The merits of a Confederate Constitutional Republic

Each of these three words has a deep meaning explained below...and ALL THREE are required!

Photo by Lily Miller on Unsplash

When did you come to THIS realisation?

For me personally, it was during the events of the Canadian Freedom Convoy and the response by Freeland (who was the actual Prime Minister of Canada at the time) through her front man JT (a.k.a. “Castro Junior”).

I started to have such thoughts well before the events of January/February 2022 given what was happening at the time in my own country Australia:

However, seeing very similar actions (if not a lot worse) being ordered by the Canadian government, as well as many others around the so called “free world” and all at the same time, convinced me without a shadow of a doubt that something TRULY nefarious was taking place.

I was contemplating for awhile what I should write about in the 100th post since starting this publication (this was my very first post) and then this comment by a Substacker called Janey B gave me the answer.

I would have loved to tag Janey and thank her publicly for giving me the idea for this post but unfortunately she blocked me for some reason. Oh well…

Before we get any further, there is a fundamental question that needs to be asked at this point which is:

Do we need government?

More specifically:

1. Do the benefits of having some sort of government outweigh the potential risks in such a structure existing? and

2. Can these risks be effectively mitigated or neutralised altogether?

My personal opinion, which I will spend the rest of this article articulating, is that the answer to both questions above is YES.

However, before I get into this, I thought it may be worthwhile to bring the counterargument of not having a government or state at all.

One person who has spent significant effort articulating the case for “no government” and has produced an impressive volume of work on this topic is

Etienne de la Boetie2

with this particular post by him providing a good starting point for understanding his argument:

Gov't is Illegitimate & Criminal - Voluntaryism is the Answer - Etienne at the Peoples Reset

The Network State

Another aspect worth mentioning in this context is the idea of a “Network State”.

This concept first emerged following a publication of this book in 2022:

The author

Balaji

Srinivasan, who is the former CTO of Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and General Partner at Venture Capital giant

a16z

(who are also major investors in Substack in case you didn’t know), defined the “Network State” as follows:

A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.

He also articulates the idea in this image:

The basic premise of the book is that due to the recent advances in digital technology, new state structures can be created which will work much better for their citizens than the current nation states, while doing a better job at maintaining their rights and freedoms and all for a much lower cost (State of D.O.G.E anyone?).

The idea is complex and beyond the scope of this article but if you want to research this further for yourself, I suggest you check out the book itself which is available to read or to download free of charge.

One existing country which seems to have adopted the concept of the “Network State” with some degree of enthusiasm is Palau, an island country in the western Pacific Ocean.

Its President Surangel Whipps Jr gave this interview in February 2023 (so over two years ago now) to Mr. Srinivasan who first articulated this concept of the “network state”:

One component which appears to play a major role in the setup known as a “network state” is DIGITAL ID (albeit a decentralised one). As Mr. Srinivasan writes in his book:

So if one wants modernity constrained by cryptography, the concept of the “social smart contract” is one way to achieve consensual, limited government – to limit what a government can do by tightly limiting its access to your digital identity and resources, much like you can control exactly how much you deposit onto a centralized exchange.

Don’t know about you but as soon as I hear the term “Digital ID”, I start experiencing involuntary convulsions.

These involuntary convulsions got much stronger after I came across THESE tweets from the father of the “Network State”:

One video that made me personally convinced that the Network State concept is not quite as its presented and is either nonsensical or outright nefarious is this presentation

Balaji

gave on “Technodemocracy” in which he also referred to his “good friend” (his words, not mine) Vivek Ramaswamy, who is clearly not as he seems and also how his “Technodemocracy” can be used by Elon Musk to build a “Network State” on Mars.

Have a listen if you want to see how utter nonsense can be packaged extremely well to sound almost legit.

There are many other major concerns with this model of the “network state” and this short video does a great job summarising the key points:

If you prefer to read instead of watching videos, I recommend these two posts from

Dave Karpf

&

Gabriel

:

The Tech Barons have a blueprint drawn in crayon. They have not thought any of this through.

Tools of the Technocracy: #12 Network States

I definitely share the concerns raised in the above video and posts but from my perspective it boils down to a much simpler point:

Do I (and you the reader) want to live in a state that is underpinned by digital technologies such as blockchain in which decisions are either powered by AI or outright made by AI on behalf on their corporate masters?

