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I don’t even think it has to come to “shooting,” I believe we can “amicably divorce” just as Dr. Walter Williams suggested in his 2000 article, “It’s time to part company” (google it).
Only people who support a “perpetual” Union will do the shooting, just as they did in 1860. No, the vast majority of the Founders, Framers and Ratifiers (as well as Locke, Cicero, Plato, Augustine and Aristotle) understood the Inalienable Right to self determination and self governance. And We the People of our separate States need to recapture this thinking, not the serf-like thinking we have now towards the national government.
Look at how many people are putting all of their hope in the 9 politically connected lawyers on the Supreme Court regarding Obamacare. If they were at all consistent in their jurisprudence, they MUST uphold Obamacare as supposedly “Constitutional.” They certainly haven’t seen much of anything else that isn’t under the Commerce Clause or Necessary and Proper Clause or the General Welfare Clause. Yet, millions are putting all there hope in the decision. What a farce.
The Founders, Framers and Ratifiers would clearly have a different opinion about what to do. Take a minute if you will and read the Principles of 98 to see what two of them said they intended to do with the Aliens and Sedition Act.
In 1860 the split was regional. 90%+ of (white) people in most of the southern states supported the war once it started.
Today there is no state in the Union that does not have at least a 1/3 minority on the “other side.”
There is absolutely no way to have a clean break or amicable divorce under such conditions. Massive ethnic and/or ideological cleansing would be required.
Which pretty much makes a mockery of this being done by “the people.” Nope, it would be one group of “the people” domineering over and oppressing another group of “the people.” Which, arguably, is what’s been going on anyway.
The only way to make this an action of “the people” is to redefine “the people” as those who support a particular political POV. Which of course makes all others “enemies of the people” even if they’re a majority in a particular area. Personally, I think the “enemies of the people” meme has a bad enough history I don’t care to revive it.
I believe as a people we believe in elections, and many are awaiting the results of 2012. If Obama wins, he will most certainly provoke a civil war and/or economic collapse. Romney wants to get elected and stay for a second term, so he won’t have the stomach to rein in entitlements that would cost him votes. Either way, we are in a fast train or a slow train off a cliff, and I can see the edge from this vantage point! When the ultimate collapse happens, not if, but when...we need to step in and grab state sovereignty back. This is essentially what happened with the former Soviet Union.
The problem is "amicably." There is no way the federal gubmint is going to let a state secede. The War of Northern Aggression established that any state wishing to leave the Union would have to do so through force.
The States not only seceeded from the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, their right to do so was acknowledged.
And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, as unquestionable, we may infer that that right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting parties. Their obligation, therefore, to preserve the present constitution, is not greater than their former obligations were, to adhere to the articles of confederation; each state possessing the same right of withdrawing itself from the confederacy without the consent of the rest, as any number of them do, or ever did, possess.
Of the Several Forms of Government, St. George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States, Section XIII
Look up the history. Who fired first?
In 1860 secessionists were out to establish their own country, their own government, and they wanted it to lay claim to as much territory as they could (with the proviso of course, that states and territories that didn't allow slavery wouldn't be welcome).
Therefore, they weren't averse to subverting other state and territorial governments and beginning a war. And they did just that. Or did you miss that day in history class?
No, the vast majority of the Founders, Framers and Ratifiers (as well as Locke, Cicero, Plato, Augustine and Aristotle) understood the Inalienable Right to self determination and self governance.
So they believed that whenever you were dissatisfied you could simply throw off the rest of your country and declare yourself independent? Somehow I don't think so.
Self-determination and self-government take place in a context of law and responsibility and mutual obligations. Believing that any passing grievance justifies rebellion or secession isn't something wise men would agree with.
So far as I can see neither Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Cicero, nor St. Augustine justified unilateral secession from a representative republic. So far as I've been able to find out, we don't know how they would have reacted to a situation like that in America in the 1860s.
Take a minute if you will and read the Principles of 98 to see what two of them said they intended to do with the Aliens and Sedition Act.
Nothing too shocking or obscene, I hope (though with Jefferson I kind of wonder).
Take a minute to find out how Washington reacted to the Whiskey Rebellion, or Jefferson to Burr's conspiracy or violations of his embargo.
Politicians can talk a pretty "state's rights" game when they are out of power, but they behave very differently when they're actually in office.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it was the rebels who opened fire on Ft. Sumter.
So it wasn’t the Union that opened fire in 1860.