Posted on 06/24/2016 6:15:44 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Hey, Texplainer: Britain voted to leave the European Union. Can Texas secede from the United States?
In the wake of Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union - nicknamed "Brexit" - speculation of a Texit on the horizon have cropped up once again. The secessionist movement has a long history in the Lone Star state. Delegates for the Texas Republican Party even recently debated adding secessionist language to the party's platform. But is it actually legal for Texas to leave the United States?
Simply put, the answer is no. Historical and legal precedents make it clear that Texas could not pull off a Texit - at least not legally.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
>>Well, you didn’t answer the question, which is not surprising.<<
I answered it EXACTLY. With references and even some reading for you.
Perhaps the answer was overwhelming for you. Do I need a teacup for your gentle sensibilities?
>>If I were violating my adversary’s fundamental God given rights, I would expect for a system of just laws (and enforcement) to compel me to cease that activity.<<
There is such a thing in place now: Sharia Law.
>>No, I understand the meaning of the word perfectly. I just wonder why you’re so dead set on insisting that laws supersede natural rights.<<
I will type slowly so you can keep up. The question was a LEGAL one. I answered it LEGALLY.
You can’t even define “natural rights” — it is an amorphous concept, unique to each person. If you eschew the Constitution, you eschew its foundation documents.
Which makes you an anarchist.
Which is unsurprising given your complete purposeful misunderstanding of the topic at hand and your extensive army of straw men.
You seem to have a mental density akin to solid bone. That, or you’re pretending to not grasp the very simple concepts I’ve been talking about.
Something tells me it’s the latter.
When I speak of natural rights, I’m referring to such things as are contained in our own Bill of Rights. Those enumerated rights weren’t granted by men, but are inherent in each individual, simply by the fact of their very existence.
Take the 2nd, for instance. The Framers recognized that all men have an inherent (or natural) right to keep and bear arms. This, of course, for the purpose of defending themselves against a tyrannical despot, or even nefarious individuals who would do them harm. They didn’t grant you and I that right - they merely recognized its existence, and codified it into our nation’s senior LEGAL document.
The same holds for all the other ‘natural’ rights spoken of therein.
Any legal mechanism crafted by men which abrogates those rights, is by the very law of nature’s God, invalid on its face. Which circles back to my original point about secession.
I believe that any people have a natural right to separate themselves from a political union which they no longer desire to be bound to. If a people do not have that right, then they’re mere chattel, owned by the state, and not free people at all.
Nope. You just need to answer the question, but reading through the thread I see you don’t answer questions. Peace. Out.
Well, you are wrong again.
Texas has the Texas State Guard (not National Guard) And they have increased the size of it in the past 2 years.
You said:
“Texas would be toothless and broke in a month”
You are simply wrong again.
This is the wrong place to spread BS about Texas.
I’ve already told you I want no part of secession, but circumstances could happen that would warrant it.
Not that I think that is even a wild possibility.
Bye
>>Nope. You just need to answer the question, but reading through the thread I see you don’t answer questions. Peace. Out.<<
You must not be able to speak English. Which part of the answer did you not understand? The citation from the United States Constitution, the lengthy opinion from Scalia or Texas v. White?
I can help you with them if you don’t understand them.
It is YOU who is obtuse and purposefully obfuscating. And repeating yourself like a 6 YO “I know you are but what am I?”
I should know better than getting into discussions with illiterate children.
>>I’ve already told you I want no part of secession, but circumstances could happen that would warrant it.
Not that I think that is even a wild possibility.
Bye<<
I think a discussion about the reality of a Texit would be interesting. Don’t get mad that you disagree with me.
What exactly do you think the TSG (total troop size about 2,200 — by comparison Ft. Hood alone has 90,000) would do?
Also the TSG is made up of the TNG and thus reports to the POTUS. Would they rebel? It also means the materiel belong to the USA — and the USA pays their salary.
Picture a scenario where the USA blockades Texas just puts up roadblocks on all roads coming in and out and blockades the Gulf and the Rio Grand? What is Texas response?
The USA then closes all pipelines out of Texas so oil can’t be moved. The USA then closes all banks (already having declared all bases and posts as US territory and expelling all Texans from them, then either closing or just going into lockdown).
Finally, the USA tells the world that any government that accepts Texas scrip will have its assets in the US frozen and barred from doing business with the US.
This is a scenario just off the top of my head. The USA wins without a shot fired.
I am not ROOTING for this — I am saying this is only one of many scenarios. If there is a scenario where Texas could actually secede, I would love to see it.
I mean that, I would be very interested in how it might be pulled off.
UT grad?
End trans.
Truth, BTW is not BS.
Unless you have better numbers than I can find.
As for the end result, you offer no counter-scenarios that say Texas could survive an attempt at secession.
>>UT grad?
End trans.<<
You are very uneducated. Read a book.
It just amazes me you show your ignorance on an open forum. I have answered all questions, added citations, and separated fact from conjecture from fantasy.
You OTOH, just keep holding your breath until you turn blue.
You can take a jackass to water but you can’t make him drink, I guess.
Adios.
I can read, the constitution does not say the Supreme Court is thefinal arbiter of what is constitutional. But the resort to use of ad hominem method of communication certainly illuminates the strength of your “argument”.
Rusty, you well know the key word here is "necessary", and no Founder, none, believed secession "at pleasure" was constitutional or lawful.
Indeed, secession "at pleasure" is the very definition of the word "rebellion", and every major Founder, without exception, took decisive actions against rebellion, insurrection, "domestic violence" or treason:
Clearly, our Founders fully understood the difference between lawful secession and rebellion, and were totally intolerant of the latter.
So, did Founders believe in lawful secession?