Is this a better model for a state than the current nation states we have today? Is it MORE or LESS pro-human and does it do a BETTER or WORSE job at facilitating the flourishing of human freedom and wellbeing?

My personal opinion is that the “Network state” model is kinda like fixing a broken bone in your foot by cutting off the foot altogether and replacing it with a mechanical prosthetic…

My suggestion

As I already mentioned above, I posit that the benefits of having some sort of (human-run) government DO outweigh the potential risks and also that such risks CAN indeed be mitigated.

While I don’t think they can be neutralised altogether, I think the model I propose below brings us close enough to this point to warrant further discussion.

The main reason why I think the benefits of having some sort of government outweigh the potential risks revolve primarily around one specific function of government:

Protecting its territory and those who live there from invasion.

Unfortunately, humanity as a species is very very far at this point from a stage in which we can all coexist with each other peacefully on this “blue spaceship hurtling through space” (to quote Karl Sagan) and violence (and often very very extreme violence) between groups of people is the norm rather than the exception.

This may change one day (and I very much hope it does) but we are definitely nowhere near that at this point.

In the current state of affairs, a nation state with a government and armed force at its disposal is the most effective (and arguably only) means for residents of one geographic location to protect themselves from violence initiated by residents of another geographic location.

So we do still need a government for that purpose (and potentially a few other secondary purposes) but what form of governance is best?

I started floating publicly the idea of Australia (where I live) adopting the model of a Confederate Constitutional Republic in May last year:

I have repeated it on multiple occasions since, including in early February this year when I posted this:

This note resulted in the following reply by

Christine

:

I found the above reply extremely valuable and pertinent and I replied with this:

In the Australian context specifically, I would also like to include this quote from an article written by

ExcessDeathsAU

as I think it adds important context to understanding the current psyche of the average Australian “normie”:

When I said “even further” in the reply above to Christine, I was referring to an exchange I had only a few days prior with Janey (who I already mentioned above) which started as a result of this note I posted:

Janey replied with this comment (screenshot because I cannot embed as I have been blocked by that user):

This prompted a fairly extensive exchange but here are the two most pertinent parts for the topic of this article (again, screenshot because I cannot embed as I have been blocked by that user):

To which Janey replied (very astutely I might add):

Being very much a detail-oriented person myself and after also having the exchange with Christine shown above, I knew I found the idea for my next (and 100th) post, especially given that I realised this is quite a complex concept which I have been floating publicly for some time but have never provided a proper explanation for.

So here goes.

The problem with Democracy

The idea of the “majority” voting for a particular candidate or a political party and thus giving them the power to do (almost) anything they want until the next iteration of this ‘ritual’ has shown to be very problematic indeed within days (if not hours) of Trump being sworn in for his second term.

Things didn’t get much better from there:

Abuse of the inherent ‘features’ of a democracy obviously didn’t start with Trump (in either of his terms) or Biden or those prior to them and has happened in many other countries, not just the US.

The rise of Hitler in the German Weimar Republic is obviously one very well known example of how the inherent weaknesses of democracy can lead to pretty horrific outcomes all around:

What is worth adding in this context is the fact that this is not some specific ‘bug’ that existed specifically in the democracy of the German Weimar Republic and was then exploited by a ruthless and shrewd ‘hacker’ but is rather a ‘feature’ (albeit a not very well known one) that was (and still is to this day) ALWAYS there ready to be ‘exploited’ by ANYONE who is aware of its existence.

In the cybersecurity world (which is where I come from), we would say that Democracy has a “built-in vulnerability” in it…or a “backdoor”.

Here is an interesting take on Democracy by founding Partner of Tech VC giant

a16z

(and a major part of the tech ‘elite’ steering the ship that is the second Trump administration and whose wife Laura is the founder of a social venture capital fund with strong ties to none other than Bill Gates)

Marc Andreessen

:

The premise of what is said in the above video is that a democracy ALWAYS results in the emergence of a “ruling elite” and while the founding fathers of the United States tried to mitigate this ‘feature’ (again, NOT a ‘bug’) in democracy by having a representative democracy (instead of a direct democracy), I think anyone with eyes and who has not been in a coma over the last few years (and decades) can see that this experiment hasn’t produced the result that was originally intended…and not just in the US.

