Up 10% in two years — and yet still 76% too low, if you ask me.
But then, I’m one of them fringe types who doesn’t like to feel trapped in perpetuity by a central government that can control me simply by conning and/or bribing 50.1% of the population (or getting just enough electoral votes, whichever obtains).
CNS:
The latest poll is just one of many that shows that Americans have “serious and growing concern about the federal government,” according to Scott Rasmussen, founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.
According to the phone survey released Sunday, 24 percent of Americans believe that states should be able to withdraw from the United States to form their own country, if they want. Nearly 60 percent (59) of Americans say they don’t believe states have the right to secede, while 16 percent are undecided.
“We do see that people are concerned about the federal government in a variety of ways,” Rasmussen told CNSNews.com. “51 percent believe that it’s a threat to individual liberties.
“It may just be part of a growing frustration with other aspects of the federal government,” he said.
“But I think it’s important to keep it in perspective, growing to 24 percent still means that only one out of four Americans think that states have the right to secede, it’s not that they’re advocating for it,” Rasmussen said.
Though a minority, the number has been growing. In 2010, when Rasmussen first conducted the poll, only 14 percent of Americans said states had the right to secede. A year later, the number was up to 21 percent.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 adults between May 29 and 30, asked, among other questions: “Do individual states have the right to leave the United States and form an independent country?”
Only 10 percent of poll respondents said it was likely a state would attempt to secede in the next 25 years — “a pretty generous time frame,” Rasmussen said. “So it’s not seen as a very realistic possibility,” he added.
The survey also asked whether the federal government is a protector or a threat to individual rights, to which a majority — 51 percent — said the government presents a danger to liberty.
— All of which means that 49% don’t believe that a government that can fly drones over your farm checking for cow flatulence or prevent you from building a house on your own property if that property is also shared on occasion by some puddles or some silverfish, eg., isn’t a danger to liberty.
And frankly, that’s just fucking scary.
Count me among the 76%, I guess, but I don’t have any strong feelings about it. Except to say I think secession is a really really bad idea, just like it was in 1860/61, whether they had the right or not.
I guess it’s a good thing you aren’t an idealistic wedding photographer then, Burt.
I guess I just really don’t get people who are for or against a process qua process.
It’s like Colin Powell and compromise: doesn’t seem to matter him what’s compromised, just that compromise is happening.
Me, I’d like to know that, should we find ourselves in a socialist hellhole run by an iron-fisted, centralized police state masquerading as a representative republic, a good portion of my fellow citizens who don’t much care for such a fate would do whatever it takes to get out of such servitude.
I mean, we were kind of born out of secession from England, were we not?
But like I say: I’m a fringe-assed kook.
There’s always Texas which DOES effectively have the right to secede. Technically, it has right to split into five parts, each of which would have the RIGHT (but not the obligation) to apply for statehood. IIRC.
If states had the right to secede, then the Constitution would indeed be a suicide pact.
On the other hand, the Left has made such a mock of it, that history might judge it an
mercy killingassisted suicide.Secession is a legal thing, rebellion, a natural thing, is how I look at it.
Through greasy, smeary, smoke shrouded lenses
in a Finnish sauna
Remember how Harvey Mansfield ended his peroration on Washington’s birthday? How our presidents could either *do as Washington did, by recognizing their own limits, acknowledging they don’t know everything, or they could do like Lincoln, who we also celebrate?*
This is what Harvey was getting at. Lincoln, I think Harvey means, thought he knew better, that the Union must be saved, hang the cost. That’s a lot to know, as it happens, and more than Harvey thinks Abe actually knew, I’m thinking.
The Hartford Convention was an event in 1814–1815 in the United States in which New England Federalists met to discuss their grievances concerning the ongoing War of 1812 and the political problems arising from the domination of the Federal Government by Presidents from Virginia. Despite many outcries in the Federalist press for New England secession and a separate peace with Great Britain, moderates dominated the Convention and such extreme proposals were not a major focus of the convention’s debate.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Convention
this part of that wiki entry is a hoot:
Jefferson’s successor, President James Madison, along with the Republican controlled Congress, continued Jefferson’s policies.[2]
Hard to uphold your oath to preserve the Constitution without thinking you know something.
Where’s this secession crap end, anyways? Does San Francisco have the right to secede from California because the bigots in the Central Valley won’t let them have their little gaytopia?
Having grown up in inland northern California, I could live with that.
San Francisco isn’t all that anymore. It used to be such a lovely little city.
