Monday, March 18, AD 2024 10:59pm

Thinking Rationally About Secession

Secession has been in the news lately. Well, not the mainstream news, for the most part, but local, Internet and alternative news outlets have been reporting a growing number of signatures added to secession petitions submitted to Washington (one has it at over 750,000 signatures). This began almost immediately after President Obama’s reelection, and while no one really expects this particular movement to go anywhere, people on both sides of our political divide take it somewhat seriously as a sign of how polarized and unstable our situation has become.

I’m going to tell you what I think about secession, and my hope is that readers will find it somewhat reasonable. In short, I reject the absolutely hysterical and frothing narrative that comes from some leftist quarters about the evil of secession. I don’t much appreciate the haughty dismissal and contempt that comes from some on both the left and the right, as if only a mental patient would want to secede from what America has become. Lastly, I don’t agree with the secessionists, but it has nothing to do with any sort of moral or philosophical objection to the principle of secession (I don’t think it is racist or crazy, in other words). Now to the meat and bones.

First, the whole idea of a “petition to secede” sounds a little strange and I must say, absurd. Revolutionary governments founded upon an overthrow of an unpopular regime have sometimes formally recognized a “right of revolution” reserved by the people in case a future generation finds it necessary to form a new government. Some communist literature I used to peruse, for instance, would praise Castro’s Cuba because the right of the people to rebel was (so they said) enshrined in the Cuban constitution. No one believes for a moment, though, that revolutions depend upon whether or not the ruling regime permits them. It really shouldn’t need to be said that revolutions occur in spite of what ruling regimes want, and that official recognition of a “right to rebel” is often little more than window dressing, when it can even be located in clear and precise language.

Even so, modern-day secessionists believe that the founders intended for there to be some kind of “right to secede.” I think some of the founders believed that, including Thomas Jefferson, while others did not. But neither Jefferson nor anyone else, at least to my knowledge, was thinking of a legal right to secede. Rather they were thinking of a natural right to cast off oppressive or failed regimes and establish new governments in their place. This is what is articulated in the Declaration of Independence, which was, as we hopefully all understand, not a note begging King George III for permission to secede from Great Britain. It was a declaration of fact, a notice of what would have already been accomplished by the time the message reached its addressees.

I recognize this natural right. The founding fathers recognized it, unanimously in their own case, and who knows in what divisions when it comes to the hypothetical rights of individual states. The Catholic Church recognizes it. Cardinal Bellarmine noted in his own writings, and Pope Leo XIII summed it up with the following words:

Lawful power is from God, “and whosoever resisteth authority resisteth the ordinance of God’ ;(6) wherefore, obedience is greatly ennobled when subjected to an authority which is the most just and supreme of all. But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man, we become disobedient to God. — Libertas, 13

In light of such considerations, I am forced to say that petitions asking for permission to secede look more like pathetic half-measures and childish complaining than anything else. If people are not prepared to lay it all on the line, as the Southern states were in 1860, then this sort of talk just invites ridicule. Those who are so prepared don’t ask; they do. There is no legal right to secede, just as there was no legal right for the American colonies to declare independence and form a new nation. There doesn’t need to be. Contrary to Reverend Lovejoy (ctrl+f to find the hilarious quotation from The Simpsons), legal and moral are not synonyms.

Maybe the purpose of the petitions is so that those who are prepared to secede can say “well, look, we tried doing this peacefully – but you wanted to fight.” If that’s the general orientation, well, there are much better ways to go about it. The best way to draw the federal government into a confrontation in which it will have no moral authority and little popular sympathy or support is to continue to pass perfectly reasonable laws at the state level that conflict with onerous, unjust, mean-spirited and irrational federal laws. Drug laws are a good place to start. If the people of Colorado want to be able to legally buy, sell and consume marijuana, they should have that right under the 10th amendment of the Constitution. If the federal government wants to impose its own contrary prohibition on the states, it will do so at the cost of legitimacy in the eyes of the long-lost forgotten man, hitherto uninterested in politics as a no-win situation for him and who reserves judgement largely for actions, not rhetoric. The forgotten men, collectively, might be called a “Silent Majority.” They might also account for the 7 million whites who stayed home instead of voting for Moderate Mitt.