This post by

Frank Wright

does an excellent job dissecting the inherent flaws of “Liberal Democracy”:

WHAT IS "LIBERAL DEMOCRACY"?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “Democracy” as follows:

Government by the people : rule of the majority

This sounds pretty easy to understand and may also sound like a pretty good form of government to have but as the great

G. Edward Griffin

said already back in the late 1960s, it can also be “deadly”:

Now as much as I have the greatest respect for Mr. Griffin, the notion of a “constitutional republic”, as discussed in the clip above, wasn’t his original idea. As a matter of fact, the person who first thought of that (at least in the American context) was already long dead by the time Mr. Griffin said the above.

If you listen to this 1991 interview with the legendary conspiracy researcher William “Bill” Cooper, you will hear Bill mention something towards the very end of this video about one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a guy by the name of Benjamin Franklin who you may know from the US$100 note.

Bill tells the story of a journalist asking Franklin as he emerged from the constitutional convention, convened to write a constitution for the British colonies in North America as they were about to become the fledgling United States of America:

“What did you write in there Ben?”

Franklin replied:

A Republic…if you can keep it.

The “If you can keep it” part is interesting when you consider that Franklin was a high ranking Freemason so you could say he was certainly very acutely aware of what his “brothers” were capable of and the threat they could pose to the Republic which he and his fellow Founding Fathers (most of whom were fellow Freemasons) just “wrote” during the constitutional convention.

In this piece I will focus on the word REPUBLIC and more specifically : a very specific kind of Republic (as there are quite a few) which is a:

Confederate Constitutional Republic.

The above term is comprised of three words with each of them requiring full understanding and context in order to properly grasp the idea:

---

1. Confederate

2. Constitutional

3. Republic

---

The rest of this article will be dedicated to doing just that but before we move on I would like to also point out that, in case you were not aware, the full text of the US Constitution does not mention the term “democracy” even once.

Furthermore, section 4 of Article IV in the US Constitution states in no uncertain terms:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

The United States was NEVER meant to be a “democracy” and not only that but its founding fathers would have found the mere suggestion of their ‘creation’ being a “democracy” quite abhorrent after studying what has happened to every democracy that came before them starting from ancient Greece where this term was first coined.

I will explain the meaning of these terms starting from the bottom up (so starting from #3 above and going up) as the last one is the easiest to explain properly and with each of the other two adding a further layer of complexity.

What is a REPUBLIC?

This was already explained accurately and succinctly by Mr. Griffin in the video above but to reiterate again:

A Republic is a LIMITED democracy.

In the context of a Constitutional Republic (which is what is discussed next), the limits are set by the constitution.

These limits are non-negotiable and can only be changed through mass consensus which is what is required to make any amendments to the document which is at the very essence of a Constitutional Republic (and after which it is named).

What is a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC?

In a Constitutional Republic the constitution reigns supreme and sits ABOVE any branch (legislative, executive, judiciary).

In addition to that, making changes to the constitution is EXTREMELY hard and requires mass consensus (at least 75% in favour and ideally even more).

The problem I have with most constitutions of supposedly “free nations” is that they are designed around the wrong premise.

To use again a cybersecurity term: they are based around “blacklisting” instead of “whitelisting”.

Let me explain this in layman terms.

A novel approach to drafting a constitution

Any and all constitutions of so called “liberal democracies” in the world today are built around the concept of granting their citizens with rights by stipulating what their government CAN NOT do. For example:

1. The government CAN NOT deny free speech;

2. The government CAN NOT arrest people without probable cause;

3. The government CAN NOT discriminate against people based on their sex, race or religious belief.

The existing constitutions are underpinned by the notion that the government is omnipotent and thus needs to be restricted by stipulating what it CAN NOT do (i.e. “blacklisting”).

This model starts from the basic premise that governments have MORE power than the people governed by it.

I propose to completely flip this model on its head and instead tell the government through the constitution what it CAN do (i.e. “whitelisting”).

The constitution under the model I propose outlines what the government CAN do.

Anything not expressly mentioned in the constitution is STRICTLY PROHIBITED for the government to get involved in in any way, shape or form…EVER (unless a formal constitutional amendment is passed).

