The Governments of the South Are Bad Governments

The Governments of the South Are Bad Governments

Thomas Allen

    Arthur de Gobineau gives four criteria to use to determine whether a society has a bad government. His criteria are as follows:
    1.    “A government is bad when it is set up by a foreign power.”
    2.    “A government is bad when it is based on conquest, pure and simple.”
    3.    “A government is especially bad when the principle on which it rests becomes vitiated, and ceases to operate in the health and vigorous way it did at first.”
    4.    “A government is bad when by the very nature of its institutions, it gives colour to an antagonism between the supreme power and the mass of the people, or between different classes of society.”

    As can be easily seen from these criteria, the governments of the Southern States are bad governments.

    The legitimate governments of the Southern States were overthrown by the United States government in 1865, and an alien government was imposed on the Southern States by a foreign power, the United States. The governments of the Southern States today are a direct descendant of those alien governments. If a government of a Southern State deviates from the accepted norm established by the United States government, the forces of the United States government are brought to bear on the recalcitrant State to force it back into line. Prime examples are the various civil rights and voting rights acts that are enforced in the South. When necessary the United States army is used to keep the Southern States in line — hence the invasion of Arkansas and Alabama. Thus, the governments of the Southern States are based on conquest and have been set up by a foreign power. Therefore, they are bad governments.

    The principles on which the governments of the Southern States rest have become vitiated. The governments of the Southern States were founded on the republican principles of limited government with the electorate limited to taxpayers where the races were separated and with a free market agrarian economy. Since the conquest, the political system of the Southern States has been corrupted into pure representative democracy where nearly all adults are allowed to vote. The races have been integrated. The free market agrarian economy has been replaced by a regimented fascistic industrial or service welfare state economy. Thus, the principles on which the governments of the Southern States were founded have been invalidated and replaced by alien principles. Therefore, they are bad governments.

    Likewise, these alien institutions of the Southern States create antagonism between various classes of the Southern States and between the government and the governed. By its very nature, the welfare state creates antagonism between the taxpayers and the privileged poor and others who profit from poverty. Fascism creates antagonism between the politically powerful and politically weak as the politically powerful benefits at the expense of the politically weak. Thus, the institutions of the governments of the Southern States by their very nature create antagonism between the rulers and ruled and between the different classes of society. Therefore, they are bad governments.

    On all accounts the governments of the Southern States are bad governments. The governments of the Southern States are bad governments by any of the four criteria given by de Gobineau. The only way Southerners can ever hope to replace their bad governments with good governments is in a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern States.

Copyright © 1992 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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