Revolution and secession are forms of self-defense, in my opinion. Any government that claims you don’t have the right is inadvertently justifying its exercise.
Now you’re just baiting me… ;-)
And that’s the flip side right there. If a polity has the right to secede from the larger polity, does the larger polity have the right to kick the little malcontents out?
Revolution is a right of last resort. Secession is a temper-tantrum.
Somewhere on one of these threads, Lee said we should just enforce the rules that are already on the books. That would rule out secession.
I’m all for sending our rules through the wash until everything is rinsed out except original intent.
the fix in the making:
I was going to excerpt this, but the entire thing is worth listening to; the link above gives a partial transcript. The entire thing comes across as former Governor Rendell making darn sure that the next administration knows that some members of the Democratic party elite were not actively involved in the ongoing (and upcoming) bouts of character assassination, dirty tricks, cheap shots, and generally nyeh kulturny behavior engaged in by an increasingly desperate Obama administration, what a tragedy, such promise, let’s all move, as they say, on.
I point this out not only because it’s funny: I point this out because everybody – including Team Romney – knows that we here in the base are paying attention to what’s going on in Dizzy City. I’m not concerned that the Democrats are making discreet signals that they’re ready to do business. I do have concerns about what business is ready to be done; and I expect the concessions to be as one-sided in our favor as possible. With the VRWC grassroots being the ones defining what’s ‘possible.’
link
The American “Revolution” was a secession. We didn’t overthrow the king, we simply opted out of his empire.
Consider this: to grant the right of secession exists is to agree to be tyrannized by the minority.
baracky under his own bus?
Video: We’re in a recession and should extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich, says … Bill Clinton
I don’t think so. Obviously secession is a last ditch proposal.
“Now I decided that I wouldn’t feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn’t feed them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them. But I only fed them every other day. And I put a second rail around the posts.”
“Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food. They now needed me. They needed my free corn every other day. So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate.
And I put up a third rail around the fence. But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will.”
“Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well. Yesterday I closed the last gate. And today I need you to help me take these pigs to market.”
—–
Taken from “The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp“, a cautionary tale I refer to as “You can’t afford the price of free corn.“
no to secession; let’s beat electorally the already senseless proggslims senseless.
Why? You can just rule over them from a central power base — and demand they follow, or else they lose federal funding, etc.
I did try to indication that rebellion & secession aren’t the same thing, even if I’m not entirely clear on how they differ. Which I also indicated.
Secession is a localized (and more manageable) revolution. It is naturally a last resort. But it also smells favorably of federalism refusing to die off.
No one is calling for secession. Some are maintaining the right to do so as an obvious last resort.
a wi open thread?
How so?
In a revolution you essentially drag the blue-model types with you. In a secession you let them keep their thing but you get to do your thing without them.
Good point Jeff.
I certainly wouldn’t live under an authoritarian regime simply because I thought secession unseemly, that’s for sure. I’d be looking for a way out — and I’d prefer one that allowed me to stay with English speaking people who have a knowledge of baseball and movie trivia.
The American “Revolution” was a secession. We didn’t overthrow the king, we simply opted out of his empire.
We already had our self-gubmint thing going by itself, so we cut the umbilical cord. We didn’t go to England, kill the king, and chase Parliament into the sea.
Or try to change England at all. We just wanted to go it on our own.
It’s troubling sometimes when the starboard side points to the American Revolution as “the good one,” as if we could ever reproduce that by storming Washington or whatever.
No honeys, that’s the French Revolution: if you have to engage in a wholesale Purge on your own soil and from among your own people, that’s trouble a-brewin’.
So I’ll take secession over a French Revolution any day of the week.
I was talking about the calls for immigration reform in particular. In general, I think we have way too many laws on the books.
I figured you meant something like that, Lee.
And after you divide the red fom the blue and leave each to their own devices, what are the red supposed to do about the scarlet and the magenta, or the blue about the indigo and the turquois?
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. -Thomas Jefferson
Was he talking of revolution or succession? Does it matter?
Was he talking of revolution or succession? Does it matter?
I think it does, in the context of the times. Plus, King George didn’t have drones or Striker missles.
I’ve done some reading on the secession/revolution thing lately. Simply put, secession equals enforcing breach of contract (the Constitution). In theory, it can be done in a civil, bloodless manner. (Did SC really need to take Ft. Sumter to make its point?)
Revolution requires a revolt against the existing power structure, which, I suspect, will not let go without blood-letting.