So the constitution under the setup I propose is underpinned by the notion that the government is impotent and cannot do anything without being told first to do something as well as how exactly to do that.

Think of it as an IKEA flat pack without an instruction sheet…😉

A ‘whitelisting model’ for a constitution is the most effective way to limit the power of government while keeping it lean and efficient with minimal Bureaucracy.

In a Confederate Constitutional Republic, the powers of the central government will be very minimal indeed and should revolve around the following areas and NOTHING else:

• National Defence (including a provision in the constitution which says the armed forces can only be used to repel an invasion by a foreign armed force and NOTHING else);

• Foreign Policy & Trade relations;

• Immigration (foreign tourists, business people, students, temporary migrants and people coming in to live permanently); and

• Managing the funds (a.k.a. budget) allocated for the above functions…and these functions ONLY!

That’s it. Nothing else!

With the last point of funds/budget, the central government in my proposed set-up has NO revenue collection mechanism (taxation or otherwise).

To be more blunt: they have NO way of raising any money themselves. None.

Instead, the are entirely 100% reliant on funds provided to them by the states/provinces/cantons/whatever you want to call it which comprise the Confederacy.

The above is a CRUCIAL point to wrap your head around before moving on to the next section and without which it will be hard for you to fully grasp what I will be outlining next…so go back and read the above paragraph as much as you need until it clicks.

Think of the central government as a service provider to the states/provinces/cantons/whatever…kinda like a plumber, mechanic or electrician.

They are HIRED to do a specific job and are paid for doing that specific job every time they do it.

If they don’t do a good job, those who hired them can decide they want to hire someone else next time or even do the job themselves.

You may not fully understand yet how this works in practice and that’s ok as I explain that in the next section.

However, you do need to understand the general premise before reading on…so please make sure you do.

What is a CONFEDERACY?

After covering ingredient #3 (Republic) and ingredient #2 (Constitutional) from the ‘ingredient list’ I outlined above, it is time to address ingredient #1 which I find is the most challenging for people to understand…but probably not for the reasons you think.

Here is a very typical response I usually get from people when I utter the word “confederacy”:

This was my reply in this specific instance:

Here is a note I posted on the very same topic a few days prior:

To which I received the following reply:

Now we’re talking!!

Because the above note seems to cut off at the most important bit, I am including it again:

The current Swiss Confederation evolved from the Old Swiss Confederacy formed in 1291 and is one of the earliest Confederate structures in history, preceding the CSA by almost 600 years!

Unfortunately, the term “Confederacy” is now associated with very negative connotations due to formation of the Confederate States of America (CSA a.k.a. “the south”) which resulted in the American civil war, which was very bloody indeed (like most wars are).

However, if we were to use again the “bug” versus “feature” analogy, a civil war occurring following (or as a result of) the formation of a confederacy is a “bug” and NOT a “feature” given the Swiss experience over the 700+ years as well as that of many many (many) other Confederacies going as far back as the 14th century BC!

Furthermore, did you know that initially the plan was for the United States to also be a Confederacy?

This "first constitution of the United States" established a "league of friendship" for the 13 sovereign and independent states.

Each state retained "every Power...which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States. The Articles of Confederation also outlined a Congress with representation not based on population – each state would have one vote in Congress.

Ratification by all 13 states was necessary to set the Confederation into motion. Because of disputes over representation, voting, and the western lands claimed by some states, ratification was delayed. When Maryland ratified it on March 1, 1781, the Congress of the Confederation came into being.

Just a few years after the Revolutionary War, however, James Madison and George Washington were among those who feared their young country was on the brink of collapse. With the states retaining considerable power, the central government had insufficient power to regulate commerce. It could not tax and was generally impotent in setting commercial policy. Nor could it effectively support a war effort. Congress was attempting to function with a depleted treasury; and paper money was flooding the country, creating extraordinary inflation.

The states were on the brink of economic disaster; and the central government had little power to settle quarrels between states. Disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the country apart.

In May of 1787, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. They shuttered the windows of the State House (Independence Hall) and swore secrecy so they could speak freely.