A confrontation in which the states have the will of the people as their primary justification, having passed laws by popular vote or through representative legislatures, and in which the federal government has nothing but what amounts to a “might makes right” argument to brandish, will go well for the former and very badly for the latter. Liberty-minded conservatives as well as at least some on the left who distrust the federal government and would opt for localism over nationalism can even work together. There are leftists who want to smoke pot legally, and there are conservatives who should, by heaven, support them in this confrontation with the federal government. We aren’t talking about intrinsic evil here, as we would be in the case of abortion or contraception, both of which the feds can’t shove enough of down our throats. Hippies and rednecks, unite and fight! 

Only when, in the popular mind, the situation is clearly understood as one in which the federal government refuses – effectively if not officially – to recognize the legitimacy of local democracy and republican institutions will any sort of secession or rebellion movement have the slightest bit of credibility. That moment has not come. It is also not too far off. But between here and there stand a number of tests to which the federal government ought to be subjected, tests which will be difficult for that arrogant and corrupt establishment to pass. Enough with the secession petitions, then. Collect signatures for petitions that really matter: to establish or disestablish laws and institutions that, respectively, oppose or favor the power of the federal government within your state.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is “secession = racism.” There is nothing remotely “racist” about secession. But I have to say, if the leftist establishment didn’t plan on having a black man espouse policies and ideas radically inimical to the American founding and effect the transformation of the United States into a European-style social democracy, it sure lucked out. Every criticism and all resistance can be explained in terms of racial paranoia, and no intellectual engagement is necessary. With Stalin’s chief prosecutor during the Moscow show trials, Andrey Vyshinsky, they can scream “shoot the mad dogs, every single one of them!” And that is more or less what they are doing right now.

Those of us on the right who find secession to be far too premature and imprudent (as I do) or just foolish no matter what happens will score no points with anyone who matters by joining in the chorus of rabid, unflinching condemnation. Those on the left who play the race card hate us all and nothing anyone says will change this. Moderate Mitt was deemed an extremist and a radical by these people, for heaven’s sake. We should articulate the reasons why we disagree with the movement, which may well have over a million names put to it by now, we may even distance ourselves from its actions. That said, I personally reject anyone who thinks it is either racist or “crazy/kooky” to be so fed up with the federal government and the degeneration of our culture that they would seriously consider secession. The parasitism of federal employees alone is enough to make me want to raise the Stars and Bars and start whistlin’ Dixie.

That doesn’t include ruinous wars both foreign and domestic (“War on Drugs”), the laying to waste of civil liberties, the assassination of U.S. citizens without trial or sentence, the mass transfers of wealth from productive workers and business owners to a class of permanent dependents who produce little if any wealth at all, the complete and total failure of the federal government to secure the southern border, the federal government’s official promotion of abortion, infanticide, subsidized birth control, “gay marriage” and every other moral abomination and cultural atrocity, and the debt we will never be able to repay to the Chinese. You’d have to be a little nuts not to consider secession under these conditions, at least as nuts as those who really think it can succeed without the requisites I outlined above.

 

 

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Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:48am

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,– most sacred right–a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the teritory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.”

Abraham Lincoln, January 12, 1848

Lincoln distinguished between the right of revolution enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and a mythical right of secession supposedly contained in the Constitution, I assume, if it is smeared with lemon juice and held up to moonlight in a full moon.

The right of revolution has important caveats able set forth by Mr. Jefferson:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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.”

trackback
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 7:28am

[…] MORNING GOD & CAESAR EDITION Published November 19, 2012 Anno Domini Thinking Rationally About Secession – Bonchamps, The American […]

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 8:55am

Mr Jefferson also said, “no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation: they may manage it, then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters, too, of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors are extinguished then, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being, till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of thirty-four years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. ” (Letter to James Madison September 6 1789)

For reasons he gives at some length, he did not think a mere right of repeal to be a sufficient safeguard.

Here in Scotland, with no weapon but discussion and no adversary but prejudice, the Scottish people have obtained from the Westminster government the recognition of their right of self-determination and a referendum on independence will be held in 2014 – The seven hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. Whatever the outcome, the principle is, on all sides, admitted.