If Texas declares its intent to secede from the Union, the choice is now on the Union as to how to react. Allow it bloodlessly, or force reunification, see, e.g., Lincoln, 1861-65.
If Texas and others revolt to dismantle the existing power structure, it forces the hand of Washington to quell the rebellion. So, it indeed does matter. The Republic of Texas, with the tools existing within its borders says, “We’re out. Don’t mess with Texas.” versus “We’re out, and putting you down like the rabid dogs you are.” Big difference.
I’m too far north of the Mason-Dixon line to have any say, so I lay low, move to Texas, or join/start the Resistance. I’m getting to the age where I just say FOAD.
Consider this: to grant the right of secession exists is to agree to be tyrannized by the minority.
That doesn’t even remotely make sense. If Oklahoma secedes, how in hell does that tyrannize California? What, they can’t bleed Oklahoma revenues to pay for gay weddings and, like, education for illegals? It doesn’t affect anyone else AT ALL.
The Constitution is not the law of God. It is not the law of nature. It was an agreement among more or less like-minded, independent states who agreed to a series of joint pacts — free trade, contract recognition, laws and judiciary, postal routes. If that union breaks down in reality, it makes no sense to pretend it exists because there is a piece of paper that’s totally unifying. That would be a suicide pact. In a business agreement, it would also be an illegal and unenforceable contract. Do we exempt the government from that, too, the way we exempt it from accounting laws and math?
You are arguing for the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of large states over small, of a central elite over individuals. That makes me want to secede.
And after you divide the red fom the blue and leave each to their own devices, what are the red supposed to do about the scarlet and the magenta, or the blue about the indigo and the turquois?
This is also a nonsensical straw man. Do I torch my neighborhood and city hall just because I don’t like a bond issue? Do I slit someone’s tires because they go to a different church? IRL, I haven’t even moved from my apartment yet despite my filthy annoying neighbors who leave bags of garbage outside their doors for days because it’s too much effort to walk 200 feet to the dumpster. If a society is 90% in agreement, they find ways to work around the other 10%. It’s when they only agree on 10% — or they don’t agree on a 1% that is existentially definitive — that a break is necessary.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 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. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
Longish excerpt from Michael Knox Beran on Lincoln’s view of secession. Bold emphases are mine:
The question of Lincoln’s responsibility for the Civil War turns on his policy toward the seceding states. According to historians such as Lord Acton, if Lincoln had really been the freedom-loving statesman he claimed to be, he would have recognized the right of the secessionist populations to choose their own destinies. More recently, bloggers have taken up Acton’s argument and in breezy and inaccurate blog posts distorted what Lincoln did and the sequence in which he did it. The record needs to be set straight.
In deciding where his moral duty lay, Lincoln had first to determine the criteria by which he was to judge the morality of secession. Was it a matter of numbers, and if so, how large did the numbers have to be? I, a lone citizen of the United States, may announce that I am seceding from the Union and attempt to make off with such federal property in my neighborhood as I fancy. If I do this, I will almost certainly be seized, tried, and jailed. No president would judge my act of secession legitimate. But does secession become legitimate if, say, 51 percent of a particular population approves it? Sixty-seven percent? One hundred percent? May particular segments of the population—blacks, for example, or slaves—be excluded from the calculus of legitimacy? By what procedure is popular approval of secession to be manifested? Must its expression take the form of a plebiscite, or is it sufficient that conventions composed of notable citizens decide?
Lincoln could have pronounced a purely personal judgment on the moral legitimacy of secession, but that was not his job. He had his station and knew its duties: when he became president, he swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The only criterion, he supposed, that he could reasonably use in judging the legitimacy of secession was that of the Constitution itself. James Buchanan, Lincoln’s predecessor, had concluded that the Constitution forbade secession; Lincoln reached the same conclusion. Yale constitutional scholar Akhil Amar argues persuasively, in America’s Constitution: A Biography, that Lincoln’s interpretation was correct and that the Constitution prevents “subunits from unilaterally bolting whenever they became dissatisfied.” When the war came, it came not because of Lincoln’s predilection for blood and iron, but because of his interpretation of the law of the land—a fundamental expression of its mores—and his application of it to a particular case.
One can, as in a law-school exercise, split hairs ad infinitum. Was the Constitution itself a legitimate law, given that it was a by-product of treason and rebellion? Can a charter that recognizes, as the Constitution does, a right of withdrawal from an older instrument (the Articles of Confederation), foreclose the same right of exit from the compact that it has established in its place? And even if Lincoln was right about the letter of the Constitution, was he not, in prosecuting the Civil War, violating the spirit of freedom that gave birth to it? Did a point not come, after quantities of blood had been spilled and the Confederacy had given so many proofs of devotion to its Cause, when Lincoln ought to have concluded, as William Gladstone did, that the Southern people had “made a nation,” and to heck with the Constitution?