By mid-June the delegates had decided to completely redesign the government. After three hot, summer months of highly charged debate, the new Constitution was signed, which remains in effect today.

The characteristics of a Confederacy

This excellent article on Confederations describes the reasons to form a Confederacy as follows:

A confederal system is ordinarily established through the voluntary coming together of different sovereign states to form a league or alliance for purposes of mutual aid and defense against foreign aggression.

By uniting, smaller states and political communities can mount larger and more effective defense forces. They also can establish peace and security within the confederation by setting forth rules and procedures that prevent war among themselves. These were important motivations for the drafters of the U.S. Articles of Confederation.

Hopefully the above is enough to at least get you to start thinking differently about a Confederacy and beyond the American “South” and the civil that has erupted following their secession.

If anything, I’d argue that if the States which comprised the American South chose voluntarily and without any coercion from anyone to secede in order to maintain their customs and economic models (which relied heavily on slave labour unfortunately), the fact that the rest of the union denied the people in those states from doing so does amount to an aggression of sort however it is also worth mentioning that it was the CSA forces who fired the first shot when they opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

So, as is often the case, there are NO “good guys” and “bad guys” in this story, only different shades of grey (i.e. a bit of good and a bit of bad).

This same article also outlines the following common characteristics of a Confederation/Confederacy:

1. No Authority to Legislate for Individuals - a confederal government cannot tax, arrest, or conscript individuals into the military or regulate commerce among its member states. It can act only through its member states.

2. No Independent Revenue Sources - a confederal government, having no tax powers, possesses no independent sources of revenue to support its operations. Instead, it must rely on contributions or dues payments by its member states.

3. Sovereignty Retained by the Member States - no sovereignty or attributes of sovereignty are usually vested in a confederation, and a confederation cannot act as a single sovereign entity. Instead, sovereignty is retained by the member states, and the confederation acts only at the behest of the member states.

4. Member-State Citizenship - individuals usually retain citizenship in the separate member states and also identify patriotically with the member states because there is no citizenship in the confederation

5. Written Document - A confederation is usually established by, and based on, a written document. This document is not a constitution; instead, it is described as articles, convention, treaty, or some other term. The document states the purposes of the confederation, the terms of confederation, the structure and procedures of the confederal government, and, most important, the specific powers that can be exercised by the confederation.

6. Expressly Delegated Powers - A confederation usually possesses only limited, specific, and expressly delegated powers. That is, a confederal government can exercise only those powers that are expressly (i.e., explicitly) stated in the document (e.g., articles or treaty) that establishes the confederation. It can only do what it is expressly permitted to do; it cannot broaden its powers through interpretation.

7. Equal Decision-Making Representation - In a confederation, all member states ordinarily have equal representation in the confederation's decision-making council, and each member state ordinarily has one vote in the decision making council.

8. Extraordinary Voting Rules - Frequently, majority voting is rejected in confederal decision-making councils in favour of super-majority and unanimous voting.

9. Secession - Ordinarily, member-states of a confederation are permitted to leave or secede from the confederation.

Have another careful read of the above nine characteristics again focusing on the bolded parts. What do you think about the idea of a Confederacy now?

Next is my interpretation of the above characteristics as they pertain to my proposed structure of Confederate Constitutional Republic.

The characteristics of a Confederacy and their translation in a Confederate Constitutional Republic

1. No Authority to Legislate for Individuals - remains as-in in my proposed structure. The central government can only work within the areas of responsibility assigned to it by the members and ANY decision which affects individuals (for example: conscription) will still need to be ratified by the member states/provinces/cantons.

2. No Independent Revenue Sources - I already discussed that above. The central government has no legal power, abilities or mechanism to impose ANY taxation. Period, end of story. It gets paid by the members to do the specific tasks discussed above and NOTHING else

3. Sovereignty Retained by the Member States - In my proposed structure, the central government of a Confederacy CAN act as a “single sovereign entity” but ONLY within its assigned areas of responsibility (i.e. defence and international relations). However, the member states/provinces/cantons retain the right to override any decisions their citizens do not approve of and if for example the central government signs an international treaty like which fails to gain the support of the majority of its members, it is not ratified. As a result, any international treaty proposed to be signed by the Confederacy on behalf of its members, requires their prior approval. Can you see how this works extremely well in something like the Pandemic accord?

