GOP delegates at Texas’s Republican Party state convention will vote Friday on whether the state should secede from the U.S., after the idea passed a special platform committee on Wednesday.
The motion is not expected to pass the convention, but it’s a major step forward for activists with the Texas Nationalist Movement, who have long been agitating for the Lone Star State to secede from the union. The group reported a 400% increase in membership after the 2012 election, and more than 100,000 people signed a Change.org petition to the White House asking it to allow Texas’s secession.
Now of course that’s just hot air. Secession groups abound, and they’re rightly taken as seriously as the fashion views of Bernie Sanders’ hairstylist. And a well-publicized effort could get 100k signatures on a Change.org petition to change the country’s name to Country McCountryface.
But consider the response of Jon Carson, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. He could have cited any of a dozen perfectly sound arguments for why Texas secession is a bad idea. Instead, he chose this one:
As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”
The dead bodies the feds piled up in the war didn’t ‘vindicate the principle’ that the Constitution ‘establishes’ anything of the sort, because in its very clear language it does no such thing.
They did, however, ‘vindicate the principle’ that the feds will kill you and all your friends very dead for trying. And then they’ll throw themselves a parade and eat pie.
So get in line, taxpayer.
You know, in secession as in revolution, the devil is in the details. If you haven’t been presented with a complete plan that goes all the way from the “divorce” through to what your new government will look like, and you are NOT OK with who your NEW BOSS will be, it might be better to just leave “bad enough” alone. Because the devil you know might be better than the new Führer that you don’t.
Because no matter what idealistic bullshit folks spout, there WILL be a new government, and new bosses and taxes to go along with it. Yes, your new government WILL impose taxes and there WILL be laws, police, courts, jails, borders, ID documents, and everything else that goes along with that government.
Just like any divorce, there would be financial pain on both sides. What happens to the national debt, Social Security accounts, Medicare, and myriads of other complications we haven’t even thought of yet? None of this shit just goes away, so these things would all need to be worked out. Naturally, the new government would have to pay for its own defense and maintain its own infrastructure (taxes). Because of duplication of effort and human nature in general, I see no way that any of this could be done any cheaper than is is today (taxes), or be done with fewer politicians and bureaucrats (taxes/regulations/laws) than we are blessed with today.
So again, if you haven’t bothered to think it all the way through, yet you still are clamoring for secession, look in the mirror. You will be looking at someone who deserves whatever he/she gets.
That would be the best of those valid arguments against the proposition that I mentioned. Yes.
Joel,in response to your original post,i.e. the italicized paragraph from the .gov,I say no,and no.The Constitution says no such thing,and also,after we killed about half the able-bodied men in this country,we didn’t prove anything,except maybe the side with the most cannons will probably win,whether they are ‘right’ or not.
Also,to Ben and Joel,if they would have waited for the ultimate proof of the result before they started,the colonists never would have started the revolution,and I believe we have been better off than if we remained British subjects.
I say,do it Texas,and if you succeed,go from there.You certainly won’t be worse off.
For some reason Kentucky had trouble posting the following comment:
“Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States ‘in order to form a more perfect union’ through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot . . . ”
. . . does not convey the same principle as this . . .
“. . . whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it . . . it is their right, their duty, to throw off such government . . .”
The former would limit our options to the ballot box, while the latter leaves the door open to whatever seems appropriate given specific circumstances. The former leaves the government in control of the process via its power, while the latter reveals that, in the end, the right actually remains with the People. That the government would choose to interpret our Constitution to their own ends is neither surprising nor unprecedented. Lincoln’s war demonstrated this to perfection.
It’s worth noting that Jon Carson is the FORMER director of the Office of Public Engagement, the White House’s spin center department where Obama’s wants and desires are now orchestrated by our old friend Valerie Jarrett. The whole operation is a passel of fresh-faced young liberals dedicated to the proposition that The One is our savior, whose legacy must be insured.