Here was the larger moral problem. Lincoln believed that if the United States were broken up by internal dissension, the result would be a setback for the cause of free democratic government from which it might not soon recover. The question, he said, was
Lincoln’s point was that if you can opt out of a democracy whenever you lose an election, democracy will never work. The moral case for the Union was even stronger, he believed, given that those who were trying to break out were doing so not because their liberties had been violated, but because they insisted on a perpetual right to take slaves out of their own states and into the national territory.
It’s true that Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. It’s true that under his leadership, his secretary of state arrested persons obnoxious to the regime. But if there were Bismarckian touches in Lincoln’s statecraft, he was not, on the whole, a Bismarckian statesman. Bismarck himself sensed this; he disliked Lincoln. The two men were on different sides of the struggle between liberty and coercion. An earlier generation had a better sense of this than ours does. “We have been at war with Metternich and Bismarck,” the British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan wrote after World War I. “Cavour and Garibaldi gave us Italy for an ally, while Washington and Lincoln gave us America.”
Clearly this is a straw man argument. If just over half the people vote all of us into slavery, we don’t have to stick around in perpetuity because the Constitution demands it.
It will mean the Constitution has ceased to function. At which point, secession — one in which the seceding bloc adopts or affirms the Constitution, even — is a legitimate and, more, a decidedly moral, act.
Whatever Lincoln or others may have believed.
Your recourse then is to Article V. You want to go the Article V route, I’m with you. But secession is the political equivalent of picking up your marbles and going home —not, I might add, because the game is rigged against you, but because you’re losing fair and square and you’re a spoilsport.
Maybe I’m being pedantic, maybe I’m taking secession as such too seriously (making me kookier even than our host). But I insist on the distinction between secession and rebellion, or just and unjust ruptures within and between a People and it’s government.
I’m sorry, where in the Constitution did Lincoln read that it was a blood oath for all time, one nation under God and indivisible? Lincoln saw a penumbra in the Constitution that wasn’t there.
Of course, he also didn’t like what was actually written in the Constitution. He had some issues with habeas corpus, free press, and free religion.
Lincoln believed that if the United States were broken up by internal dissension, the result would be a setback for the cause of free democratic government from which it might not soon recover.
England may have had something to disagree with, there.
But secession is the political equivalent of picking up your marbles and going home —not, I might add, because the game is rigged against you, but because you’re losing fair and square and you’re a spoilsport.
Yeah, I’m a real spoilsport when I lose my rights of freedom of religion totally fair and square. The right not to be ordered what to eat and drink and in what quantities. The right not to be ordered to buy an financial product from the government itself. I mean, I’m in the minority, right? I should spread my legs and like it? Because might makes right, and we don’t have natural laws, as free moral agents and adults with personal responsibility. If the majority — or a ruling elite, which is agood as — says that I don’t have the right to be free, it’s just being a sore loser to disagree with that.
Maybe I’m being pedantic, maybe I’m taking secession as such too seriously …
I take it to mean that a state or region says, “I am no longer in the USA. I’m out.”
And I support that.
I insist on the distinction between secession and rebellion, or just and unjust ruptures within and between a People and it’s government.
Pardon me if I misunderstand you, but I don’t read you as saying there is any right of secession at all, ergo there is no such thing as a just rupture between a people and its government.
Quite frankly, that terrifies me.
It helps Lincoln’s cause then that the slaveholding majority were the one refusing to stick around.
Your recourse then is to Article V. You want to go the Article V route, I’m with you.
Gah, I read over this before. Seriously? A Constitution amendment for what? How &^%$ many amendments would we need to pass to undo the damage of the last 100 years or progressivism? You seriously believe that we have the 20 years to pass a dozen or more constitutional amendments to create a patchwork quilt of freedom?
Where’s Pablo? I need him to post more of the Declaration of Independence.
You’re not going to like where that road leads.
It helps Lincoln’s cause then that the slaveholding majority were the one refusing to stick around.
1. The South had about 1/3 the population of the North.
2. Only about 10% or something like that of Southerners owned slaves.
3. Several slaveholding states stayed in the Union. All of them were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation.