4. Member-State Citizenship - I propose that in order to simplify things and reduce costs, all residents of any of the member states/provinces/cantons hold the Citizenship of the Confederacy (similar to how it is in Switzerland at the moment) but ONLY while said state/province/canton maintains its membership in the confederacy (see final point #9 below).

5. Written Document - I think the name of the document which underpins a Confederacy is pure semantics and do propose to use the term “constitution” because it better aligns it with the “Republic” part of this structure. As far as: “The document states the purposes of the confederation, the terms of confederation, the structure and procedures of the confederal government, and, most important, the specific powers that can be exercised by the confederation.”, I am perfectly happy with that provided everything is drafted based on the concept of “whitelisting” as discussed above instead of “blacklisting” which also ties in with the next point below

6. Expressly Delegated Powers - “A confederation usually possesses only limited, specific, and expressly delegated powers. That is, a confederal government can exercise only those powers that are expressly (i.e., explicitly) stated in the document (e.g., articles or treaty) that establishes the confederation. It can only do what it is expressly permitted to do; it cannot broaden its powers through interpretation.” or in one word: “Whitelisting”! Nothing more to add really.

7. Equal Decision-Making Representation - “In a confederation, all member states ordinarily have equal representation in the confederation's decision-making council, and each member state ordinarily has one vote in the decision making council.” Nothing more to add here as well.

8. Extraordinary Voting Rules - “Frequently, majority voting is rejected in confederal decision-making councils in favour of super-majority and unanimous voting.” ties in perfectly to what I already mentioned above about making changes to the constitution EXTREMELY hard by requiring mass consensus (which I propose to be a simple majority support in at least 75% of the member states/provinces/cantons).

9. Secession - “Ordinarily, member-states of a confederation are permitted to leave or secede from the confederation.” This is a CORE feature which underpins this entire structure. Any member state/province/canton can leave at ANY time if its people decide that this is what they want and there is nothing any of the other members can do about it. I propose that each member state/province/canton gets to decide for themselves whether such a decision to secede will require a simple majority or a super majority.

Another aspect I want to highlight in this context is that the power sits with the lower levels of governance and diminishes as you go up while at the same time changing the composition of the people at that level of governance outside normal elections (a.k.a. “recall elections” which I touch on in a separate section below) is easiest at the bottom (as they have most of the power) and becomes harder as you move up (as they have less power).

How does all this come together?

This paragraph from an article by

Elle Griffin

serves as a good high level overview in my opinion:

Here is the full article if you’d like to check it out:

Decouple federal government from nation-states

A specific example in the Australian context:

As I live in Australia, I am most familiar with the structure we have here so have decided to use that to illustrate how all of the above can work in the Australian context.

For the benefit of non-Australians, we have what is essentially a three tier governance structure:

1. Federal Government which is in-charge of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the Australian Federal Police (AFP which can probably be equated to the US Marshals Service) and the two spy agencies of ASIO for domestic intelligence gathering (equivalent to the FBI in the US and MI5 in the UK) and ASIS which is the foreign spy agency (equivalent to the CIA in the US and MI6 in the UK).

2. State Governments which are in-charge of the Police force. To make it easier for Americans to understand, Australia has “State Troopers” ONLY and no local Police departments in addition to that.

3. Local Councils/ Shires. If you happen to be American, the best way to understand these are to think of them as Counties but without local sheriffs/Police departments as already mentioned above.

So under the proposed structure, what we currently know in Australia as Local councils/ Shires will have more power than what we currently know as state governments and state governments will have more power than what we currently know as the federal government.

What this means in practical terms is that state governments can only make decisions on matters delegated to them by the majority of local councils in that state and the Federal government can only make decisions on matters the majority of member states have decided to delegate to them as per the constitution.

Furthermore: any lower level/component of governance can SECEDE at ANY time and go their own way. The association at the higher levels is purely voluntary.

So, if the majority of people in a particular council/shire decide they don’t want to be part of the state they are currently in, they can SECEDE. Whether that will require simple or super majority is up to of people of each council/shire.

Once a majority in a council/shire decide to secede, they can either choose to join another state (if geographically feasible), form their own new state (either with or without other neighbouring councils/shires) or go for full sovereignty.

