Full Sovereignty Exercised By American States

50 states of the American union with limited sovereignty exercised full sovereignty by electing Donald Trump president of a government in Washington that is not a state and is not fully sovereign. Their actions defy and upset all notions about what makes a state sovereign. People in states outside the American union fear joining it because they might lose their sovereignty and be ruled by some abstract and all-powerful government far away in some distant city. It would not be so. American states parcel out their sovereignty assigning part of it to a central government and keeping the greater part for themselves in their state governments. The citizens of each state are free to live and vote in any of 50 states by choosing one to reside in. They vote for representatives to the legislatures of 2 governments neither of which are fully sovereign. Ironically, they would be more subject to undemocratic domination by the central government of a union of states if each state retained its full sovereignty. Joseph Stalin of Russia once ruled a union of 15 fully sovereign soviet states as a dictator. It is easier to rule a group of sovereign states despotically than states who have designated a portion of their sovereignty to a president who must be elected democratically every 4 years and shares his power with a Congress and a Supreme Court. It is impossible for a president in Washington to dictate laws to citizens living under laws of their own states which they themselves make and that they are all free to challenge in federal and state courts and to overturn. The Washington government does have the power to make laws necessary to unify commerce, police actions and the legal system but it has only the measured amount necessary to assure universal rights to all citizens of the union and to keep it together. We saw in the presidential election states exercising their democratic power to control a central government  located outside their state in a federal district. Nation-states throughout the world should not fear joining such a union by applying to Congress for admission. They will all keep the government they have and gain a second one in Washington. They will join the 50 states of our union and exercise the same power states used to elect Donald Trump president.

Daniel McNeill

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Crossing All Borders Everywhere Freely

   An immigrant arrived recently in Italy from Kenya in Africa. He said in English to reporters that he came for a better life. That is what I want too. A better life. If it means leaving the state where I was born, then so be it. States can still be states without national borders keeping people out. I and the immigrant from Kenya and everyone in the world should have the right to go and live in any state to live a better life. It makes sense.

   I have so far in my life lived and worked in 5 states. In each state I had the right to register to vote simply because I took up residence in it. None of them had the right to prevent me from living in them with full democratic rights. 45 other states in the American union of states are also open to me. In no matter what state I live, I am subject to laws of the state and also to laws of the central government of the union located in Washington in a federal district. I vote for the governor of the state I live in and for the president of the US. I vote for representatives to the legislatures of two governments, one state and one federal.The citizens of American states have all the democratic power they need because they vote by right for political leaders for two governments neither of which are fully sovereign.The federal government in Washington is not a state, is not located in a state and it like all the 50 states does not possess by law full sovereignty. American politicians in 51 legislatures create laws that can be legally challenged by any citizen and overturned in both state and federal courts. States can still be states without full sovereignty but only in a union of states willing to grant in a written constitution limited sovereign powers to a central government. The American union proves that politicians can recover from addiction to the political drug sending a hallucination flashing through their minds convincing them that they and their citizens can not be free unless they live locked up behind national borders in a fully sovereign nation-state. Nation-states should apply to the Congress in Washington for admission to the American union and completely cure their politicians of a bad habit. Then we can one day all live in any state in the world we wish to try to find like the Kenyan immigrant a better life.

Daniel McNeill

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Americans Voting For a Nearly Perfect Union

