Well! Doug Macgregor had a lot to say the other day to Stephen Gardner on Youtube. You can find it all here: Douglas Macgregor - The Threat of Russia. I started out transcribing, and I’ll paste the first part in below. This appears to be just a portion (20 minutes) of a longer interview. It begins with the question: When will the West wise up that this war on Russia is a complete disaster—for the West! Here’s that part:
One last thought regarding the comments that Dr. MacGregor made about our current governmental structure. What we have now is not what the founders intended. It is what they were trying to prevent. If I may make a recommendation Hillsdale College has free online courses that discuss the constitution vs what we have now. I would be more than happy to hear about other resources that cover this ground.
MacGregor is brilliant when in his wheelhouse and a much needed reality check for all of us. He has the sobriety regarding war that only comes with experience. We are in dire need of direct discussion of issues of war and peace that he and too few other provide. The discussion of some sort of division of the nation is part of the discussion about how far apart we are from each other. The challenge is trying to understand how many people really understand how radical the left is. How many true believers vs how many who just do not get it? Is it possible for leadership to come to the fore that will focus on common concerns such as war and peace? Can anyone bring together what Obama rent asunder?
As for some sort of division into two or more smaller nations The Federalist Papers laid out the many risks and challenges of this approach to managing differences. Smaller weaker nations are prey for the great powers and will be used against one another for the benefit of the great powers. Conflict with the leftists state(s) would never end. Imagine Cuba times 20 with a common and very long land border. They would infiltrate and continue to undermine us as the left has been doing for generations.
"The end of that could be that those much smaller and weaker countries—as compared to the current United States—might become prey to foreign, overseas, powers."
Mark, the US is already in thrall to foreign, overseas, powers. Breaking it up might be a good thing. Heck, it's following the 250 year cycle of Sir John Glubb*. Maybe salvage something out of it before it jumps the shark?
On one hand, Putin has sat opposite the US and the World Communty since he came to power. I do not recall them ever joining in World Aid situations. I don't recall them or China doing much of anything outside in their own interests. That said, Trump's method held them in check without casualties and we were getting places on China. The extreme corruption in Ukraine as well as Russia we've bungled this horribly, nobody is siding with Putin or Zelenskyy here, can't trust either as far as I could throw them. The thing about Foreign Policy is yours is supposed to benefit your Country not open it up to failure.
Did you know that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush (back then, they were even on a fist name basis, Putin actually addressed W as George) to offer assistance? Putin even allowed the U.S. to stage operations in Afghanistan out of former Soviet bases in Central Asia — an unthinkable gesture just a few years earlier, and something I could never imagine the U.S. doing if the shoe were on the other foot.
Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has bent over backwards to befriend the U.S. and Europe, only to have the hand of friendship slapped aside time and time again.
" I do not recall them ever joining in World Aid situations."
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but in fact Russia and China regularly join in natural disaster relief efforts. For example, recently after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
My phone got stolen a few days back and leaving this thread without fuller explanation to Mr. Wauck of my meaning has bothered me, not so much about Mr. Ass.
My reference is more general in that since the Wall came down and China got temporary Favored Nation Trading Status in 97 and our manufacturing went with it I do not see China or Russia sitting supporting much of anything in the West. GW said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul, for which he got scorched when Putin invaded a part of Georgia, I think? Trump rolled up a bunch of Russian Mercenaries in Syria that we not supposed to be there, I thought. China has not done much WITH US that I know of there was a Genocide going on in Africa that NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof felt GW should go in and stop and China was trading with them and felt it an internal matter. Someone a number of years ago proposed an alternative to the UN, an organization I despise, in a Trading Organization of Nations that held similar values excluding others that didn't. This I felt at the time to be far superior than that toothless old woman known as the UN. Castelletto below has made a fine point as well. I do not condone nor am I trying to excuse the Globalists, just an observation that there's been no push by China or Putin to be basically friends of the West. Yes they have made efforts of late but that is of late not the nearly 30 years wince the Wall came down. I refer to Nixon's book "The Real War" where he called China 100% accurately, they will never be our ally but can be neighbors with the right incentives. We didn't listen. I enjoy a civil enlightening discussion and I am just a retired Mold Maker who was severely effected in 97 by the Global Folks, greatly, and completely shocked when GW did nothing about it and even condoned it.
