking the other way when organized terror groups began committing genocide on minorities, charging them poll taxes, instituting terror programs intended to scare them away from voting at all, and even killing voter registration workers.
The federal government WAS THERE to "protect the rights of the people"...the people YOUR people were burning, bombing and just plain murdering in the streets. The federal government had to be called down to MS to quell an insurgency, plain and simple, an insurgency that operated with the tacit blessing of local and state officials, who then stepped up and loudly proclaimed their intention to escalate it further.
So, let's just be honest about it.
If the ultimatum that your people are leaving on our doorstep says in so many words that the federal government had better allow your people to behave in that manner with impunity "OR ELSE"...
Then we've arrived at the moment where your people in Mississippi are about to get another large dose of "OR ELSE".
You will not contravene the spirit or letter of the law with regard to human rights, civil rights, voting rights.
You will not contravene the spirit or letter of the law with regard to a whole host of laws that apply to all persons in this country.
If that means you're ready to go to war over your rebellion against these laws, then so be it.
Good luck.
This has absolutely nothing to do with our wars overseas. Federal intervention in the Deep South had nothing to do with foreign policy, it had to do with domestic policy, domestic policy which your people insist does not apply to them.
Well, hate to inform you, it does. And it wasn't brought to bear to divert attention from anything.
Your actions several decades ago were designed to divert attention away from the horrors your people enacted on fellow Americans. And your people appear to be attempting to practice the same diversion today.
But most importantly, this "decentralized" government you speak of had its heyday.
It was the Articles of Confederation, which was deemed a failure by the founders, and replaced with the democratic constitutional republic we have today, which consists of a union, one which you apparently seek to break for the second time in our history.
States are not more powerful than the federal government.
They were in the days of the Articles of Confederation, but they are not now, and they never will be.
I'm not saying that gives the feds unlimited license or omnipotence, but I am saying that the relationship as defined makes it clear that states are a part of something larger than themselves, and while much power is indeed delegated to the states, in the end we are not a ragtag collection of sovereign fiefdoms, we are a single country.
Out of many, one. E pluribus unum.
If Mississippi and the rest of the states in Dixie believe that they have the numbers to bust that up, go for it.
Good luck.