4. Lincoln empressed over 100,000 black “free” men to do manual labor for the Union, without pay and without choice.
5. This is debated, but the North fired on Ft. Sumpter first.
Why not? Because Yankees get twitchy and start invading the South and killing people?
Is that better or worse than armed drones flying overhead in “peace” time?
Jesus wept, already.
Are we going to re-fight the Civil War? I’ll go get pala so he can tell us all what a pos Lincoln was.
Heh. Okay, let us step back. And by us, I mean me.
Why do we not have the right of secession? An anti-secessionist (Ernst!), make your case.
How about an amendment recognizing the heretofore nonexistent right to secede if you’re in such a damn hurry to get out? How about a Constitutional convention to do with the obsolescent bit of 18th century rigamarole and replace it de jure instead of just de facto?
That must have purely annoyed the hell out of ol’ Edmund Ruffin.
More? It’s all here. But I thought I posted the most relevant part. YMMV.
Does the Constitution need to be amended to recognize a right in order for it to exist? No.
Because secession makes a mock of majority rule and just consent of the governed. If a portion of the people can opt out of the Republic anytime they feel like things aren’t going the way that portion of the people think it ought to be going, there won’t be a Republic, or republics.
There will however be manifold tyrannies. Petty or otherwise.
Is secession a natural right inherent in the people? No Man is an Island until he votes himself there, is that it?
Also, I’ve recognized that the people have a right to change their form of government from an unjust one to a just one, by armed rebellion if those means become necessary.
Obviously secession carries a negative connotation for me that it doesn’t for others. Nonetheless, I’d rather talk about armed rebellion than secession, if only because the former concentrates the mind.
On the drones thing, I’m aware that there are drones flying over the border. Also that there are drone flying over ranchland in Nebraska (and Colorado too, since Jeff mentioned it) looking for Clean Water violations. This of course is exhibit number 965,746 in why the EPA should be abolished. I’m not aware that the drones are armed.
Yet anyways.
Ernst,
Because secession makes a mock of majority rule and just consent of the governed.
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. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
There is not a single offense listed in the Declaration that has not been performed, now, by the federal government.
King George III was apparently a decent king, if you were English or Irish. So, because England and Ireland were fairly ruled, by your argument, it was unjust, illicit, for Americans to secede. I mean, they were revolting against the majority opinion, right?
You don’t need to amend the Constitution — the third in a series of documents overthrowing the previously established government — to justify why people would rebel against a tyrannical government.
Even if a majority of people like the tyranny, that doesn’t make it right. Yes, secession is my natural right.
Secession is a gentlemen’s agreement to shake hands and part ways. If that fails, then the next step is rebellion. Because it is my natural right to rebel against tyranny. It is my natural right to secede from tyranny.
Secession is the marketplace. Don’t like government? Break up and form a new one. Hey, elites, don’t govern too far afield of the people, or your people will leave. How is that tyrannical to any but the petty tyrants themselves? How is that bad?
Performed by the Federal Government, with the consent of the governed. We’ve voted for bread and circuses today for which we will gladly let our grandchildren pay next Tuesday. When we withdraw that consent, and they still go about overreaching, you can get back to me.
You do need to amend it if you want the Federal government to recognize the right of the respective states to “shake hands and part ways,” in my opinion. Particularly since we’re talking about an agreement between gentlemen, and not a one sided argument between a gentleman and a tyrant.
Also, if we can dissolve the Constitution binding the states together in a “gentlemen’s agreement” that would tend to sugggest that the Constitution was nothing more than a gentleman’s agreement itself, and this nation then nothing but a gentlemen’s club.
I feel the same way about the United States being just a club that Flanner O’Connor felt about the Eucharist being just a symbol.
Ask Polybius.
“Jesus wept, already.
Are we going to re-fight the Civil War? I’ll go get pala so he can tell us all what a pos Lincoln was.”
Lincoln GOOD Leigh! Lincoln GOOD. Adams bad but LIncoln GOOD> JackSon TERRIBLE! LIncoln GOOD! LIncoln on right side of history.
Lincoln victim of LUTHERAN lies!
Lincoln victim of neo-confederate leftist Obama supporters! HUURR. Lincoln GOOD man.
You asked earlier, why should California care if Oklahoma goes it’s merry way. What if it’s Nevada? Should California care if Oklahoma seceeding makes it easier for Nevada to secede? Should Southern California care, even if Northern California doesn’t, seeing as Nevada can turn off the Colorado River?