Paul W. Primavera
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 9:29am

I signed the petition at Whitehouse.gov for my State to secede frm the Union, not because I took the movement seriously, but because I despise and loathe that godless man of sin and depravity, and his demonic and diabolical Democrats who in their day some 150 years ago enslaved the black man just as today they murder the unborn:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/peacefully-grant-state-north-carolina-withdraw-united-states-and-create-its-own-new-government/rx1KDYTs

I just hope God has mercy on this once formerly Christian Constitutional Republic. I don’t really “believe in” secession, but I do want Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrats removed from power permanently. Other than that, I have nothing profound to contribute to this excellent post, with most of whose points I agree.

Ted Seeber
Ted Seeber
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 10:15am

I signed the Oregon Petition. Sure, I would love a Catholic Cascadia- but it is never going to happen. I signed it for an entirely different reason:

Memento Mori. When a general in old Rome won a great victory, a servant would walk behind him, continually chanting “Remember, O man, that you too are mortal”.

That is what these uselss petitions on Whitehouse.gov are- memento mori to President Obama- remember that you too are mortal- that you do not have a mandate and stop acting like a dictator.

Benjamin Lancaster
Benjamin Lancaster
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 10:20am

I agree with you wholeheartly sir, the petition to secede from the Union, will undoubtedly fail. There is no real dispute in my mind about that point. The Federal government will not willingly allow a section of the country just leave peacefully, as much as I would absolutely love a bloodless and mutual dissolution of the current Union, that simply is, just a fairy tale. However, the petition I think does serve a purpose.

It is a rallying cry, if you will, to let other secessionists know that they are no alone in their sentiments. Indeed, I have found the petition most heartening in recent days since the election, hopeful that in fact there maybe brighter days on the horizon for those that espouse the sentiments set down by the Founding Fathers and our Confederate forebearers. That through hard-work, sacrifice and faith in God we can bring at least part of America back to the founding principles.

The secessionist movement is not a new one, it has been an ongoing battle since our nation was founded. And over the years the Federal government has slowly gained more and more power, eroding the liberties of the people ever so slightly. yet since the Civil War, no one dared stand against them. I firmly believe that this is just the beginning. With membership of state militias on the rise and the increasing discontentment with the Fed, I think that we have a very real chance now to finally claim our independence which has been denied to us for so long.

Deo Vindice, and God Save the South.

Jay Anderson
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 10:22am

Bonchamps, I’m in 100% agreement with you.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 10:31am

I have a better idea. I am seceding from the ranks of those “pulling the wagon” and joining in the “wagon” the moochers and looters.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 10:39am

Taking this all out of the realm of theory, I would shudder at the idea of a Second Civil War being fought with modern weaponry, quite likely with nuclear weapons. We would have the additional horror of most states having blue and red areas within them, intermixed. What that would be like would probably be far worse than the worst of the partisan warfare in Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War.

Taylor
Taylor
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 11:22am

That quote by Jefferson above, this is what I have heard. TJ may have in fact expected secession of States if a government started to act detrimental to the State of the Union.

Taylor
Taylor
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 12:00pm

After watching There be no dragons, I read another book on the Spanish Civil War, 300,000 killed in a space of 3 years. I think that’s worse than our own Civil War.

Paul W. Primavera
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 12:10pm

I think there will be civil war, not that I want that to happen. Of course not! But there is no talking to liberals. There is no dialogue to be had. I just had to block a relative on Facebook because she is so in love with Obama and so hateful and spiteful against Romney, the GOP and anything conservative. Every discussion always turns sour. A rational person cannot reason with an Obama lover. And this woman claims to be a Christian while she proudly supports abortion as a woman’s right to chose. Sorry, guys. These people will never “get it”. Either thay have to be defeated peacefully via the election process (which we failed at this November), or they will start civil war with violence to shut us up.

Donald R. McClarey
Reply to  Paul W. Primavera
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 12:21pm

“or they will start civil war with violence to shut us up.”

I don’t think it will come to that Paul, but if it did I think they would find that they had “chosen poorly”.

Paul W. Primavera
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 12:27pm

Thank you, Donald. I do not want any violence. I just want liberals to leave us alone and in peace to practice our Faith as we choose to, instead of shoving their infanticide and sodomy down our throats. Sure, I have a mini-14, but if any violence did occur, then I would likely be hiding in my apartment using a weapon far bigger than my rifle – my Rosary. I am otherwise a coward, which is why I went on a Navy submarine – I didn’t want my behind shot off in the jungle or desert. And as to your comment about nuclear weapons, having been up close and personal with such weapons in the Torpedo Room on my old submarine, I can’t imagine the horror that might occur. Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison. Kyrie Eleison.