It is up to the people residing there and no state government (not to mention the Confederacy government) get any say on the matter.

The exact same thing goes for States. If the majority (simple or super majority is up for each state to decide) of councils/shires in a particular state decide they want to secede from the Confederacy, they just DO SO and there is nothing the government of the Confederacy or any of the other states can do about it.

The councils/shires in the seceding state who don’t like this decision have the option to themselves leave the seceding state and either form their own state that will remain in the Confederacy or go their own way.

This may all seem quite chaotic at first but I suggest you read the above few paragraphs several times and you will hopefully see that this can absolutely work out, especially with the ‘special bolt-on feature’ I discuss in the next section.

If you still think this makes no sense or just want further clarifications, please leave a comment to discuss this further. This will be very helpful given the fact I consider this entire article (and especially this particular section) as a “live working document” of sorts which is to be better refined based on your feedback.

Recall elections

I consider this an essential ‘bolt-on feature’ to the structure described above and without which a Confederate Constitutional Republic simply cannot live up to its full potential.

Recall elections are defined as:

Method of election in which voters can oust elected officials before their official terms
have ended.

To illustrate it in another way, if you are not happy with the performance of your elected representatives and there are enough fellow constituents who feel the same way, you can get an ‘exchange’ at ANY time.

To use a phrase first coined in 1980 by the leader of the Australian Democrats Donald Chipp, “Recall elections” is the best way I can think of to “keep the bastards honest” consistently and repeatedly at all times.

Recall elections in the Australian context

Once again, given I most familiar with the Australian system, I will illustrate how “recall elections” can work across Australia’s three levels of government as described above.

To start with, ALL three levels of government can be subject to recall elections but the number of people required to trigger such an event goes UP and you go UP the levels and goes DOWN as you go DOWN the levels.

This makes perfect sense given there are less people at each level but even more importantly, due to the fact that as you go down the levels, the government level there (be it state or local council) has more power in terms of ultimate sovereignty and thus its MORE important to allow people to replace the elected representatives they are not happy with as those have more direct impact on their everyday lives compared to elected officials at the higher government levels.

Hopefully this makes sense. If not, please leave a comment.

Recall elections need a “fit for purpose” electoral system

With the existence of a “Recall Elections” mechanism across the board (which again, I argue is an absolute must), it is inevitable that elections will be held more often.

Furthermore, the current electoral systems across the entire (former) “free world” are deeply flawed as they can be easily manipulated and election results are forged.

The reliance on a centralised authority to maintain the electoral roll and also count the votes further exacerbates this inherent deficiency and erodes people’s trust in the electoral process, which can very rightly be described as “selections” rather than free, open and fair elections.

What is the solution?

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) of which Blockchain is just one type.

In case the above note gets cut off for you, here is the important point I am trying to articulate there:

Unfortunately, the industry has taken a definitive and undeniable turn for the dark side since that video was released and the first major public use implementation of this technology (being Bitcoin) is very problematic, to say the least….as are many of the subsequent implementations which followed it.

However, the technology itself DOES indeed have promise but the devil is in the details (as it ALWAYS is!).

While I am firmly of the opinion that certain technologies can NEVER be made safe and therefore should NEVER be allowed (mRNA, CRISPR & Artificial General Intelligence being prime examples), DLT, like most technology is merely a neutral tool with no agenda of its own and thus can be used for both evil and good (just like a hammer or a knife) and it is therefore up to us as a species to determine how it will actually be used and for what purposes.

I am making the argument that using blockchain (or any other type of DLT) to conduct elections is a much more powerful and much more appropriate user case for this technology than using it as a means of financial exchange like Bitcoin or outright financial speculation like the recent memecoins/shitcoins craze.

Here is why:

• It is significantly more transparent: ALL matters relating to casting of individual votes as well as the tallying of said votes is fully public while maintaining the anonymity of individual voters is fairly trivial.

• It is easily auditable…forever and by anyone wishing to do so: this is due to the fact that any record on a blockchain or other DLT cannot be modified after it has been initially created. This is what is referred to as immutability.

• It is very accurate: If implemented correctly, both the distribution of individual votes and their final tallying can be fully automated while the process itself can be relatively easily monitored in real-time as well as audited (either manually or through automated means) at any point after the elections have concluded.