Of course they did, just as their new "more perfect" Constitution of 1787 "seceded" from the old Articles of Confederation "perpetual union".
So, what was lawful secession?
Well, Madison's considered opinion explained it best.
Madison said secession, or disunion, were valid under two circumstances:
Did either of those conditions apply in 1861?
No, not even close.
So those declarations of secession were "at pleasure".
Could either apply today?
Sure -- Congress could lawfully approve any state's request for secession, or a convention of states could carve out whole regions into separate countries.
What about unapproved, unilateral declarations of secession?
No, those remain today, as they were to our Founders, acts of rebellion, insurrection and/or treason.
2. President Adams passed (and Jefferson initially supported) Alien & Sedition acts in preparation for war against France, now known as the Quazi-War of 1798.
3. President Jefferson arrested and tried for treason his own former Vice President Burr, on suspicion Burr was going to lead Louisiana to declare secession (1807).
4. President Madison moved US Army troops off the war-time frontier with Canada to Albany to be in position to put down rebellion in case the Hartford Convention declared secession in 1814.
As a matter of historical interest, we should note that these examples don't support your case.
The Whiskey Rebellion was not a "secession," per se. It was simply a...rebellion.
The Alien and Sedition Acts had nothing to do with secession. They are also widely admitted to have been unconstitutional, which is why Congress repealed them shortly thereafter.
Burr's attempt to create his own western kingdom was not a secession because it did not involve a state or states trying to leave the union. Instead, Lousiana was a territory at this time, and the Constitution had implied, and the Northwest Ordinances clarified, that territories of the United States were under federal control. Burr's effort was not "secession" in the sense this discussion means it, but would have been more akin to him trying to steal federal territory outright.
The Hartford Convention example is perhaps the closest to an issue of secession with these, but still fails as an example because your use of it essentially begs the question.
Further, we ought to note that there were a lot of other factors, not least of which were sectional rivalries, involved in the preparations to suppress the Hartford Convention. What this means is that the move to do so dids not stem from some pure-as-the-driven-snow conviction on the part of "the Founders" that "secession was wrong," but instead involved a lot of rather petty partisan and sectional concerns that would have been in play regardless of the legal status or lack thereof of secession.
All the examples you cite of the federal government militarily crushing citizen dissent, are from bygone eras, where such actions were commonplace.
No one in our government has that sort of backbone today, nor do the American people. If there’s to be a secession of one or more states, it will not provoke violence in this age.
Then you misunderstand my "case".
So now focus your attention on my actual argument, not on what you might wish it had been:
Yashcheritsiy: "The Hartford Convention example is perhaps the closest to an issue of secession with these, but still fails as an example because your use of it essentially begs the question."
No, you're wrong because Madison's response to the Hartfod Convention precisely illustrates our Founders' Original Intentions towards unapproved, illegal declarations of secession.
Yashcheritsiy: "...but instead involved a lot of rather petty partisan and sectional concerns that would have been in play regardless of the legal status or lack thereof of secession."
Irrelevant, since such is always the case in politics, including the politics of 1860-61.
My point again, in case you still haven't grasped it is: our Founders well understood the difference between lawful approved secession versus rebellion, insurrection, "domestic violence", treason, etc.
They set the example, in 1787 of how to lawfully "secede" from one form of government to another.
Nor did secession, or slavery or tariffs or any other such cause provoke violence in 1861.
What provoked violence was the Confederate military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861.
On December 7, 1941 such history repeated itself, but this time on a global scale.
1.Mutual consent, meaning logically, approval by Congress or by Convention of the States.
2.Or "...by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect," meaning a serious breach of compact rendering its binding obligations null & void.
Did either of those conditions apply in 1861?
No, not even close.
So those declarations of secession were "at pleasure".
I know you don't think that nullifications of the Constitution by various Northern states blocking the return of fugitive slaves were not serious enough to justify secession. Perhaps you are forgetting that the return of fugitive slaves was voted for unanimously by the Constitutional Convention. That and other similar compromises between North and South helped make the Union under the Constitution possible. There was a lot of give and take between the two regions to get to the final Constitution.
According to the description of some of the horse trading at the Constitutional Convention by the authors (Edward J. Larson and Michael P. Winship) of "The Constituional Convention, A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison":
On August 24, the eleven-member committee reported its recommendations to the Convention concerning the major outstanding issues relating to congressional power over trade. With respect to the slave trade, it recommended a compromise forbidding Congress to ban the importation of slaves until 1800. The following day Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina moved that the date be changed to 1808. The Convention approved this motion, with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia voting no. With respect to statutes regulating international shipping, or "navigation acts," the committee recommended striking the southern-inspired restriction requiring two-thirds majority in each house for their passage, and the Convention passed it on AUGUST 29.
On August 28, as a concession to the South, the Convention unanimously approved a requirement that fugitive slaves in any state "be delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor."
As I've posted before, and I'm sure you know, Daniel Webster, who served twice as Secretary of State, and also as a Senator from Massachusetts, and a Representative from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, warned the North as follows in 1851:
If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations? I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.
And yet, some Northern states continued after this warning to flout the Constitution. To save bandwidth, I'll link to one of my earlier long posts citing reports of what some Northern states were doing: Link
The problem is that you weren't even successful in trying to make your own point then, because none of the examples you cited, with the possible, partial exception of the last one, were ever understood to even be attempts at a lawful secession, and they weren't even billed as such by those participating in them.
Face it, your examples were bad ones and didn't support your argument.
Face it, so long as you refuse to "get" the point, the examples won't make sense to you.
Point is: those examples prove that rebellion, etc., including threats of unapproved secession, was clearly and decisively opposed by our Founders.
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