Siobhan
Siobhan
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 12:38pm

If I can put my tin foil hat on, do you think it’s possible that “The Powers That Be” put Obama in power for the purpose of destroying this country? Sometimes I think the left, outside of this country, sees Obama as their Gorbachev. As he presided over the demise of the Soviet Union, Obama will presided over the demise of the USA. It would explain, sort of, why he was given the Noble Peace prize – in advance?

Pinky
Pinky
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 12:53pm

I don’t think a violent secession could happen in the US, at least not before years of serious deterioration. Serious deterioration – think Haiti, not Detroit. I think our sense of national unity and belief in assimilation is so weakened, though, that a prolonged secessionist sentiment could gain sympathy. Hawaii, Alaska, Utah, or certain Indian reservations are the most likely initiators. Ballot support of mroe than 80% over several years would get noticed.

Among the problems an amicable split would face: currency, debt, citizenship, government.

Pinky
Pinky
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 1:24pm

Two additional thoughts.

The model for secession wouldn’t be the US South, but the northern Roman Empire – de facto independence due to severe contraction.

There’s no place in the US which, if it seceded, would become more Catholic. Boston and New Orleans aren’t leaving. A second Mexico would be possible, but at the cost of becoming more a Central American country than a North American.

Shirley J. Schultz
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 3:14pm

When Texas is ready to secede, I’m ready to go. Until then, some of my family is looking at moving out of this country, if they can find a country that fits their criteria. How sad t;his whole situation is, but I am a Catholic child of God before I am an American. And America is becoming intolerable.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 3:31pm

I think the proper role for any patriotic American is always to stand by the country and to fight for what the Founding Fathers intended: a free people and a limited government. I am going nowhere and I will not allow some Leftists to destroy this country.

Tito Edwards
Admin
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 3:49pm

Secession isn’t going to happen.

I agree with Donald, stay in our country, reproduce and educate our children, and demographics will work itself out in the future.

G-Veg
G-Veg
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 5:48pm

This is the most startling thread I’ve read.

I, for one, will stand with the United States against any and all comers, foreign or domestic. I cannot conceive of the circumstances under which I would turn against her and would take up arms to defend her against anyone who did.

I would happily count the most thuggish union enforcer as my brother if it was to put down an armed movement to rip the Unitd States apart.

This secession movement is a bizarre knee-jerk reaction to things not going our way. It is beneath contempt and I sincerely hope that no fools pull a Ruby Ridge and get themselves and some good cops killed over this insanity.

solly gratia
solly gratia
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 5:50pm

Looking at it from the distance of 3000 miles across the pond, one would hope that while the idea of secession was the tool to get Federal attention, States Rights was the more immediate and acceptable goal. Having that national debate is the necessity, because that is what the system was set up for. The more people who know and talk about the Constitution in the face of positivist interpretations of it, the better. Knowedge is power.

G-Veg
G-Veg
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:04pm

The problem with idle threats comes when someone takes them seriously. We have unsanctioned states militias all over the US. For the most part they are harmless enough, a group of citizens letting off steam. In that grop though are hardcore survivalists, white suppremists and neo-nazis, and bona fide mentally ill people.

Give them a cause and the trappings of justification and they will work all kinds of mischief. At the least they’ll get themselves arrested. Rememer the Lyndon La Rouche insanity and the “income tax is unlawful crowd”. I don’t think the daft bastards who bought into that nonsense did themselves any favors.

Tony Esolen
Tony Esolen
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:07pm

My sentiments are with the secessionists, for various reasons, one of them not yet broached here. I think that a “democracy” of 300 million persons is an absurdity, a contradiction in terms. The federal government has grown so metastatic, that the actual political life of the average citizen has been reduced nearly to zero. We’d be healthier if we were four or five nations, just as California would be healthier if it were broken up into three states. One of the salutary effects of such fragmentation would be that people in our largely dysfunctional cities would have to come to terms with everybody else; there wouldn’t be so many and so various places to hide.