• It is very fast: final election results can EASILY be available within a few hours to within a day or two after voting has concluded. The exact timing will depend on the specific speed of the chosen DLT in what is referred to as “Transactions Per Second” (TPS).

• It is much cheaper: given all of the above, this is probably self explanatory but the crucial point I want to add is that it requires significantly less human and other resources to complete while the chance of human error or malicious manipulation is significantly reduced (as it can be easily detected in almost real-time).

This is the gist of it but there are obviously a lot more details to it.

I actually have a fairly detailed plan for a DLT-based election voting system I have been working on for some time with a few other people.
The details are quite technical and there are some crucial aspects that are yet to be finalised so I won’t outline it here but I do want to float the idea and hear your thoughts.

There are multiple solutions that exist already for such systems which are in various stages of maturity. Here is one:

However, I find that most of them have some sort of deficiency, especially around the need to use some sort of a digital ID which is a non-starter from my perspective at this stage.

Any thoughts or suggestions you have on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Why this is needed?

I think many reading this will probably be able to answer the above question themselves but in case you are not one of them:

The current system of “democracy” and “elections/selections” has shown that not only it cannot guarantee freedom for humanity but it actually facilitates the exact opposite.

Democracies by definition turn into either Plutocracies or a Corporatist regime (which is the most common form of Fascism) which are the exact opposite of anything that can be remotely described as freedom and individual sovereignty of people over their own lives and bodies.

Worse yet, it ALWAYS (A-L-W-A-Y-S) happens.

As discussed above, it is not a “bug”, it’s a “feature”!

“Democracies” in which governments are given too much power will ALWAYS (A-L-W-Y-S) end up facilitating abuse of power such as this:

#268 - Dr William Bay’s Historic Victory Over AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency)

Click to watch

I also think the way candidates in elections obtain their funding should be completely overhauled and political parties should be banned altogether.

EVERYONE must run as an Independent. No exceptions!

This could easily be another (very lengthy) article in itself but to start with, here is a reply I wrote in response to a comment by

Influence through Confluence

:

Think local for the win!

Ultimately, the solutions are (and always will be) at the local level.

Here is one example in the Australian context:

A Growing Movement at The Local Government Level

Here is an example in the Canadian context (don’t pay too much attention to the title as it is somewhat misleading):

The scenario described in the above video may sound a bit extreme at first but if you are Canadian, think what the alternative is given your current predicament.

A Confederate Constitutional Republic is a VIABLE path forward

There are a lot of people talking about creating “parallel communities” with the idea of facilitating alternatives to the current systems/structures.

These are good ideas but ONLY if their underlying premise is to undermine, destroy and then replace the existing systems rather than merely coexisting with them.

COEXISTENCE IS NOT AN OPTION!

As an example, what are you going to do when these things come to your “parallel community”:

I don’t think they will care the slightest about your claim of being “sovereign”.

No, the current governance structures MUST be destroyed first and a Confederate Constitutional Republic is a viable structure to replace these with.

Hopefully you agree after reading this article, at least somewhat.

If not, let me know why below.

Another very important question we need to contemplate on for the post-war world is:

What is a country/nation state?

Is it something built around a common race, common religion (or both), or is it rather something built around a common value system and the willingness to defend that value system to the death if the need arises?

My argument that it is the latter. What do you think?

Closing thoughts

It has often been said that you shouldn’t underestimate the ability of a small group of people to change the world.

My addition to that will be that it does also require everyone else (or at least most) to join in as well in order to maintain said change.

Equally important, no leader is required to achieve truly amazing things. If anything, a leader can be a hinderance to true greatness.

These birds have NO “leader” and yet look at the result:

Ultimately, this all boils down to THIS TRUTH which is true for me but also for you and for anyone else on this planet who values Freedom:

I want to remain free…but I NEED YOU!

While we do need each other, we can’t ‘outsource’ our liberation and ongoing freedom (not to mention our thinking) to anyone but ourselves!

Until we understand THIS (at the deepest level possible), we cannot win in my opinion:

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To allow me to continue this work and expand it further and in pursuit of the mission to “Tell the Truth…and shame the devil”, your financial contribution is greatly appreciated.