The reason Americans are so deeply interested in the presidential election is that their political system works far better than any other in the world. It is a nearly perfect union of 50 states with limited sovereignty whereas all the nation-states of the world with full sovereignty work imperfectly and some so badly they are near collapse. Americans want the right president for their system because he is the only official in the whole system who exercises individually sovereign powers. He is not at all like a leader however of a nation-state because he by no means exercises all sovereign powers. He has full power only over the military and diplomacy and he can exercise these powers only in relation to foreign states, never in relation to American states. His only other great power, his right to veto legislation sent to him from Congress, is limited because Congress can vote to override his veto. So the real issue of the presidential election for Americans is who is most qualified individually to keep the system in good order. For foreigners in nation-states it is generally impossible to understand our political system. Foreigners are used to one leader in one state embodying all sovereign power. Some Americans who understand neither their own political system nor American history believe erroneously as do most foreigners that they are voting for the leader of a state. Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton cannot become the leader of a state because the American Constitution does not set up the Federal Government in Washington in the District of Columbia as a state and it is not located in any state. American history is very complicated and very difficult to understand. It alone can explain how a government in Washington that is not a state and not located in any state and possesses no national territory can nonetheless own territories, buildings and military bases within  American states and also own military bases in many national states all over the globe, military bases that the American president controls with full power. But American history is perhaps too difficult for anyone to understand. The typical American voter doesn’t care about it. He wants only that his grand and nearly perfect political system continue working for him with the right president fixed in one corner exercising bits of a sovereignty spread out in portions to other corners of Washington’s government and to corners throughout 50 state governments.

Daniel McNeill

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Perpetual Baseball

McMurphy in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is normal, but his normalcy borders on madness because he has an innocent and fierce wind in the soul that blows where it will. He has enough discipline and reason to set his sails and steer his ship, but he obeys no law except the imperative to be born again with each new tug of the universe on his mast. He is a new Christ admitted to an evil world for a new crucifixion. He is insane because his humanity violates the rules of the rigged game. He is judged a social misfit because he will not sit down and quietly obey his enemies like a vegetable. He has the stiff, self-reliant hardness of a Ty Cobb. He is ready to steal any base in any ball game at any time against any team. Yet he is a new cowboy, not the old sort, usually on a horse above the ground with the glamour and god-like detachment of the sun. The old cowboys got off their horses mostly to punish now and then a few wild western men who disobeyed the law. Randall McMurphy is against any law that cannot prove on the spot its necessity by showing a man some new possibility for life. Like Achelous, the Greek river God, who turned himself from a man back to a river in order to squirt away from the grip of Hercules during a wrestling contest, McMurphy is a new cowboy because he has his eye on not just what is possible. He is not just ready to steal bases. The law allows that. He is ready to try to go all the way home at any moment. His boldness will send him off and running from first base for the plate on just a base hit like Enos Slaughter who scored from first base on a base hit to win the 1946 World Series. He is as innocent as Jesus, as self-reliant as Ty Cobb, and as bold as Enos Slaughter. He is too dangerous to be let out of the mental hospital. He has to be specialized, one way or another, so that he learns to live only according to predetermined models of behavior. Experts in the necessary laws of behavior must operate on him. He must be forced to stand passively touching a base and not be allowed to run freely around the bases.

   Perpetual Baseball is Part 4 of Daniel McNeill’s book on the metaphysical meanings in baseball as expressions of American culture, The Theater of the Impossible. The book is for sale at his author’s page. www.amazon.com/author/graceisall. Read the whole of Part 4, Perpetual Baseball, at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture

The American Election Is About Germany and Turkey

The American election for president is about Germany and Turkey. It is about the political responsibility of a superpower union of states like the US and the irresponsibility of nation-states. If Clinton wins, Germany and Turkey will win and continue to act irresponsibly. Germany’s advanced economy is booming with no unemployment. The election of Clinton means it can go ahead with its global plans securely protected by the US. It will invest its excess capital not in Europe but in economic opportunities around the globe. The states of the world will go on as usual using to their advantage what worldwide unity exists because of US financial and military  actions globally. But Clinton will support not only good states like Germany but also bad states like Turkey. Their state sovereignty allows them to act politically just as if they had no need to be backed up globally by Clinton and American power. The dictator in Turkey was elected democratically and he is now consolidating his power by imprisoning and firing thousands of Turks who have done nothing more than use their democratic freedom to criticize his government. Turkey is an American ally and Clinton will continue the alliance. She will support all good states and most bad ones. She alone will take full political responsibility making difficult choices for world unity because without it all of our states worldwide will become poorer and dangerously less peaceful. Clinton as president will perhaps do some positive things for us Americans in small increments but her focus will be global. Trump as president will not be for America first and the world second because the hard truth is that the global investments and enterprises of the American rich and the world’s rich are absolutely vital for world unity and an American president must support them to aid world unity.