As it happens, Georgia was in a way the beginning of my awakening. After 9/11 Putin was the first foreign leader to call Dubya and offer his help. And Putin provided real aid. He allowed US military overflights of Russia to Afghanistan and also raised no objections to the US establishing military bases in formerly Soviet Central Asian republics. FOR WHICH HE GOT SCORCHED by Dubya and the Neocons when they sought to turn Georgia (used by the US as a staging area for providing aid to Chechen terrorists) into a forward base for NATO, along with Ukraine (2008). Dubya was warned by NATO allies that this was madness and would end badly. Putin and Russia were the ones who were betrayed, not the US. Putin held out a hand of friendship, and was treated as an enemy, as the US turned around and sought to ring Russia with military bases, just as we have done with China.
As for Syria, there were never Russian mercenaries there. Those were contract soldiers, just like the ones we employ in large numbers. Not supposed to be there? The US invaded Syria. Russian contract soldiers--and now a far larger military contingent complete with air and naval bases--were and are in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government. Maybe Putin is a bit of a slow learner, but learn he did. The transformation of the Middle East away from the US and towards Russia is almost entirely due to Putin's smart involvement in Syria fighting the US supported jihadi terrorists.
The African preference for China and distrust of the US and the West goes back many decades and is growing stronger. I recently wrote about it. African nations increasingly believe that the US, France, and the rest of West only offer a form of neocolonialism, but that China and Russia treat them as equals.
So they were aiding US in Syria and on the African Content? Please excuse my ignorance Brother Ass, if that's your real name!!! My memory lapses at what a great ally they've been, along with China.
It's not clear to me how or why you equate "joining in world aid situations" with "aiding the US in Syria" or being allies with the US.
The US was trying to overthrow the Syrian government in order to fracture the Syrian state, build military bases to improve the encirclement of Iran, and run a gas pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Europe to destroy European economic integration with Russia. To accomplish this, the US stole military supplies from Libya, whom we had just destroyed for the sin of trying to setup a commodity-backed African currency in their bid to break free from the French colonial currency, and we gave those military supplies to ISIS and Al Qaeda, among other allies in Syria. The war in Syria had already created a refugee crisis; a broken Syria would have amplified that crisis tenfold.
Forgive me for not criticizing Russia's failure to aid us in this despicable plan. Instead, Russia did what any people of conscience would do: they opposed the US, saved the Syrian state, obliterated ISIS, and forced the American military to a remote corner of the country from whence we persist in stealing Syrian gas.
Syria was just an short example, look to the entirety since the will came down, that is more my point, what you talk of is administration specific, though I will concede GW turned out to be more of a Globalist that first thought.Castelletto made a fine point below.
The only thing I'd respond to is Xi, he is a Communist and that carries a lot of water in my boo. I do not think he looks for his Country's Peoples betterment than eventual Party Control of the world, much like the Globalists here and in Europe and then Islam is interested in the same. Putin is or was a dedicated Communist so his new found Christian Faith advocacy is suspect but it is not our job to convert him, just deal with him in OUR Nation's best interests.
I'll respond to this one first, since I believe I can do so briefly.
I don't believe Xi is a truly a Communist. Having worked Chinese matters for 12 years--but, no, that doesn't make me an expert--my view is that, above all, Xi is Chinese. And I believe that goes for most members of the CPC these days. As such, I do think he is looking to make his country better for Chinese people rather than seeking world domination. However, I believe that nobody is more aware than Xi is of the real challenges China faces for the long term. Those challenge--demographic, resources, food production, educational for much of the country, water, etc.--mean that China is in no position to seek world domination. I think it's a mistake to under estimate Chinese awareness of China's history--as they see it--as well as their determination to never again undergo the centuries of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers (beginning with Britain forcing the importation of opium) and the internal dissension that brought--ending, more or less, with Deng. This, I think, is their motive for seeking to push their military influence out to at least the first island chain.
I doubt that Putin was ever a dedicated Communist, and since attaining political position and power he has shown himself to be much more oriented toward Western liberalism--which tends to make me more suspicious than his professed Orthodox faith. As for that faith, my assumption is that it results not so much from profound study as from the realization that Orthodoxy is the only real unifying principle of Russian civilization that can bring Russia to what he regards as its rightful place among the nations of the world. So, like Xi and China, I believe Putin is Russian first, but Russian based on what I believe is a fairly deep understanding, arrived at over years, of Russian culture and history.
