Should the nation go down the drain?

Last month I was on a family Zoom call. Remarking how amazing it was to see family in three countries and two continents, the patriarch said, “When the telegraph reached Texas to Maine, Thoreau asked, ‘But what do Maine and Texas have to say to each other?’”

I remarked, “He was prophetic.”

Seven years after Thoreau made his observation in Walden ( here’s the exact quote), Maine and Texas were on different sides of the Civil War. I wonder if Maine and Texas ever did have anything to say to each other. If one left the Union, would the other miss it?

I’m writing this on July 7, the birthday of the late science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, born in 1907. In a 1961 speech, he said,

“I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don’t think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can’t save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!”

If a national government must sacrifice the people’s freedom to preserve itself, it doesn’t deserve to exist. While the U.S. no longer has an active draft, I agree with Heinlein that some prices are too high to save the country, such as endless wars and mass surveillance.