What Has 'The Union' Ever Done for Colorado?

by Mark R. Crovelli

The main argument trotted out by defenders of giant, super-armed governments is that such states offer vital protection to the peoples they claim to protect. Thus, according to this argument, the gigantic war machine stationed in Washington D.C. (or, more accurately, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, Japan, etc.) stands as an indispensable bulwark against imminent foreign invasion that keeps the individual people living under its umbrella safe from attack from, inter alia, the German Kaiser, the Japanese, the Germans again, the Soviets, the "terrorists," Iraq, Iran, etc.

Now, it may be excusable for the egotistical governing class in Washington D.C. to indulge themselves with this twaddle, but for Coloradoans there is no excuse. Indeed, it only takes a few minuets of historical reminiscence to realize that this is not only false with regard to the state of Colorado, but the very reverse of the truth. Instead of protecting Coloradoans from vague foreign threats, the federal government of the United States has, from the birth of Colorado to the present, actually made Coloradoans the targets of foreign aggression. In other words, while the federal government has been piously claiming to protect Coloradoans since the mid-19^th century, it has actually done nothing but put them in grave danger.

The history of the federal government’s wonton endangerment of Coloradoans’ lives begins with the War Between the States. (Actually, if we are to be thorough, the federal government’s disregard for Coloradoans’ lives begins with the Mexican American War, when the U.S. government assumed responsibility for the "protection" of the people then living in Colorado from Mexico. In subsequent years, the "protection" afforded to the indigenous Coloradoans turned out to be virtually synonymous with "ethnic cleansing" and "extermination." But I digress). When Lincoln decided to invade and lay waste the South in order to "preserve the Union," Colorado was not yet a state. But, the population was steadily growing, thanks to the discovery of gold, and especially silver, in the Rocky Mountains in 1859.

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