For all things China, Gordon Chang is my "Go To" guy. We will see but I still think both stir things rather than smooth things but as also stated in the thread, the US has 2 distinctly different schools of thought on World Affairs as well as many subgroups.
"But the war [on Russia] is not to counter a threat. It’s a crusade in one form or another..."
Point of order that it is not a crusade but perhaps a jihad, an unholy war by which the whole world will submit to the voluntarist will of those marching under the Rainbow flag.
Which brings to mind how our elites must have manufactured islamic terror these past thirty years to achieve many goals. With those goals achieved, muslims are withdrawn in favor of new terrorists to achieve new goals. A virus? A transvestite? A heatwave?
So I'm a chump, but I do understand my faith better now in contradistinction to Islam. Hey does anyone else remember "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"?
A few weeks ago I read Peter Zeihan's book "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning." I had previously read his "The Accidental Superpower" about how the US became so dominant. Zeihan has his own consulting firm now. He previously worked for George Friedman's Stratfor. Both Zeihan and Friedman have predicted a stressful period during this decade, and we are living in it now. But if we can avoid a nuclear war, the US will have an advantage in survival and even prospering, even if we cease to dominate the world as we did after WWII. Our geography, our internal waterways, our natural resources, and our distance from both Europe and Asia give us some serious advantages.
Yes, we have regional differences. I have 3 books on my shelf about those. The earliest was Joel Garreau's "Nine Nations of North America" published in 1981. Colin Woodard's "American Nations" (2011) divides us into even more regions (he separates Garreau's "Dixie" into three areas--Tidewater (the coastal area of VA, MD, and NC), the Deep South, and Greater Appalachia (from the mountain regions of the eastern states clear to Texas). Woodard takes a more historical approach, and looks at how the regions have allied with each other on politics, changing sometimes on particular issues. The third is "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer. It looks at the highly varied regional cultures that were part of the British Isles in the 1600s and 1700s, and how each major wave of settlement in America brought a different cultural group, and mostly each group settled in a different region of what is now the eastern US--and started the modern cultural differences written about by the other two.
Remember when Bill Clinton said "The era of Big Government is over."? While succeeding presidents of both parties have backtracked on that since 2000, I think it is going to come back strongly. And it is our best solution to many current issues: we are going to have to give up the "one size fits all" approach to governing and allow differences at the state and local levels--both between states and within states. I'm afraid the left is going to resist this more than the right--and it will cost them in the long run.
But there is a basic issue that applies across all boundaries and parties: the major problem with both Big Government and Big Business is finding anybody competent to run it! The recent stuff with Bud Light, Target, and other firms is just a current example, and so is the entire Biden administration. But it is not a new problem. FDR failed to solve the Depression (WWI ended it, because of the need for major production). LBJ's War on Poverty was also a failure that lingers to this day. The failures of the managements of Ford and GM back in the '60s made it possible for first VW and then Toyota to eat their lunch.
This problem has been building for a long time. Here's something I wrote back in January '09 on my old blog, recently moved over to Substack: https://autisticredneckphilhawkins.substack.com/p/modest-proposal For those who don't have time to read it, I suggested a new capital city, in the middle of the country--and make all of them walk to get there! Yeah, I had my tongue firmly in cheek writing that. But the things that have happened since then cause me to think I was right.
The reasonable risks and objections to 'regionalism' or 'separation' or breaking up the United States should not invalidate the likely advantages of shrinking the federal government, allowing the states to manage the adoption and enforcement of their Constitutionally-reserved powers, including their 'police powers', and underscoring the application of the Bill of Rights...
Well, indeed! I usually find MacGregors analysis sobering, well thought out and real. I’m hoping his his assessment of the need for regionalization is just frustration with he morons who “rule us”.
I would add that, for now, those ideologies have strong footholds even in supposedly deep Red states, as many commenters have pointed out. Regionalism is no sure fire cure.
Today, 5/29/2023, the video by McGregor has been deleted by YouTube and is no longer accessible.
Good thing we have this transcript!