Also, your description of secession as breaking up and forming a new government to replace an unpopular one does a fairly good job of describing the breakup and disintegration of the Roman Empire in the west during the 5th century. (Unfortunately, there’s not a good single source to point to like, Polybius for the rise of Rome at the expense of the independence of the Greek City states. They too were particularly adept at breaking up and forming new governments.)
Jeff commented earlier in the thread,
And
My problem with secession is that I don’t believe that it will remain an obvious last resort. Instead, I think it will become an obvious
firststrike second or third resort for a politically motivated minority.Not unlike initiative and referendum and all those other lovely progressive era reforms that were supposed to make things better.
There's that old saying about just government resting on the consent of the governed, right? Well I suggest that that cuts both ways. If the government is going to govern justly, the governed have to consent to be governed. In Wisconsin we've been witnessing what happens when a politically motivated minority withholds that consent; indeed uses that withholding of consent to illegitimately accuse the duly elected government of Wisconsin of governing unjustly. As a thought expirement, what if Wisconsin was an independent and sovereign state? Would the counties that went for Barret have the right to secede from Wisconsin? To listen to some of his supporters, you would have to think so, if secession were written into law the way referendum is.
I appreciate Scott Rassmussen’s finding that 1 in 4 Americans are so dissatisfied with the present state of affairs that they’re open to extra-constitutional remedies to what ails us. I also appreciate Jeff’s bemusement that that number isn’t higher, given how far we’ve strayed into extra-constitutionality of a different stripe.
But I don’t think we do our country any favors by mainstreaming* yet another line of extra-constitutional thought. I think that’s a Burkean position, but I’m not sure.
That’s all I have to say on this subject.
*Not quite the right word, but all I can come up with
Jeff commented earlier in the thread,
And
My problem with secession is that I don’t believe that it will remain an obvious last resort. Instead, I think it will become an obvious
firstsecond or third resort for a politically motivated minority.Not unlike initiative and referendum and all those other lovely progressive era reforms that were supposed to make things better.
There’s that old saying about just government resting on the consent of the governed, right? Well I suggest that that cuts both ways. If the government is going to govern justly, the governed have to consent to be governed. In Wisconsin we’ve been witnessing what happens when a politically motivated minority withholds that consent; indeed uses that withholding of consent to illegitimately accuse the duly elected government of Wisconsin of governing unjustly. As a thought expirement, what if Wisconsin was an independent and sovereign state? Would the counties that went for Barret have the right to secede from Wisconsin? To listen to some of his supporters, you would have to think so, if secession were written into law the way referendum is.
I appreciate Scott Rassmussen’s finding that 1 in 4 Americans are so dissatisfied with the present state of affairs that they’re open to extra-constitutional remedies to what ails us. I also appreciate Jeff’s bemusement that that number isn’t higher, given how far we’ve strayed into extra-constitutionality of a different stripe.
But I don’t think we do our country any favors by mainstreaming* yet another line of extra-constitutional thought. I think that’s a Burkean position, but I’m not sure.
That’s all I have to say on this subject.
*Not quite the right word, but all I can come up with.
(Reposted to clean up my screwed up html. Go ahead and laugh. I did.)
[There was an open tag on the strikethrough. Tried to close it by context but I might not have done so correctly.]
[Turns out I did close it correctly.]
And somebody was nice enough to close the open tag for me.
So now I have a crazy double post thing going.
Or maybe I just imagined the whole thing and this what the beginnings of a psychotic break look like.
Mother? Oh Mother? It’s your Norman.
Thank you bh. Not for closing the tag, but for not removing the double post and making me look really crazy instead of just slightly crazy.
night all.
There’s a temptation to clean up the thread including all references to the thread being cleaned up but it’s probably more fitting that we’d end up instead spending an extra half-dozen comments talking about it.
This is a human thing. This is what we do.
Heh.
‘Night, Ernst.
Well, I don’t for a moment believe that the behemoth government that has been built and exists today will accept a state leaving the union. Their response won’t be peaceful because a state that leaves the union is a state that has refused to accept the federal government as their master. That would be intolerable. That would be unacceptable. They would have to be put down . Hard. Remember, this is an administration that LIKES the phrase “boots on necks.” Look at how they treat their own members when they stray from the thought plantation. You think they’ll treat those they consider their enemies better?
It’s not about a state having the legal right to leave the union; it’s about the people of that state being able to withstand the nightmare that the federal government will visit upon them. Sherman will have looked like a restrained gentleman having a leisurely stroll down to the coast with a bunch of dudes compared to the firestorm that will be unleashed upon a “misbehaving” state by our federal government.