Or do the thought experiment in reverse. Imagine belonging to the European Union. Or imagine that everybody in the world gets to vote for our archons in Brussels. Fat lot of good that would do. Give me back a little bit of political liberty, please. An aside: there’s not one Founding Father, not the most centralizing among them (say, Hamilton), who wouldn’t have found what we have now to be monstrous and tyrannical. That sound you hear isn’t tea splashing in the waters of Boston Harbor. It’s our Founders, retching.

Taylor
Taylor
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:11pm

“”If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation…
to a continuance in union… I have no hesitation in saying,
‘let us separate.’ “- Thomas Jefferson

Ron Paul, Secession is a deeply American Principle!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84058.html

“Paul wrote that secession must still be an option to be used as leverage to make sure the government doesn’t “encroach” on Americans’ liberties.

Paul wrote that secession is a form of American freedom.

“At what point should the people dissolve the political bands which have connected them with an increasingly tyrannical and oppressive federal government?” Paul wrote.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84058.html#ixzz2CiW6ANYc

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:24pm

“Secession isn’t going to happen.”

Quite right Tito. I might add that our enemies around the globe would love nothing better than to see the United States dissolve into a group of weak squabbling Republics.

G-Veg
G-Veg
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:30pm

It is difficult to say what I woulddo if my government became an oppressive regime. Not only are far from that point, I don’t honestly believe we can get there.

The US Constitution is a subtle and powerful instrument for good. I consider it inspired, a thing of rare genious. It survived slavery, that birth defect that threatened to kill our nation and it survived the Roosevelts. Even Obama, that hubris ridden fool who believed he could subordinate the Constitution to his hoards of deranged followers, is receiving a well deserved thrashing.

As an intellectual exercise, let us assume that Executive Orders and Regulations continue to grow in importance and, thus, overwhelm affirmative law. The President would then, in a Chavez like fashion, assume full rule-making and enforcement powers, checked only by the courts, cowed though they be.

I might very well find myself jailed and dispossessed. Me and mine might be jobless and friendless in an alien nation that hates us. I like to think that, even then, I would not take up arms against her.

I note that we haven’t let Christ speak in this discussion. Why is that? Is the recognition that He accepted death without justly striking back, even for justice, too much for us? The Apostles too; they could not know that humbly accepting the judgment of man would bring mighty Rome to her knees. And the early church, did she rise up in defense even of the innocent? No? Well then, there must be a lesson in there for us.

No. The evil you postulate is a figment of your imagination and the intellectual exercise is flawed in its articulation. It is a flight of fancy and one that could lead to great mischief.

Taylor
Taylor
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 6:52pm

1st off, these secession petitions were for doing such peacefully, let’s not bring in talk of the Militias and Minutemen at this point. Someone wisely said that perhaps if a State voted on this numerous times over a course of years, they might soften the resolve of the federal government.

The rights of States, okay, Slavery was wrong and it’s easy to see that nowadays but other things, the pro-life issues, marriage laws and others could easily be left up to the States. There is no reason for Utah and New York to have the same laws, yes, they are changed up a bit but still.

Paul W Primavera
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 7:03pm

I hope that Tito and Donald are correct when they wrote that secession isn’t going to happen, at least any time soon.

I fear Bonchamps is correct when he writes:

“Natural rights are more important, sacred, and valuable than any particular political entity or government, which exist for no other reason but to protect those rights. Obedience to God may well one day require you to disobey, resist, refuse and even fight with the federal government. I don’t say that it is today. But it may be tomorrow. We are not morally bound only to our duty to resist, either – it is within our right to establish new political bodies to secure the natural rights for which all governments exist to protect.”

Bonchamps’ analogy of the Cristeros is most appropriate and serves as a warning. Already my company requires gay-friendly on-line training classes for all employees. It’ll become a demand to sign papers in support of gay rights as a condition of employment. I think that will happen within a year or two. From there it’ll just get worse. Priests and Bishops will be sued and then arrested for speaking out against homosexual marriage and abortion on charges of hate speech. That’s happening to a certain extent in England and Canada. It’s all down hill. But maybe Donald’s optimism is right. With all due respect, that optimism wasn’t right, however, with respect to the prognostications for the last election.

As far as I am concerned, if the good Lord lets Amerika get away with this sexual filth and murder, then He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah (as well as ancient Athens and Rome). Sorry. Don’t mean to be a pessimist. But I do not want to be a part of this godless national democracy – two wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner. I want the restoration fo our Christian Constitutional Republic, and I think the American people are just like the children of Israel in 1st Samuel chapter 8: too stupid to know what’s good for them and too arrogant to care.