The use of the word migrant should be avoided. They're not migrants, they're illegal immigrants
Macgregor is a superb analyst and very wise, but has his own (domestic) agenda. Nothing wrong with that but just take what he says with basic caution
That's funny. Assuming this is truth, do tell what his "own (domestic) agenda" is?
Well I wouldn't say its "truth" or not, its just what I think.
One last thought regarding the comments that Dr. MacGregor made about our current governmental structure. What we have now is not what the founders intended. It is what they were trying to prevent. If I may make a recommendation Hillsdale College has free online courses that discuss the constitution vs what we have now. I would be more than happy to hear about other resources that cover this ground.
MacGregor is brilliant when in his wheelhouse and a much needed reality check for all of us. He has the sobriety regarding war that only comes with experience. We are in dire need of direct discussion of issues of war and peace that he and too few other provide. The discussion of some sort of division of the nation is part of the discussion about how far apart we are from each other. The challenge is trying to understand how many people really understand how radical the left is. How many true believers vs how many who just do not get it? Is it possible for leadership to come to the fore that will focus on common concerns such as war and peace? Can anyone bring together what Obama rent asunder?
As for some sort of division into two or more smaller nations The Federalist Papers laid out the many risks and challenges of this approach to managing differences. Smaller weaker nations are prey for the great powers and will be used against one another for the benefit of the great powers. Conflict with the leftists state(s) would never end. Imagine Cuba times 20 with a common and very long land border. They would infiltrate and continue to undermine us as the left has been doing for generations.
How to live with totalitarians?
Yes. It's a simplistic solution to a complex problem with world strategic implications.
"The end of that could be that those much smaller and weaker countries—as compared to the current United States—might become prey to foreign, overseas, powers."
Mark, the US is already in thrall to foreign, overseas, powers. Breaking it up might be a good thing. Heck, it's following the 250 year cycle of Sir John Glubb*. Maybe salvage something out of it before it jumps the shark?
* - http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
Cheers
On one hand, Putin has sat opposite the US and the World Communty since he came to power. I do not recall them ever joining in World Aid situations. I don't recall them or China doing much of anything outside in their own interests. That said, Trump's method held them in check without casualties and we were getting places on China. The extreme corruption in Ukraine as well as Russia we've bungled this horribly, nobody is siding with Putin or Zelenskyy here, can't trust either as far as I could throw them. The thing about Foreign Policy is yours is supposed to benefit your Country not open it up to failure.
What an ignorant comment.
Did you know that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush (back then, they were even on a fist name basis, Putin actually addressed W as George) to offer assistance? Putin even allowed the U.S. to stage operations in Afghanistan out of former Soviet bases in Central Asia — an unthinkable gesture just a few years earlier, and something I could never imagine the U.S. doing if the shoe were on the other foot.
Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has bent over backwards to befriend the U.S. and Europe, only to have the hand of friendship slapped aside time and time again.
" I do not recall them ever joining in World Aid situations."
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but in fact Russia and China regularly join in natural disaster relief efforts. For example, recently after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
My phone got stolen a few days back and leaving this thread without fuller explanation to Mr. Wauck of my meaning has bothered me, not so much about Mr. Ass.
My reference is more general in that since the Wall came down and China got temporary Favored Nation Trading Status in 97 and our manufacturing went with it I do not see China or Russia sitting supporting much of anything in the West. GW said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul, for which he got scorched when Putin invaded a part of Georgia, I think? Trump rolled up a bunch of Russian Mercenaries in Syria that we not supposed to be there, I thought. China has not done much WITH US that I know of there was a Genocide going on in Africa that NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof felt GW should go in and stop and China was trading with them and felt it an internal matter. Someone a number of years ago proposed an alternative to the UN, an organization I despise, in a Trading Organization of Nations that held similar values excluding others that didn't. This I felt at the time to be far superior than that toothless old woman known as the UN. Castelletto below has made a fine point as well. I do not condone nor am I trying to excuse the Globalists, just an observation that there's been no push by China or Putin to be basically friends of the West. Yes they have made efforts of late but that is of late not the nearly 30 years wince the Wall came down. I refer to Nixon's book "The Real War" where he called China 100% accurately, they will never be our ally but can be neighbors with the right incentives. We didn't listen. I enjoy a civil enlightening discussion and I am just a retired Mold Maker who was severely effected in 97 by the Global Folks, greatly, and completely shocked when GW did nothing about it and even condoned it.