Obama seems to be fascinated with his ability to kill via drones now; imagine the videos he’ll get to watch when he can use the drones in the USA. He’ll probably insist that they run on MSNBC so everybody can watch as “he” kills more “Right-wing Terrorists.”
if i had a fleet of flying death robots I would use them wisely I promise
It is quite intriguing to watch these kind’s of debates here at PW. I don’t remember most of the things brought up here such as this or that president was bad being taught in history class when I was in school. Conversely, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention though admittedly this was before the DoE came into being.
From my limited knowledge all I can say is the United States of America would likely not exist in its current form, if at all, had the civil war not been fought or if the south had won after years of bitter struggle. I can imagine that France might have colonized the south and England, perhaps via Canada, might have gone back into the north. Of course there are many other scenarios that could have played out as well. Then we wouldn’t be having this discussion, if indeed we were even actually here.
This is an interesting article that is only slightly off topic, even more interesting is the fact that this very same article has a map. I find it mildly interesting that the second link is hosted in the UK.
I understand JG’s point on secession and if either the article or the map are reasonably accurate it is amazing that more folks are willing to simply let the government do what it will do even when they make their voices heard.
Let’s hope that the soft civil war JG has spoken of before actually is soft because as Kresh points out the alternative will be anything but like the War Between the States.
Revisiting Ernst’s arguments against the states’ right of secession:
First, I’m not sure where the Constitution states that the Union is forever binding. If the power to force the several states to remain in the Union is not listed among the enumerated powers of the federal government, then my understanding of the document tells me the right remains with the states.
Second, I’m not sure how any state would threaten secession casually. The Union has a great many benefits, and a fairly high value proposition; if it didn’t, the several states would never have agreed to bind themselves so. For as long as the Union provides mutual benefits that outweigh the costs in self-determination, liberty, and treasure, then any state leaving the Union would be shooting itself in the foot. Who would go to the trouble of forming an Army and Navy, establishing embassies across the world, renegotiating hundreds of trade agreements, setting up border controls, starting an independent currency, and God knows what else I’m missing, just to be a petulant nuisance in Washington?
Does anyone really think Washington would have gotten away with so much over the last century, if we didn’t have reasons to stick with the Union that rated much higher than simple inertia and good manners? I say that if the day comes when Washington’s abuses outweigh the myriad benefits of our Union, then those states suffering such abuse can and should dissolve their bonds with their abuser, and singly or together “to provide new Guards for their future security.”
And I honestly don’t think myself an extremist for believing any of this. Quite the contrary, in fact — I can’t believe that three-quarters of my fellow countrymen believe that a wife, by dint of the marriage contract, is required to remain with her abusive husband, to cook his meals and clean his house, while he grows ever more demanding and threatening. It’s just ludicrous!
. I can imagine that France might have colonized the south and England, perhaps via Canada, might have gone back into the north…
Actually, England supported the South. They didn’t much like Yankees, anyway, and they were a textile powerhouse that depended heavily on cotton supplied by the South. Culturally, the South was verysimpatico with England, while the North retained the nagging, moralizing nanny-ism that made the English belch out the Puritans in the 1600s.
But you are right — there is a reason that Birth of a Nation is about the Civil War, not the Revolution. The USA of 1859 died forever. The USA of 1866 was an entirely different animal.
Actually, England supported the South. They didn’t much like Yankees, anyway, and they were a textile powerhouse that depended heavily on cotton supplied by the South. Culturally, the South was verysimpatico with England, while the North retained the nagging, moralizing nanny-ism that made the English belch out the Puritans in the 1600s.
The British government was sympathetic to the South, albeit with the significant exception of the Albert, Victoria’s Prince Consort. Singlehandedly, he kept the Union and Britain from going to war over the Trent Affair in 1861.
The English working class, on the other hand, was vehemently pro-Union, including (most significantly) the textile workers themselves.
Amanda Foreman’s recent book is considered to be the definitive examination of the subject: http://www.amazon.com/World-Fire-Britains-American-ebook/dp/B004J4WN2G
I own it, but it’s in the “To Read” queue.
The main problem with secession is that there will be a lot of people in the seceding realm who do not care to go, thank you very much. You saw a lot of that in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with predictably horrible consequences.
In our history, Southern Unionists were a significant factor in the defeat of the Confederacy, both at the command level (George Thomas, David Farragut) and in supplying a large number of soldiers to the Union (around 100,000 Southerners wore the blue).