   We propose that Germany apply to the American Congress and become a US state. Then its citizens will vote for an American president and become politically responsible because they will be voting like we Americans not only for national unity but for global unity. Turkey should become a US state too. The American Constitution states that the Federal Government must assure a republican form of government in each state of the union. It has the legal authority and power to force states in our union to act democratically even if a dictator like Turkey’s present dictator refuses to act democratically.

  But really why should any nation-state in the world act responsibly? That’s the primary job of all American presidents. We Americans have no choice but to act responsibly and to choose a global president. But at least we are not acting selfishly and irresponsibly like citizens in nation-states. There is even a certain unselfish grandeur in we Americans choosing with passion a world leader who will not be able because of nation-state irresponsibility to primarily lead us.

Daniel McNeill

Daniel McNeill’s books are for sale at: www.amazon.com/author/graceisall

Read Chapter 6 of his novel, The End of All Beginnings, at:www.usoftheworld.com/fiction 

Anxiety About Voting

The issue of the American presidential election is grand, momentous. We Americans feel we are faced with an immense, weighty, crucial decision. Yet the candidates do not put the issue clearly before us and we ourselves cannot make the issue clear to ourselves. We know  only that Donald Trump’s character and abusive actions towards women and minorities may not allow us to vote for him and so maybe we should vote for Hillary Clinton even though her long past experience as a Washington political insider will not take America in some new better direction. The candidates are both flawed and their words now in the days just before the election no longer seem even vaguely relevant to the deep emotional tension we all of us feel that has strangely nothing to do with the candidates. We are sick of listening to them. We know we are not voting for any real political issue and yet we all feel that the result of our individual decisions will be fatal for us in our future in a way that for some reason we have never felt in the past in a presidential election. Some of us hear in our minds words from the Irish poet Yeats, “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”...”The center cannot hold”...”Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” But no words correspond to our anxiety. We are facing something dangerous and alarming. We do not know what it is and even if we did know, we know our vote will not do anything to help us. So we are alone and abandoned politically and psychologically and no one and nothing can change the tension we feel. The only relief is to go into a voting booth and do something. We need to act politically even though we fear that neither Trump nor Clinton will act politically for us. If we knew that Clinton or Trump as president will be forced to keep a hold on the center and keep the world from anarchy by supporting the worldwide designs for power and riches of the best and the worst on our planet, it would only increase our anxiety. It’s better not to think of the world and do our best to deal with the anxiety caused by our political impotency in America.

Daniel McNeill

Daniel McNeill’s books are for sale at: www.amazon.com/author/graceisall

Read Chapter 3 of his novel The End of all Beginnings at: www.usoftheworld.com/fiction

The American Civil War

Virginia was a sovereign state under the union and with the union broken it was natural and unproblematic for it to act with full sovereignty. Lincoln and Washington however began the war with extremely limited sovereignty and usurping more sovereignty or acting with full sovereignty was problematic. When Napoleon made his coup d’etat, he was the head of the army and he took control of a government that was already set up to rule as a fully sovereign government of a state. Cromwell as a dictator in England ruled with full sovereignty a nation that was already constituted with it. Congress did not challenge Lincoln’s war power, even though he used it against American states, and it was the main power he had as head of a government that was not set up to be fully sovereign. It was difficult for Lincoln to act with the authority of a leader of a sovereign state because his revolutionary goal was to make a government sovereign that was not sovereign. It is debatable whether he ever reached the level of power of a Napoleon or a Cromwell but it is certain that he steadily gained power even after the early defeats of his armies and as his armies bludgeoned their way to the final victory, he became very nearly a fully endowed tyrant.

Daniel McNeill/ Read the rest of the essay at: www.usoftheworld.com/history