Declare independence from Oregon's abusive state government

The governed must withdraw their consent to subjugation

A view of buildings housing Oregon state agencies in Salem, from the Capitol Building.

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

— Declaration of Independence, referring to King George III of England.

Oregonians find themselves, 248 years after the Declaration of Independence, the subjects of a ruler the excesses of which would absolutely broil Thomas Jefferson’s breeches. That ruler is not one person, but the state government, which in jealous service to its own aims devours Oregonians’ dwindling supply of moral, social and economic substance. It is our duty to not only declare but effectuate our independence from, and superiority over, the state.

The state’s “swarms of officers” are titularly controlled by the people we elect, from time to time, but in truth our state government mostly grinds along, protecting and enriching its own with little regard to the rest of us. It is, increasingly, an entity distinct from and, in practice, superior to the public. It rarely operates at the consent of the governed; the governed exist only pursuant to the state’s consent.

Oregon’s current elected figurehead of state government, Tina Kotek, is not so different from those who preceded her. She promises to make the state do things Oregonians want, like “clean up the damn trash.” She spends millions to achieve those goals, but the achievement is most often limited to the press release heralding the spending, as though the spending, and not the cleaning, were the point.

The state exerts mastery over those elected to control it by ensuring, via public employee unions’ campaign contributions, that the big incentives point toward doing the bidding of the people who work for the state. When push comes to shove, cleaning up the damn trash is secondary to protecting the state employees who seem infinitely incapable of cleaning up the trash, or doing much of anything at all.

Jefferson envisioned a government that exists for the sole purpose of protecting the fundamental rights of the governed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The just powers of the government arise from the consent of the governed. Because the governed are the source of all authority for the government, they possess the power to change it.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, slaying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Oregonians have gradually ceded our sovereignty to our state government, and now neither the state government nor Oregonians think there’s anything wrong with that. We believe that’s just the way it is.

But there is something horribly, fatally wrong with it. For it is the people’s abdication of their proper place atop their government that has allowed Oregon’s state government to fail the people so comprehensively, consistently and catastrophically. Oregonians care a great deal about quality public education, safe streets and a reasonable balance between earnings and cost of living. Individuals working for the state care about those things, too, but the state as an entity continually fails to deliver them, or more to the point, get out of the way to allow Oregonians to deliver them. Because the state is optimized to benefit the state, not the people governed by the state.

In 1776, facing a foreign ruler over which the colonial governed exerted no real control, the way to institute a new government in America was revolution. Oregonians are fortunate, thanks to the acts of Jefferson and his contemporaries, to possess the power, despite all appearances, to change our form of government through peaceful means. Our system, if not our practice, gives us the tools to right the inverted power structure that plagues us.

To do so, Oregonians must first declare that we are distinct from and superior to our state government. We need not continue to suffer the pilfering of a ravenous state government that repeatedly and objectively fails us. The moral decay that attends repeated subjugation to an incompetent and greedy state government must stop. We can stop it. We must stop it. We are Americans.

Then Oregonians must vote for candidates who have credibly made that same declaration. Anyone who has helped the state deprive us of our sovereignty must go. The question should be, when faced with a decision, will this candidate or measure or policy empower and enrich the state, or the people? It is a binary choice. A zero sum game. There is only so much sovereignty to go around.

Democrats have at least as much to gain from declaring their independence from the state as do Republicans. Liberalism is based on the protection of individual rights against an oppressive government. Democracy is consent of the governed. The party that believes government can and should help people requires, or should require, a government that does in fact help people.

But Oregon Democrats, as much as any in the country, have allowed progressivism to supplant liberalism as the motivating philosophy of their party. Progressivism insists upon the superiority of government over the governed, for it is the people - the “experts” - who work in government who know how to make things better for everyone.

But progressivism is, by definition, a top-down ideology. Its proponents, many of whom profit from a government flush with cash and power, are loud and well-positioned within the Democratic Party and therefore state government. They retain power by appealing to liberal Democrats’ desire to help, and by contrasting themselves with real or stand-in Republican alternatives.

Rank and file Oregon Democrats retain more of their liberal roots. They see the state’s manifold failures, and they hate them. They believe that better leaders can deliver better results. That will happen only if the new leaders are not beholden to the state.

Which brings us back to the Declaration. Independence from our state government does not mean voting Republican or voting Democrat or joining Idaho. It means asserting ourselves as the proper sovereigns of our state, against the protestations of the usurpers.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is our right. It is our duty.

Happy Independence Day.