Donald R. McClarey
Reply to  Paul W Primavera
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 7:18pm

“With all due respect, that optimism wasn’t right, however, with respect to the prognostications for the last election.”

It would become tiresome Paul if one were right all the time! 🙂

My optimism was fully rewarded in 2010 and we will see what happens in 2014. I would note that the Republicans currently control 30 statehouses and retained 550 of the 690 legislative seats in 2012 that they gained in 2010.

NickD
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 7:36pm

at first, I thought you had linked to my blog (http://imperfectfollower.blogspot.com/2012/11/what-were-already-folding.html) because I had the petitions at 750,000+ signatures almost a week ago. Whoops

Pinky
Pinky
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 7:41pm

If Arizona were populated entirely with Third Order Franciscans with nuclear weapons and a good understanding of economics, then maybe this conversation would be worth having. It’s not.

Taylor
Taylor
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 7:51pm

I don’t know Pinky, some of these governors made the move to ?? get control of their own gold from the Fed. Does that mean secession? No, of course not but I am getting weary if the law of the land becomes one party’s platform that has some intrinsic evils in it, who landwise, are indeed smaller than the rest.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 9:01pm

I have my own take on secession.

Texas has the world’s 15th largest economy….bigger than Russia..on its own. In 1846, the Republic of Texas was deep in debt and headed for failure unless it joined the United States. Well, that is not the case now, is it? Now, we have an out of control Federal government that behaves as a national government and refuses to abide by the Constitution that was enacted in order to create it.

Why should Texas accept gay marriage because Massachusetts started it?
Why should Texas accept Obumblercare when it is clearly a violation of the 10th Amendment?
Why should Texas not be allowed to enforce its border with Mexico since the Federal government sees poor illegal Mexican immigrants as a source of Democrat votes?

Should Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana tell Barack Hussien Kardashian Obumbler (a/k/a The Empty Chair) to shove it I will be there with them. Secession need not be Constitutional since so much of what comes out of Washington is not Constitutional. The Constitution has been shredded already.
President Empty Chair would not lift a finger to stop Texas because Obumbler is an empty suit…and an empty chair. He would probably not notice.

A second Civil War? No. Many of the states who formed the Union in the 1860s are now populated by Medicare recipients and countless people who want government to give them what they want. They won’t fight.

G-Veg
G-Veg
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 9:07pm

My Dear Bonchamps, you throw out a challenge and I intend to meet it, as best I can with the humble tools in my possession.

Let me reiterate though, at the outset, that I have the utmost respect for your intellect and writing. Though at odds often enough, your writing challenges me and I have immense respect for both the gifts you have been given and the exercise of them that you display.

I will confine myself to your post and not to the comments. Though my previous replies were generalized to respond to both, responding to your post alone is a Herculean task in the comments section.

First, I agree with you on two predicates that you lay out: that the petition movements aren’t going anywhere and that petitioning the State to leave is absurd. You articulate both ideas well and I have nothing to add to either of them.

I cannot improve on Abraham Lincoln’s response to secession. The National Park Service explores the issue well. (Search by Lincoln+secession.)

Let me note what Lincoln does NOT say: that there is no right to rebel or throw off an oppressive government. Secession is an entirely different animal though, no?

You note that some of the founders of our republic may have intended “some kind of ‘right to secede’” but expressed doubt that it was intended to be a legal right to do so. I entirely agree but I will go farther, I think that a fair reading of Jefferson is that he thought that the government itself would, from time to time, be disbanded and a new government put in place. He certainly wasn’t thinking of secession because he presumed a complete overthrow of government – the inherent right of men to choose for themselves the government by which they will be governed.

This idea is at the core of my understanding of both the second and tenth amendments. I believe that it was with a mind to preserving the power to oppose government, by force if necessary, that the first government of the United States reserved in the States and their peoples the ability to oppose the federal government.

It is here though that we appear to split.

We start from the same crown but take divergent trunks. You seem to be saying: since the United States government will never cede its power over its territory or its people and the people reserve in themselves the right to choose their own government, there is a requisite right to dismantle the United States through secession. I am saying that: since the United States government will never cede its power over its territory or its people and the people reserve in themselves the right to choose their own government, there is a requisite right and duty to remove that government, by force if necessary.

