United States vs Unified States

Mark Greathouse

(12/2021) An American conservative is a person who desires to preserve and conserve our founding ideals and way of life. Conservatives believe in a nation comprised of separate states united by the glue represented in its governing Constitution. That’s "united," not "unified." The difference is huge; not unlike the difference between equality and equity.

"United States of America" versus "Unified States of America" offers a provocative thought. The difference is not the least bit nuanced. United is a joining of disparate parts into a single entity while maintaining the distinct identities of those parts, while unified is a uniting into a non-disparate whole with a single identity. The inference here is that our Constitution, based on federalism, created a republic that united disparate states into a nation while those several states retained certain self-governing rights. Notably, we’re separate but not divided. There are folks among us who would have us unified under a massive central government that controls every aspect of our lives. Unification is a euphemism for and facilitates socialism. To be clear, socialism has never been implemented successfully yet its proponents insist that is because of mistakes made by implementers rather than recognizing that it is simply morally, factually, economically, and logically impossible for it to succeed.

I compared the difference between united and unified to equality versus equity, terms deemed interchangeable by the political left. Equality means that individuals or groups of people are given the same resources or opportunities to freely do with as they may. Equity, on the other hand, allocates to each person or group the precise resources and opportunities necessary for them to reach a fully equal outcome. Just as equality doesn’t aim to achieve equity, so united doesn’t aim to achieve unification. Under unified equity, a large central government ensures that everyone will share equally in misery with no opportunity to rise above their life condition. Exceptionalism is prohibited…except among the controlling elite.

Our Bill of Rights was created to ensure that each of the original 13 states retained their separate identities, to protect themselves from encroachments by the other states and by a metastasizing central government. Folks in South Carolina didn’t want to have their way of life determined by folks in Massachusetts and vice versa.

I’ve always been struck by the separateness of our nation’s people. Sioux were quite separate from Comanche, blacks from indigenous folks, Italians from Irish, slave from free, rich from poor, educated from uneducated, and so on. These separate and competing elements framed under the structure of a republic are what have made the United States so exceptional that everyone seems to want to immigrate here. Each and every citizen is indeed endowed with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No matter your race, ethnic background, or other circumstances, our nation was founded on that premise, and it has served us well.

Folks have given their lives to preserve our nation as our founders intended. A great war was fought nearly 160 years ago on our own soil and hundreds of thousands died to hold the nation together. Untold thousands more have given their lives in far-off lands in defense of our founding principles. For whatever reason, there are folks among us who would change us into a mere shell of the republic most of us envision and enjoy. Our founders purposely designed a government whereby no single ideology supported by more populous states could hold sway over others.

Why would anyone want a "Unified" States of America? Why would anyone want to so radically restructure a nation that has grown to become the envy of the world? I suggest that it’s about power and control. Unification facilitates control by a single ideology, a single political party, a single power structure to the exclusion of dissent. When there’s only one voice making the rules, all opposition is squashed. How do they achieve this? Recall the words of the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu who advised that government power over citizens can be easily sustained by keeping their minds empty and bellies full. Hmmm. The unifiers apply a perverse version of creative destruction. Minds empty? Reduce education standards to the lowest common denominator, eliminate excellence, silence debate, cancel history, and more. Bellies full? Citizens quickly discover that it’s ever-easier to belly up to the public money trough to seemingly have their every need met. They never ask where the money is coming from nor challenge whatever rules are attached with accepting it. Then, they’re surprised when a loaf of bread costs $3,000,000 (check out Venezuela). Soon private life, private property, and privacy are abolished in a wave of mutually-assured failure. The government money trough is like an addictive drug. Folks will do anything to get their fix, including silencing anyone who gets in the way.

Most academic elitists minds, wed as they are to a rationalized well-ordered socialist economy, comfortable in their protected cocoons of tenure, and feeding ravenously from the philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx, are blown away by the entropy, the uncertainty, of free and open macro-economic dynamics embodied in catallactics, Adam Smith’s "invisible hand" at work. The debate inherent in freedom is anathema to the elitists, so silencing of opposition through unification is their solution.

To build the unified nation, all vestiges of a republic must be destroyed. The unified nation is to be built from the resulting rubble. Ironically, the plan is to break down the existing culture by creating division while stifling dissent. We see inflammatory divisive language constantly spewed forth by leftist "wokists." The latest divisive slogan is critical theory. (Recognize it’s theory, not fact.) Critical gender theory…critical race theory…critical economic theory…critical education theory…critical environmental theory…critical justice theory… Good grief! Where does it all end? We need to unite to fight the stains on our nation but we dare not unify. We must recall Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation that the United States was uniquely designed as a republic, enabling the several states to right any moral wrongs in its midst.

We are at war! It’s an expensive war, as the legal tender is the hearts, minds, and futures of our citizens. Beware unity, beware equity, as these charlatans are the seeds that spawn failed nations. If we expect to sustain our dominant role in the world, we must stave off unification. We must hold to the original intent of our founders in creating a limited national government.

We are individuals, and it’s our individualism, ownership of property, and adherence to family that unites us in delivering the fatal blow to the unifiers. What do we do? To begin, we must shrink the federal government and rein in its massive debt by electing patriots who will. Otherwise, if you’re not close enough to the problem to care, you’re not close enough to make a difference. As for me, I’m for the United States of America.

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