By Andrew K. Boyle

Much has changed, quickly, in the Sooner State. Oklahoma was thrust into the national spotlight when Forbes magazine dubbed Oklahoma City as being the "Most Recession Proof City." This title triggered a flood of businesses and people relocating here, bringing with them the resources and human capital to diversify an agricultural and energy based economy. In the past few years the State has famously acquired an NBA franchise and has established a bio-tech corridor comprised mostly of ex-California based firms.

The movement of people and capital into Oklahoma from states with basket-case economies is confirmation of the virtues held by the citizenry, and demanded of elected officials. Oklahoma has attracted this growth by being one of the few states that still functions in a sustainable way. Oklahoma is a state where people can still afford to do business, and it is a place families can still afford to pursue the American dream. Oklahoma has not allowed bubbles to overtake the housing market; likewise the citizenry has demanded that the government avoid the debt bubbles that have ravaged most other State budgets. The simple pursuit of a fair State that upholds the rule of law, maintains a business friendly marketplace, and allows the imbued virtue of individuals to fashion communities still resembling "Mayberry" has been rewarded of late with an economy that continues to grow in defiance of the national economy.

Globalization has come to the Sooner State, and its people have remained unchanged by it. The economy has been remade within the tight bounds of a citizenry maintaining a firm reliance on fundamental, unchanging virtues that this nation was at one time founded upon. Oklahoma today is likened to the townships of New England that Tocqueville described as the key to Jacksonian America. Oklahoma is a strong case for Federalism, counter to the madness consuming Washington and many States; one State can abstain from the suicide pact and continue on.

Oklahoma has passed the first test of Globalization, now it faces a second test. Today the world wide economy is being pushed to the brink of total collapse, and this debt animal is now hunting on our shores. Sovereign States within the European Union are being forced into bailing out the dysfunctional and bankrupt states in the Union, and it is pushing Europe close to dissolution. How long will the German people tolerate being forced to pay for the excesses of the people of Greece?

As Europe moves towards collapse, America is showing the early signs of a similar arrangement. States like California and New York are beginning warned of pending bankruptcy and have started to float the idea of needing a federal bailout. This notion is being floated at the same time Oklahoma has joined an alliance of States suing the federal government in an attempt to block ObamaCare from being implemented. These States are trying to stop the federal government from forcing them into actions that would prove fatal to their respective economies; Oklahoma must prepare a similar defense for the upcoming State debt battle.

A strategy of regional and ideological partnership with like minded States that have not participated in the suicidal spending of other crazy States is the only way States like Oklahoma can protect themselves from being forced to pay for other States impossible budgets. A partnership of States must form a voting block in the Senate, and this union must be large enough to wield effectively a veto vote of any attempts to maintain one State on the backs of others. Oklahoma does have some natural partners in the Southern States and much of the mid-west and mountain region. This alliance should be fortified now by supporting Federalism in any form presented nationally. For instance, these States should support proposals like Rick Perry's energy plan which seeks to leave authorization of energy exploration up to individual States to regulate and removes the power to stop exploration from the EPA. In matters like this and in opposing ObamaCare, States like Oklahoma are defending their right to govern themselves, and are building the case to continue in such a manner.

The importance of this can not be diminished, for the alternatives that will present themselves in a world in which States like Oklahoma are forced into paying for the mistakes of New York are very scary and violent. It will not take long under a bailout arrangement for all of the wealth to be stripped from the Sooner State, and it will not have solved the problems of New York. Dysfunctional States will continue to be dysfunctional even after being bailed out by Oklahoma, and will continue to spend in ways that demand huge and unsustainable amounts of wealth transfers. States like Oklahoma will face the grim choice between unending indenture and succession. The violent warfare such a move would trigger is a world none want to inhabit.

The system of Free States, that has been the heart of America since its inception, is today threatened by revolutionary forces seeking to fundamentally transform America. It would be foolish for Oklahoma to wait for the culture in Washington to repent and change. It is up to Oklahoma to seek alliances that preserve the Right of States to govern themselves, and thus erect a limit to the spending binge in Washington D.C. and in the more suicidal States. Just as the soul of Oklahoma was challenged in the age of globalization, it must today protect its character and its wealth in an America that has neither. It is States like Oklahoma that idea of America still lives, and it is required of these States that they maintain the Union from those who would force its dissolution. Just as Lincoln saw America as the last, best hope for freedom; Oklahoma is the last, best hope for America.