Secession isn’t just a matter of nation vs. state/region–there’s also the question of the rights of the people. Loyalists/Unionists/Tories–whatever you want to call them–are inevitably a factor in secession scenarios. What about their rights?
Unionist rights would have to be balanced against Separatist rights. There’s no doubt that many would wish to remain in the Union, whether through a sense of patriotism, or because they’re recipients of federal largesse, or whatever other reason. It’s just one more reason why I doubt any state would threaten secession lightly. Things have to get very, very bad before a Governor and Legislature tell their Unionist constituents that they’re out of luck.
The definition of “very, very bad” of course will be entirely relative (in the historically contingent sense). For example: What was intolerable in 1860 was the fact that a Republican administration meant no expansion of slavery into the territories for four whole years.
The larger point about the country being integrated and interconnected in ways that the antebellum United States were not, of course stands. That’s the current historical contingency.
In this piece , h/t sdferr, it is argued that there have been 3 political revolutions since the original.
And that we are on the cusp of number 4.
[emphasis mine]
Well, I think any succession would likely follow from revolt, and theories aside, would most certainly involve lots of blood, sweat, and tears. Also, see Kresh says June 6, 2012 at 1:12 am.
Sometimes it’s a useful exercise to flip the script, and see how your thoughts hold up.
Let’s say it’s 1984, and New York State said no way, we aren’t staying with this dangerous cowboy trying to provoke war with the USSR, firing air traffic controllers in mass, and giving the countries wealth to the rich so it can “trickle down” to the disenfranchised, we held a vote (pretend they did and it was 60-40 for succession) and we succeed from the Union!
Now what?
Would South Carolina really have been a sovereign and independent state if another country controlled entry into it’s major seaport?
Four revolutions, three regimes, or
five, going on six party systems.
We’ve been on the cusp of something Historic my entire adult life.
But we never seem to get over the apex, do we?
Another straw man argument. Reagan was acting Constitutionally. And of course, leftist states won’t secede, because they rely on others to pay for their perks.
As I said, secession is a last ditch effort — a kind of localized rebellion. And we’re talking about it in the context of living in a post-Constitutional society where those who have been bought off keep the rest of us essentially enslaved in perpetuity by voting themselves our stuff, and using the instrumentalities of government (from unelected bureaucrats to politicized judges) to act as a kind of police state for thieves.
We have no compulsion to live under tyranny.
Oh, I wasn’t really making an argument, just an exploration.
Honestly, you went right to what I was thinking, that proggs would never consider succession. Each going their own way just don’t work for a parasite.
It’s also another example of being unequally yoked. We agonize over rules the left don’t even acknowledge exist.
SEcession, Lee, not SUCcession.
Smack that auto-correct around a few times, show it who’s boss.
This is what I love about pw – the free exchange of ideas and opinions from a wide and diverse (in the non – pc way) group of people. Reasoned discourse, with occasional barbed comments. It makes me think. (Jeff, you know where to send the check.)
Ernst, I reread the thread today and I understand your passion regarding seccession; it has a nasty, bloody history here. I also know that the country would not be here if Lincoln had not saved the Union. Maybe one of the few times that the ends justify the means.
But my take is that we are discussing ways in which the Constitution can be reasserted. It has taken a revolution, several founding document changes, a civil war, and many amendments to get where we are. You are absolutely right that secession would be a dangerous path, as would armed rebellion. Neither of those steps could be taken lightly.
But what if they are forced upon us? Imagine that this Leviathan we have created begins to come apart. Crippling debt, hyper-inflation, civil disorder greeted with massive crackdowns by Washington. Yes, even drone use against citizens. At what point do we say we have to reassert the Constitution by means that are not going to be pretty?
Would it not then be possible that secession might even be the saving of the Republic, where the cancerous bits would be removed? I have no idea what that next iteration of the American experiment would look like. But it would be the result of the continuing and different challenges the nation has faced.
I think that we have an obligation to debate various ways of healing the Republic. Voting, amendments, tea parties, civil disobedience, even secession. And I still don’t like the word. But it ain’t Voldemort.
Back into my cave.
Damn! And I was this close: >|<
Much as I'd like to blame auto-correct, it was all me. I thought I had it right.
Learn'in stuff is fun!
When a government — any government — provides for human flourishing that government will meet with the approval, support and sanction of the people for whom it exists.
When a government, by contrast, is itself the source of injustices, punishments and immiseration of the people for whom it supposedly exists, that government will meet with the opposition, refusal and abandonment of these self-same people. There is no mystery here.