You speak of a right to secede; I speak of a right to revolt.

At its core, the Confederate States of America had the argument and their analysis of their rights wrong at inception. They asserted a right to secede where no such right existed. They failed to assert the right that they actually possessed: to ride on Washington, strip the federal government of its powers and insist on a new government.

You make the same mistake.

As for the means for bringing the dispute to a head, I can think of dozens of mechanisms, some moral, ethical, lawful; many that are downright evil. And that is my problem with the discussion as it matured.

There is a nexus between attractive theories and action. We saw it with the La Rouche movement and the arguments that income taxes are unconstitutional. The sovereign citizen movements and the racist movements in the inner cities and rural America are similar. It takes only a seeming sound argument to drive a small group of people right over the edge.

Let me take on one more point: I meant precisely what I said, that the US Constitution is an inspired document. It has been one of the greatest forces for good in human history. I have fought for the principles articulated therein and would do so again, without a moment’s hesitation – against any enemies, foreign or domestic.

So long as I was fighting to preserve the principles of the Constitution, I would be willing to bleed for or kill for my country. Dissolve the Constitution – which is the horror that we were addressing, an American tyranny without a valid constitutional government – and my allegiance to THAT government dissolves.

I like to think that I would fall back on my Christian beliefs and quietly and prayerfully go to the gallows for my faith. I tend to think that I would do so if it were only me but be less inclined to sacrifice my family to the vagaries of tyranny. My guess would be that I would join a movement to directly dissolve the government. I would not, however, seek to pick off a piece of it in some vague and delusional hope that I could create a paradise on earth that would not be immediately overwhelmed and driven into the history books as a mere footnote.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 11:22pm

My reaction to this conversation is to remember Jeremiah, and his advice during the Babylonian subjugation and exile. He reminded the people of their responsibility to be personally moral and to live a good life in obedience to their covenant with God. They had slid downhill. They had responsibility for the moral decline and their own resulting weakness and exile. They had over the years turned their back on their own founding “documents” the book of the Covenant.
Living a life of faith daily in the middle of the pagan society is a witness to the Truth. Ultimately this would be the route back to their own ideals (and home)
Living in and among the pagans but keeping and building their own faith made them a light, not only to the pagans, but to their own people in exile and to the upcoming generations… winners while losing.
As the iniquity of the nations plays out we have most of all to remain true to God and our own covenant with Him. America has a special calling in the world– and we -each- as Americans are to live up to that calling and I think we have to take a long view. We may think we are living in Babylon right now, and a smarter more subtle “secession” of non participation in the pagan culture around us coupled with earnest rebuilding of our own civilization of love within the world may sound crazy and pie in the sky; but it just may also bring about change and help us get back to our own foundational ideals.

Don the Kiwi
Monday, November 19, AD 2012 11:39pm

The base problem is that over the years, the Federal govt has usurped more and more of the various states authority, and , as a total outsider who does not really understand US politics ( the complexity of it drives me nuts 😉 ) the individual states that run their own affairs properly are frustrated at the Federal govt which has become totally socialstic under O’Bumbler are running the country into ruin.

I agree with Don and others who say, don’t run away from the problem – face it and fight it. Otherwise I’d have to think that you yanks are a bunch of wooses (;-).

And I’d be, of course, totally wrong – wouldn’t I ?

G-Veg
G-Veg
Tuesday, November 20, AD 2012 4:25am

I live in Amish country anzlyne and their communal life, or at least an idealised version of it, is attractive to me. It is interesting that the Left has no cognizable interest in Amish America, even though the strictures of their faith require spanking of children, acceptance of one’s lot in life, the subordination of women, etc. I’ve thought many times “we should become a separate people unto ourselves, living apart and obeying our own rules.” The Hasidim live thus too and, arguably, many recent Indian spirituality groups live apart but among the broader society.

What is common to all of these geoups is the use of shunning. Any group member who strays from the visible path of right conduct is cast out and further contact, even by close family members is barred. This forces conformity and it appears essential to the long term existence of such communities.

I do not reject this position. Our RadTrad brothers and sisters have moved that direction though I would argue that they are not as separate as they need to be for the movement to maintain itself beyond this JPII generation. However, Christ calls us to be the leaven of the world. That seems to imply mixing and mingling with it doesn’t it?

