Jackass, is that you?
Sorry, but no Founder considered it their "right" to secede "at pleasure", meaning for light and transient causes.
Instead, they said: "...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..."
Then, "...it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."
DiogenesLamp: "The foundational premise of all these works is the assertion that the King is unnecessary because men have a right to rule themselves."
Sure, but it was never our Founders' original intention in, say 1770 or 1773, to "secede" from Britain "at pleasure".
Instead they tried first to secure their rights as Englishmen to charters of self government and representation in Parliament.
Only long after these failed and after Brits launched & declared war on them did they finally assert independence.
DiogenesLamp: "They did not say "Y". They said "X", "X", "X","X", "X". You keep trying to force them to say "Y", but they didn't say "Y." They said "X". "
Rubbish & nonsense. It's DiogenesLamp who consistently misrepresents their ideas & actions.
DiogenesLamp: "It was an issue of secession because we had a *RIGHT* to secede.
Because we had a *RIGHT* to rule ourselves.
You keep using the word "pleasure" as if we are referring to a lark, but intolerable offenses are in the eyes of the beholder, and what may be tolerable for some, can be intolerable for another. "
"At pleasure" refers to light & transient causes which our Founders said were not justification for secession.
Rather, they said, "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another" 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..."
Our Founders never claimed an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure.
DiogenesLamp: "You just keep trying to subjectivize the matter by saying it must be intolerable in *YOUR* eyes before it is legitimate."
Not at all, our Founders gave us a perfect example of what was intolerable in **THEIR** eyes, in their Declaration list of grievances against the king.
No such listing existed in 1860.
DiogenesLamp: "It isn't superior, it is exactly the same.
They recognized they had a right to self determination, and they seceded from their Union because they wanted to rule themselves."
They recognized no "right" to secede "at pleasure", but only for "a long train of abuses and usurpations", which they obliged: "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
DiogenesLamp: "...they gave the advice that it shouldn't be done for light or transient causes, but you and yours keep wanting to interpret the advice as an absolutely essential requirement and ignore the fact they clearly say it is the right of the people to abolish an existing government and form one to their liking."
They clearly state their "right" is a matter of necessity driven by a long train of abuses & usurpations.
Any other interpretation is not Founders' Original Intent.
In natural law theory, people had the right to rebel against a government that had become abusive and tyrannical. They didn't have the right to overthrow governments because they didn't like them.
Consider: the Founding Fathers (and most people who participated in and thought about politics in those days) were property owners. They weren't going to take kindly to someone arguing that a propertyless majority could overthrow property owners and confiscate their belongings just because the felt like it. So clearly, they believed that the right to self-determination was not absolute.
Of course some may have gotten carried away in the heat of argument, but Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, Jay and others didn't believe that they had an absolute right to overthrow governments if they didn't like them.
It's a confusion that continues. If you look at the Wikipedia page for John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, they write: [U]nder the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens, to replace the government with one that served the interests of citizens.
Then they quote him:
Locke affirmed an explicit right to revolution in Two Treatises of Government: “whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.”
Obviously, the right of revolution required much more than people thinking that their interests weren't being served.
But the problem is this: if you've come to think slavery is essential to society and you think slavery is threatened, is that a just cause for revolution?
I think that's a good example of why you don't want people making such decisions subjectively based solely on their own will or whim.
You don't want people deciding to opt out of the political system whenever they feel like it for whatever reason they feel like it.