Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
In Genesis 11, years after the great flood, the people of the world (who then spoke one language) gathered into one vast plain (Babylonia) and decided to build “a city, with a tower that reaches the heavens,” so as “not to be scattered over the face of the earth” (v. 3-4). Some Bible readers say the objective of the tower was for men to be able to ascend toward heaven, and others say it was meant as a way for a deity to descend to a temple at the base to be visible for worship. Either way, these people were arrogantly challenging God’s command to “fill the earth.”
The result, of course, was that God said: “’Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city” (v. 7-8). Thus, they became “the nations” referred to so often in the Old Testament.
The same globalist arrogance has taken center stage today. The post-modern process by which man seeks his own glory is to reject Biblical nation status and (again) move aggressively toward a one-world government. Of course, the aspirations of today’s “tower builders” have little to do with literal towers or any deity – especially not our Christian God. And those in this country and elsewhere who lead this ideology (aka “the elite”) seek their objectives not with an eye toward the heavens but toward a worldly goal of what they believe is unity through diversity. Trouble is, it’s not Biblical diversity. It’s a diversity that’s only skin deep – race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. – and not a diversity of ideas and thought.
In the Bible, the diversity created by God was profound. Besides different languages, the results were, among other things, different values and ideas, , different architecture, different dress, different survival methods, and even different gods – in short, totally different cultures. Ultimately, the only possible (and lasting) unifier of these diverse cultures would be universal belief and trust in our Triune God. However, man’s inherent wickedness and habitual disobedience made that virtually impossible.
Post-modern elites, on the other hand, insist that inner man is inherently good. And while their ideal of unity through diversity is based mostly on superficialities, they believe that when we’re all (forcibly) tossed together in a societal salad bowl, the ultimate result will be total equality and lasting peace. Imagine that!
One way the elitists in the US and a few other countries are trying to hasten this kind of diversity is with open borders – a rapid return to a new Tower of Babel, if you will. For example, we still speak mostly English here, but as we now see from operating manuals, public signs, public school communications, and other interactions, we are accommodating several languages. Is the final objective a single language for everyone? If so, will it be English? Chinese? Russian? It may depend on which of those countries shows the most muscle in the next 50 or 60 years.
Globalism is not new. Over the last two millennia, many philosophers have rejected the Biblical truth that man is inherently wicked and have declared that “the right people” can unite the world and govern in benevolent fashion so that all mankind would flourish. (Today’s Democratic Socialists in the US believe without question that they are the ones to pull it off here.)
But long historical experience has demonstrated the opposite – that a truly benevolent world government is impossible. Witness Lenin’s communism that was to unite the workers of the world in a “workers’ paradise.” Witness the grandiloquent but toothless League of Nations after World War I that couldn’t recognize, let alone correct, the conditions that led to the rise of Hitler and imperial Japan. And how about the corrupt and Orwellian United Nations of today?
The closest to national unity we’ve had in our own history was in the years after the revolution, when intelligent men with deep Christian roots wrote and ratified the US Constitution, a document that reflected the Biblical truth that man is inherently wicked. That basic truth was the rationale for safeguards like the separation of powers, checks and balances, limiting the central government to specific (enumerated) powers, and reserving all other powers to the individual states. Of course, over the years, especially since the 1950s, lawmakers and judges have gradually diluted those safeguards, claiming the Constitution is a “living or evolving” document. All of which brings us to this question: Is it time for our developing Tower of Babel to be dispersed?
Most politicians and jurists, including the late Antonin Scalia, have expressly stated that the Civil War settled the question of state secession once and for all. Indeed, in Texas v. White in 1869, SCOTUS ruled that a state could not unilaterally secede from the union. It should be noted, however, that to rule otherwise would have meant that Lincoln’s war to force southern states back into the union was illegitimate.
According to a recent book by F. H. Buckley (American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup), the original intent of the Constitution’s framers was that a state does have the right to negotiate separation. Basically, he believes that the establishment of state sovereignty is made clear by limiting the central government to a few “enumerated powers” – e.g., national defense, conducting foreign policy, establishing a sound currency, etc. – with the individual states having jurisdiction over everything else (“reserved powers”). No constitutional amendments have changed that, Texas v. White notwithstanding. Here lies the dilemma: If a state unilaterally votes to secede – and if SCOTUS does follow Texas v. White to block secession – it would empower the president to invade the state, if necessary, to force it back into the union. Would the current SCOTUS have the nerve to rule that way?
The fact is, there may be another, less traumatic avenue to resist federal encroachment on the states’ reserved powers. An example cited a few years ago in Chronicles Magazine noted that SCOTUS has ruled several times (in “anti-commandeering cases”) that the Feds can’t compel a state to use its courts and law enforcement agencies to enforce a federal law the state “finds repugnant.” More recently, when California refused to enforce federal marijuana laws, SCOTUS and Congress ordered it to do so – but California ignored the order and the Feds did nothing to force compliance. Sensing a me-too opportunity, a few other states piled on and passed their own marijuana laws, some even legalizing it for “recreational” use.
Finally, a formal process of nullification is frequently discussed as a way for a state to override a federal law it believes violates the US Constitution (not its own constitution). However, nullification is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution, and courts have never upheld it when it’s been tried, referring to it as no more than a theory. The last time nullification was tried was in the 1950s in Cooper v. Aaron, a segregation case. In Cooper, SCOTUS held that nullification “is not a constitutional doctrine…it is illegal defiance of constitutional authority.” (Interestingly, Canadian law provides for a province’s right of nullification of any civil rights law passed by the central government, although the province must reaffirm its nullification every five years.)
It would seem, then, that a state’s “refusal to enforce” a federal law with its own courts and law enforcement agencies is the only viable avenue for state resistance. But even after the well-publicized episode of California successfully refusing to cooperate with federal marijuana laws, most state lawmakers seemed oblivious to the broader possibilities – including states that have tried to modify Roe v. Wade. As retired philosophy professor Donald Livingston stated in Chronicles (Oct. 2020): “This ignorance about half of our constitutional tradition morally disarms state legislatures and governors from exercising the authority they have under the Constitution to resist federal tyranny. To exercise that authority, they must first realize they have it.”
Otherwise, breaking away in a meaningful sense may take another war – or another act of God.
Norbert J. Kuk