As for standing and fighting, I’m going to treat your rhetorical question as an answerable one.

I think American bark a lot at first and that scares many off. Then we go silent as we start to get serious about the matter: a dog circling in the shadows. The foolish interpret the silence as cowardice and approach, then all hell breaks loose.

What worries me is that those more strongly inclined to libertarian ideals have legitimate complaints that have gone unaddressed for too long. As we have been dragged left by the nanny-state folks, the injuries have piled up. These libertarian-minded floks have been barking louder and louder. At some point, they will fall silent. The American Left are just tone deaf enough to interpretthat silence as consent and will boldly step up on the porch. God help us all if we get to that point.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Tuesday, November 20, AD 2012 4:36am

“We would have the additional horror of most states having blue and red areas within them, intermixed. What that would be like would probably be far worse than the worst of the partisan warfare in Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War.”

Guerrilla/partisan warfare in border states is an aspect of the Civil War that, I believe, gets less attention than it deserves — perhaps because it doesn’t fit into the conventional narrative of noble Johnny Rebs and brave Billy Yanks marching off to fight the great battles immortalized in history books, novels, and movies. Few people like to think about Johnny Reb and Billy Yank living only a few miles apart and conducting organized campaigns of harassment, deception, robbery, torture and eventually murder against one another and their families.

Although Civil War battle reenactment is a cottage industry of sorts, I doubt that even the most hardcore reenactors care to recreate incidents like William Quantrill’s 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas (in which 150-200 residents, mostly men and young boys, were killed) or the 1864 massacre at Centralia, Mo., led by “Bloody Bill” Anderson (which started with a train robbery/hijacking and ended with more than 100 Union soldiers being slaughtered and mutilated), or the execution by Union military of 10 randomly chosen Confederate POWs at Palmyra, Mo., in 1862, in retaliation for the disappearance of a local Union militia leader (it made international news at the time but is pretty much forgotten about today). Not to mention thousands of smaller incidents in which bushwhackers or jayhawkers or whatever they called themselves at the time functioned as death squads wandering the countryside robbing, torturing or killing anyone they knew or suspected to be sympathetic to the other side (with the definition of “other side” subject to change at any time).

I suspect this aspect of the war has been neglected because most people who lived through it just wanted to forget about it when it was over, and if they participated in it, took no pride in having done so, with a few notable exceptions such as Jesse James (who is more associated with the Old West than with the Civil War in the popular imagination). However, I think we neglect it at our peril, because if it happened before, who’s to say it couldn’t happen again?

The book “April 1865: The Month that Saved America” by Jay Winik, which I’ve referred to before on this blog, sums up its review of Civil War guerrilla action with a quote from a Union military officer who had served in the Kansas/Missouri border area: “There was something in the hearts of good Christian people… which had exploded.”

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, November 20, AD 2012 4:44am

The question of secession raises an obvious question: is the United States a nation?

In Europe, nationality is defined by descent and birth, and it is neither revocable nor is it attainable at will. A Pole, for example, may lose his citizenship – as happened in the three partitions of Poland – but not his nationality. The term nationality, as we understand it, does not refer to citizenship and legal status, but to ethnic characteristics that are transmitted through descent. Underlying this is the assumption that the nation is a unit of common descent and blood; not of voluntary adherence and of association. As Mazzini put it, “They speak the same language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same tombs…”

That is why we can speak, for example, of a Hungarian minority in Romania or a Swedish minority in Finland

How do Americans see themselves? This, surely, has a great bearing on the question of secession.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, November 20, AD 2012 5:04am

“Was the resistance in the Vendee nothing but “mischief”?”

No, but think what provoked it. The nobility had been overthrown, the king had been beheaded and the Republic proclaimed, the Non-Juring priests had been expelled. This had been resented, but the people never stirred. Then, on 10 March 1793, the conscription began.

As Acton says, “the demand that they should go out, under officers whom they distrusted, and die for a government which persecuted them, caused an outbreak. They refused to draw their numbers, and on the following day they gathered in large crowds and fell upon the two sorts of men they detested—the government officials, and the newly established clergy.”

They did not take up arms spontaneously, but, compelled to fight, one way or another, they chose their side.

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