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I was tempted to start things off with an item about Death Camps in the American South, but how about something lighter?
Item: Russian intelligence "expert" predicts that the United States will collapse and be split up between competing foreign powers.
I think that if central government collapsed, the former United States would more likely split up into independent entities along regional lines, as above.
I forget what the exact publication was that inspired this map of American regions: it was published by the US Information Agency (a propaganda arm of the CIA that is legally forbidden to operate within the US...I found this in Peace Corps days). FYI the blue spots are urban areas that do not fit into any region. Independent city states, perhaps?
Oh, and the death camps are here.
5 comments:
Regarding both issues I guess, I maintain that the North would have been far better off allowing the South to secede. Culturally and economically they were completely different countries. Forcing Union served only to strip States of their rights, which has led to the Fascist Empire we have today - whilst the position of Blacks (whose plight largely justified the war) changed only marginally as a result of the conflict.
Trade embargoes combined with private funding of guerrilla revolts and insurrection in the South could have overthrown the White masters and caused the reemergent Black controlled States to reapply to the United States, with all states preserving their independence and rights.
Even with events like a dollar collapse, I find it unlikely that the Union will actually disolve at this point, although with increased Collectivism will come a reactionary movement for increased Liberty - which may in an extreme scenario cause secession. I have heard some hearsay that the Supreme Court has maintained that secession is Constitutional in principle. It would seem that a court ruling could be all that is necessary to bring about a sweeping change of that nature.
The new centers of the post-imperialist U.S. would be based on food production, access to functional ecosystems services (such as water production/purification), energy production, and internet hubs. Things would then congeal around them, ala feudal baronies coalescing into counties, duchies, and then kingdoms.
I think such a reality makes boundaries drawn on existing political boundaries pointless. I think it will even throw into question many existing cultural assumptions that we may have, especially when you realize how many libertarian leftists and communalists live in the Appalachians.
And, on top of that, there will be siginificant population displacement that will make cultural boundaries irrelevant. The midwest, as it currently exists, will collapse in toto - and the population will move or massively readapt itself. Alot of the northern half of the megalopolis will also likely cease to resemble what it does now, and I suspect you'll see much in the way of Southern migration from New England into the Mid-Atlantic and Southern Atlantic states.
Pace: I have been thinking over Reconstruction very much lately, and I would actually like to address this maybe in a separate post. Suffice it for me to say in this space two points:
I have never held "states rights" to be a marker of respect for constitutional liberties in the US. If anything it has been an argument for greater restriction of personal civil and economic liberties. While states had and continue to have certain retained powers (which they haggle over with the federal government), both ultimately are responsible to the people.
As far as the anti-secession strategy proposed as an alternate to the Civil War, I think it was exactly a trade embargo and Northern-sponsored slave rebellion that was exactly what white Southerners feared most, and were therefore most prepared for.
Andrew: I take your point, and on some level self-suffiency would be key in establishing any sort of new order out of chaos. But I think this would only be possible through a full scale civilizational collapse. Any collapse of authority on a smaller level will still need to take existing political, legal and cultural structures into account (like in the former Soviet bloc, Yugoslavia and Africa).
Nomad, Perhaps it is a mixed bag as to whether a stronger Federal Government is better or worse for the Individual. However I would feel better about far more culturally competitive States with much more discretion in running themselves economically and in respecting human rights than to have a tyrannical Federal Government sucking up 35%+ of economic activity, to redistribute resources and fuel a military World Empire, and imposing uniformly on the States a set of cultural norms and values which determines what inherent human rights must and must not be recognized.
The War on Drugs domestically and Internationally is the perfect example of the Tyranny of not recognizing States Rights. Afghanistan is occupied, whilst there has been decades of war in Columbia. Mexico is on the verge of collapse from drug violence. America has about 1.5 million prisoners whose only crime was enabling or exercising self-manipulation of the human body and mind. If it were just a handful of States with such tyranny, it would still allow freer states to flourish or fail from their own toleration.
Pace, I think you do have good points, and I can't say that I disagree with them. And you are quite correct about military expenditures and the so-called "War on Drugs", although some recent evidence would indicate that there is a cultural shift in America that -might- lead towards an end of that political campaign. I'm also not against having culturally competitive states: they are the "laboratories of the nation."
But there are indeniable benefits to having an integrated economic market managed by a central government rather than by a group regional or state authorities. In some respects the US is one, in some respects the other. And yes, in some ways the federal government subduing the South smacked of imperialism, and certainly strengthened its hand, for good or for ill.
Unfortunately, I don't see much of a better alternative. The Counterfactual too easily could have been North America devolving into some squabbling mix of warring and turbulent republics, like Central and South America. Let's not forget that the South was a slave-holding oligarchy bent on conquering Cuba and other parts of Latin America. Lincoln was successful where Bolivar was not, and where Juarez and Diaz barely managed to be at an immense social and economic cost. And were he not assassinated he most likely would have worked to restore the status quo ante bellum, minus legal slavery.
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