As it happens, Georgia was in a way the beginning of my awakening. After 9/11 Putin was the first foreign leader to call Dubya and offer his help. And Putin provided real aid. He allowed US military overflights of Russia to Afghanistan and also raised no objections to the US establishing military bases in formerly Soviet Central Asian republics. FOR WHICH HE GOT SCORCHED by Dubya and the Neocons when they sought to turn Georgia (used by the US as a staging area for providing aid to Chechen terrorists) into a forward base for NATO, along with Ukraine (2008). Dubya was warned by NATO allies that this was madness and would end badly. Putin and Russia were the ones who were betrayed, not the US. Putin held out a hand of friendship, and was treated as an enemy, as the US turned around and sought to ring Russia with military bases, just as we have done with China.
As for Syria, there were never Russian mercenaries there. Those were contract soldiers, just like the ones we employ in large numbers. Not supposed to be there? The US invaded Syria. Russian contract soldiers--and now a far larger military contingent complete with air and naval bases--were and are in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government. Maybe Putin is a bit of a slow learner, but learn he did. The transformation of the Middle East away from the US and towards Russia is almost entirely due to Putin's smart involvement in Syria fighting the US supported jihadi terrorists.
The African preference for China and distrust of the US and the West goes back many decades and is growing stronger. I recently wrote about it. African nations increasingly believe that the US, France, and the rest of West only offer a form of neocolonialism, but that China and Russia treat them as equals.
So they were aiding US in Syria and on the African Content? Please excuse my ignorance Brother Ass, if that's your real name!!! My memory lapses at what a great ally they've been, along with China.
It's not clear to me how or why you equate "joining in world aid situations" with "aiding the US in Syria" or being allies with the US.
The US was trying to overthrow the Syrian government in order to fracture the Syrian state, build military bases to improve the encirclement of Iran, and run a gas pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Europe to destroy European economic integration with Russia. To accomplish this, the US stole military supplies from Libya, whom we had just destroyed for the sin of trying to setup a commodity-backed African currency in their bid to break free from the French colonial currency, and we gave those military supplies to ISIS and Al Qaeda, among other allies in Syria. The war in Syria had already created a refugee crisis; a broken Syria would have amplified that crisis tenfold.
Forgive me for not criticizing Russia's failure to aid us in this despicable plan. Instead, Russia did what any people of conscience would do: they opposed the US, saved the Syrian state, obliterated ISIS, and forced the American military to a remote corner of the country from whence we persist in stealing Syrian gas.
Syria was just an short example, look to the entirety since the will came down, that is more my point, what you talk of is administration specific, though I will concede GW turned out to be more of a Globalist that first thought.Castelletto made a fine point below.
The only thing I'd respond to is Xi, he is a Communist and that carries a lot of water in my boo. I do not think he looks for his Country's Peoples betterment than eventual Party Control of the world, much like the Globalists here and in Europe and then Islam is interested in the same. Putin is or was a dedicated Communist so his new found Christian Faith advocacy is suspect but it is not our job to convert him, just deal with him in OUR Nation's best interests.
I'll respond to this one first, since I believe I can do so briefly.
I don't believe Xi is a truly a Communist. Having worked Chinese matters for 12 years--but, no, that doesn't make me an expert--my view is that, above all, Xi is Chinese. And I believe that goes for most members of the CPC these days. As such, I do think he is looking to make his country better for Chinese people rather than seeking world domination. However, I believe that nobody is more aware than Xi is of the real challenges China faces for the long term. Those challenge--demographic, resources, food production, educational for much of the country, water, etc.--mean that China is in no position to seek world domination. I think it's a mistake to under estimate Chinese awareness of China's history--as they see it--as well as their determination to never again undergo the centuries of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers (beginning with Britain forcing the importation of opium) and the internal dissension that brought--ending, more or less, with Deng. This, I think, is their motive for seeking to push their military influence out to at least the first island chain.
