Posted on 01/19/2021 4:38:09 PM PST by rfreedom4u
Many people have stated that secession is illegal and not allowed as determined by the American Civil War. But is it really? Throughout the history of the United States our government has supported the independence/secession of states/territories/colonies from various other nations.
Haiti seceded from the French empire through a slave revolt. South Sudan broke from Sudan. Yugoslavia broke into several countries and later Kosovo seceded from Serbia. Czechoslovakia split into two countries. The Soviet split into quite a few countries. The UK left the European Union. And many others….
So why do people say secession is illegal in the United States? There’s nothing in the US Constitution that mentions secession. The Tenth Amendment states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Using my logic this means that since the issue of secession is not given to the federal government it is reserved to the states or the people themselves to determine. I’ve read the constitution of my own state (Texas) and secession is not mentioned at all. This even furthers my belief that is should be determined by the people.
If I were to join a club and did not like what the club became, I would be well within my rights to quit that club. If I go to see a movie and don’t like it, I can walk out. So why would anyone believe that the United States is a “once you’re in you can’t leave” type of deal? When someone doesn’t like the state in which they live they are free to move to another state or even another country.
If secession/independence/splitting up is supported for other people in the world why is it not ok for citizens of the United States? And yes, I know that politicians are garbage and want to maintain their power and control. So please give me your opinion on whether it is legal or not and why you think that way? But please spare me the “if it’s broke, we don’t run away, we fix it” argument. At this point I am fairly certain that it is not repairable.
That depends on which side of that border you are on..
You are a state-ist fluffer with no shame....
It is very popular. And that popularity is growing!! Free Republic is the only place where the idea of secession is not popular.
Oh, the death of literacy! Words mean things and "expressly unconstitutional" means that this supposed unconstitutionality is expressed somewhere in the constitution. Please tell us where in the constitution your claim is expressed. "Expressly" does not mean 'very' or 'I feel strongly'.
Okay; where will that border be friendly?
As long as you and I are on different sides then i know everything is good in the world...
Different sides of what?
Secession is not connected to anything the left is demanding. Remember that the Communist Manifesto concludes with the words, “The workers have nothing to lose but their chains; they have a world to win”. This is an international leftist movement, and they originate outside the USA.
Meanwhile, in reality, the Declaration of Independence was a beautiful disunionist manifesto.
It was a vote of the people in ratifying conventions in each new state that created the union.
Thereby proving that membership is maintained by the consent of the people of any said state. After all, the mechanism was not a referendum for the people of, say Vermont, to allow the former colony of New York to join.
One joined it takes the consent of the whole for a State to depart.
Which theory contradicts the historical circumstance of individual states choosing for themselves whether they are part of the union or not.
You are simultaneously a citizen of your state and of the nation as a whole.
Federal citizenship as you're imagining it was created by the Fourteenth Amendment to resolve the issue of it-not-actually-even-existing-prior-to-the-rump-ratification-of-the-Fourteenth-Amendment.
Just as one state may not abrogate or diminish your citizenship rights in another state, a state may not abrogate or diminish your national citizenship though secession.
Oh, how you must resent those damned revolutionaries who deprived your fellow subjects of their ability to participate in the Crown's government. Unless, of course, you're complete hypocrite.
Lincoln laid this all out, many times.
Lincoln wasn't around when the constitution was being crafted, how could he 'lay out' anything?
There is no constitutional process for dissolving all or part of this union of states and people. A constitutional amendment would have to be enacted that would lay out the process.
Most of our rights are unaccompanied by a constitutionally mandated process. The First Amendment guarantees the rights of free expression, religious observation, political demonstration, publication without prior constraint, and the right to specifically petition the government. But that same amendment provides NO guidance for how to enjoy them because rights don't originate with government and the constitution doesn't create rights -- it merely prohibits government intrusion into our exercise of our own original rights. The whole premise of the American experiment in self-government is that the people of each of the several states have the sovereign and natural right to withdraw from political union to which they withhold consent. As with other rights, the "process" would consist of the federal government staying the hell out of it.
Good luck with that. Just trying to figure out who absorbs the national debt or how to keep social security payments flowing or how to divide military assets would never be resolved.
Yeah, because nations never negotiate treaties and shit./s
You may not be a citizen of California or Texas or Ohio, but as an American you have as much “right” to to those states as anyone else. Equal protection of the law and other federal rights is what you gained in union, having that also granted to all American citizens. That can’t be taken from you by another citizen or a state in any legal manner.
Next time I take my ar-15 through a New York airport or visit a public firing range in California with my thirty-round magazines, I'll be sure to direct any inquiring authorities your way. You'll straighten them out for me.
I don't recall seeing any language in COTUS relating to state "membership" except Article IV, Section 4. It only speaks of admission of states and not their secession.
Since the constitution is silent on the secession, this must be a power of the states retained in Amendment 10.
I agree. The Balkans has been referred to as the ‘’anus mundi’’(ass of the world’’). Secession would Balkanize America and we’d become a tribal mess.
We did not ‘’secede’’ from Britain. We declared ourselves free people with rights given to us by God, not by a degenerate monarchy that thought itself superior by dint of ‘’royal blood’’.
The South seceded from the Union in order to preserve an economic system based on the use of slave labor.
bfl
I believe that quote was made by Lincoln during his debate with Stephen Douglas.
So a soldier from Ohio is going to defend the right of a soldier from Virginia to secede?
The colonies rebelled from Great Britain, and fought a protracted war with Britain to establish their independence.
You would be incorrect. Texas is bound by the same Constitution as the other states are, and has no more or any less powers under it.
Why should it take violence? James Madison, Salmon Chase, and others proposed that leaving the union should not have to be any harder than joining was. Approval of a majority of the states as expressed through a vote in both houses of Congress.
If states like Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia could have known in the 1780s what would happen to them 80+ years later, they never would have ratified the Constitution in the first place. That right there is enough to convince me that they had every right to secede from the U.S.
Why?
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