THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

There is reason why the Book of Judges is followed by the Book of Kings.

As the Soviet Union wobbled, its component nations threatened to secede. There was a series of cartoons portraying Estonia as a bunch of Confederates, all drunk and singing Dixie. The columnists made it clear that the Soviets didn't know about a free country, that you were not free to just pull out.

Lincoln would get you.

That hilarity went right down the media Memory Hole.

Estonia DID seceded, and almost every republic followed it.

One of the endless things the media did not know was that the Soviet Constitution included the right to secede. The Soviet Constitution, adopted in 1936 under Comrade Stalin, made the US Constitution look oppressive. It gave total freedom of everything, including the right of any component republic to secede.

Nobody in the USSR was fooled by the Soviet Constitution.

At least nobody who survived.

You survived only if you knew that the 1936 document was being interpreted by Comrade Stalin.

A couple of years earlier Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. The Weimar Constitution allowed the Chancellor, with the President, to declare a state of emergency and make himself dictator. During the First and Second World Wars, Britain did the same thing. There were no elections and no Parliaments. A multiparty Cabinet took over dictatorial powers.

So when President Hindenburg died, Hitler held an election, actually a referendum, in making himself also President. He stated flatly that "This will be the last election in Germany for a thousand years."

In other words, Hitler obeyed the letter of the Weimar Constitution, not the original intent. The original intent was not in line with the New Order. When he held both offices, he simply imposed a perfectly constitutional emergency rule on Germany.

Forever.

The reason no one in the media was truly aware of this right to secede was because it violated the position on which America is supposedly based, the "one nation, indivisible" line.

Not that long ago the President of China visited the White House. He demanded that, since the United States had recognized a One China Policy, they should either allow China to rule Formosa or that the portraits of Lincoln in the White House be taken down.

Nobody shouted Liberty, Equality and Fraternity more loudly than Robespierre.

He interpreted those words and enforced his interpretation.

Which is where the Terror came from.

The Gettysburg Address simply erased the Preamble to the Constitution and substituted the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Any history professor who says that is likely to be fired in the name of Academic Freedom.

Once I say that, everybody nods and says we all learned that in school.

So why doesn't anybody but me SAY that?