I doubt that Putin was ever a dedicated Communist, and since attaining political position and power he has shown himself to be much more oriented toward Western liberalism--which tends to make me more suspicious than his professed Orthodox faith. As for that faith, my assumption is that it results not so much from profound study as from the realization that Orthodoxy is the only real unifying principle of Russian civilization that can bring Russia to what he regards as its rightful place among the nations of the world. So, like Xi and China, I believe Putin is Russian first, but Russian based on what I believe is a fairly deep understanding, arrived at over years, of Russian culture and history.
For all things China, Gordon Chang is my "Go To" guy. We will see but I still think both stir things rather than smooth things but as also stated in the thread, the US has 2 distinctly different schools of thought on World Affairs as well as many subgroups.
"But the war [on Russia] is not to counter a threat. It’s a crusade in one form or another..."
Point of order that it is not a crusade but perhaps a jihad, an unholy war by which the whole world will submit to the voluntarist will of those marching under the Rainbow flag.
Which brings to mind how our elites must have manufactured islamic terror these past thirty years to achieve many goals. With those goals achieved, muslims are withdrawn in favor of new terrorists to achieve new goals. A virus? A transvestite? A heatwave?
So I'm a chump, but I do understand my faith better now in contradistinction to Islam. Hey does anyone else remember "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"?
A few weeks ago I read Peter Zeihan's book "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning." I had previously read his "The Accidental Superpower" about how the US became so dominant. Zeihan has his own consulting firm now. He previously worked for George Friedman's Stratfor. Both Zeihan and Friedman have predicted a stressful period during this decade, and we are living in it now. But if we can avoid a nuclear war, the US will have an advantage in survival and even prospering, even if we cease to dominate the world as we did after WWII. Our geography, our internal waterways, our natural resources, and our distance from both Europe and Asia give us some serious advantages.
Yes, we have regional differences. I have 3 books on my shelf about those. The earliest was Joel Garreau's "Nine Nations of North America" published in 1981. Colin Woodard's "American Nations" (2011) divides us into even more regions (he separates Garreau's "Dixie" into three areas--Tidewater (the coastal area of VA, MD, and NC), the Deep South, and Greater Appalachia (from the mountain regions of the eastern states clear to Texas). Woodard takes a more historical approach, and looks at how the regions have allied with each other on politics, changing sometimes on particular issues. The third is "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer. It looks at the highly varied regional cultures that were part of the British Isles in the 1600s and 1700s, and how each major wave of settlement in America brought a different cultural group, and mostly each group settled in a different region of what is now the eastern US--and started the modern cultural differences written about by the other two.
Remember when Bill Clinton said "The era of Big Government is over."? While succeeding presidents of both parties have backtracked on that since 2000, I think it is going to come back strongly. And it is our best solution to many current issues: we are going to have to give up the "one size fits all" approach to governing and allow differences at the state and local levels--both between states and within states. I'm afraid the left is going to resist this more than the right--and it will cost them in the long run.
But there is a basic issue that applies across all boundaries and parties: the major problem with both Big Government and Big Business is finding anybody competent to run it! The recent stuff with Bud Light, Target, and other firms is just a current example, and so is the entire Biden administration. But it is not a new problem. FDR failed to solve the Depression (WWI ended it, because of the need for major production). LBJ's War on Poverty was also a failure that lingers to this day. The failures of the managements of Ford and GM back in the '60s made it possible for first VW and then Toyota to eat their lunch.
This problem has been building for a long time. Here's something I wrote back in January '09 on my old blog, recently moved over to Substack: https://autisticredneckphilhawkins.substack.com/p/modest-proposal For those who don't have time to read it, I suggested a new capital city, in the middle of the country--and make all of them walk to get there! Yeah, I had my tongue firmly in cheek writing that. But the things that have happened since then cause me to think I was right.
The reasonable risks and objections to 'regionalism' or 'separation' or breaking up the United States should not invalidate the likely advantages of shrinking the federal government, allowing the states to manage the adoption and enforcement of their Constitutionally-reserved powers, including their 'police powers', and underscoring the application of the Bill of Rights...
Well, indeed! I usually find MacGregors analysis sobering, well thought out and real. I’m hoping his his assessment of the need for regionalization is just frustration with he morons who “rule us”.
Regionalism is not going to happen. Nobody wants to give up power, and the constitution is very hard to change.
I would add that, for now, those ideologies have strong footholds even in supposedly deep Red states, as many commenters have pointed out. Regionalism is no sure fire cure.