Posted on 11/14/2012 1:05:46 PM PST by TheWryFederalist
It's barely been a week since President Obama's re-election, and some people can't believe, truly can't believe, that things didn't go their way.
As of Wednesday morning, 37 states had posted petitions on the White House website to secede from the United States of America. (Some not-so-brilliant citizens of Georgia and South Carolina actually have two different secession postings each, but I'm counting those knuckleheads only once.)
I'm sorry to report that this not-so-illustrious group includes California, where nearly 7,000 citizens have signed a petition quoting the Declaration of Independence and insisting on the right to set up their own government.
This is clearly part of a movement to draft all the states, and Lord knows that there are certainly enough foolish people in each and every state in the union who would be willing to put their name on anything at all. But seeing as this country did fight the most bloody war in its history over the secession of the chattel slavery-holding states, it's sad to see that those are the same states that currently boast the most popular secession petitions.
Louisiana (around 30,000 signatures). Florida (about 24,000). South Carolina (around 28,000). Alabama (nearing the 23,000 mark). And last but never least, Texas, which rates as the state most likely to secede at more than 80,000 signatures.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/If-they-want-to-secede-let-em-4035092.php#ixzz2CEQjDxxO
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
As a former ‘rat myself, I think this the really unexplored aspect of this issue: why it might make sense for the other side. In the immediate sense, losing one large red state or a few small ones completely tilts the balance of power in the electoral college. Not to mention how those states act to prevent realization of socialist fantasies.
And then there is the cultural aspect. The deep blue cities view the red areas as being full of illiterate knuckle draggers. Men who want nothing more than to beat their wives and burn crosses. Women who are the embodiment of trash. Inbred children who sit on the porch and play banjos. There is no love lost here.
While I’m personally undecided on the issue, there are some aspects that most people on both sides of the fence would like.
Basically it boils down to “might makes right.” You’ll see some discussion about whether its legal or Constitutional to do so. Its kind of a silly discussion because the act of secession means that the seceding party wants to leave the Constitution, laws, and courts of the country in question behind.
It was a very complicated argument, that got more complicated over thirty years or so. But in the end it was not about property rights as such, but over a particular sort of property right.
Simply put -
- The South was concerned about certain Constitutional property rights - constitutional as in explicitly called for in the Constitution; the second amendment was vague in comparison to the wording in Article IV
- The North refused (unconstitutionally) to honor these rights, arguing that they were intrinsically evil.
This conflict was THE cause of secession, and quite simply explains why the South fought. They fought for slaves.
The confusion arises over the reasons why the NORTH fought. The North didn’t fight to free the slaves, true. They fought, most simply put, because the South fought.
On other matters -
Unlike most other slave-owning countries, in the US slaves were broadly owned. In places like Brazil and the Caribbean slaves tended to be owned by a relatively small class of landowners. The end of slavery in the US was bound to be messier and more traumatic.
The argument proceeded during periods where the value of slaves waxed and waned. In 1860 slave values were in fact rather high and slaves were both widely owned and constituted a major portion of Southerners real property. This is a separate matter than whether slavery was an economically sound system. A threat to slavery was a broad-based bread and butter issue. Note that a general emancipation and relocation at government expense was out of the question by then (like James Monroe’s Liberia experiment) because slave values had risen so much.
Last I hear there was a total of 675,000 signatures. Even allowing for repeats there are something like 100,000 for Texas alone already.
And the number is exploding as we speak.
That will keep the feds busy for years. They may have to resort to threatening letters.
Here’s an idea - you cannot vote unless you pay $1 more in tax than the sum of any government transfer payments (welfare, disability, etc.) that you received in the preceding year.
“Peter Cook & Dudley Moore - ‘The Frog and Peach’ “
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fY-M41FGzI
See minute 2:22 and a little after.
Yeah, you are right. I guess it is semantics I was arguing...
But, we are in agreement on the issue of the north not acting constitutionally. The south didn’t feel that they had any other redress than to seceed, and the north didn’t recognize their ability to seceed. (That is a Lincoln thing I believe.) Then Lincoln brilliantly set the south up to fire the first shots in South Carolina, and the fight was on.
I think that if Lincoln was unable to use the anti-slavery feeling in the north at the time that he did, the war would have ended in an armistice between two separate countries, and things would have been a lot different...
The idiots at the SF Chronicle are too damn stupid to realize that California is a 21st century slave state.
“If a state declared its independence from Obama’s rule, what would happen? That is uncharted territory.”:
No, it’s not. The National Weather Service has bought 1.2 billion rounds of cop killer bullets. Any state that tries to secede will be attacked by federal weather forecasters who will fart bullets from their arses and kill anyone within 500 yards.
I understand the reason but not the process.
What good is sending 25,000 signatures from a state to the WH?
Any decent size state should be able to get 25,000 signatures.
How do you get from there to succession?
Doesn’t the state legislature have to declare independence?
Concur. They’re gonna miss us (giggle)!
What is to say that a divorce would not be peaceful such as that between the Czech republic and Slovakia or very recently that of Sudan and Southern Sudan? You can envision a scenario that goes either way.
“Signing the petiton is just asking for a visit from the Feds.”
Really? Are you afraid that a fat welfare momma will sit on you? If you’re afraid to take a tiny risk and oppose Buckwheat in writing, I suggest you take a hike. JR has already made his resistance statement against obuma. Embrace it.
Sending petitions to King George III was how this whole country started. I doubt the colonists really expected anything to come of those petitions either.
As political theatre, the petitions have been a success. We’re all here talking about them and they cost the authors a few minutes to type them up and post them.
If Texas were to secede, it would succeed.
Millions of Constitution loving Patriots in Blue states would join Texas.
It would be even more powerful than anybody could imagine.
At least Texas has the history to know what NOT to do this time around.
“If a state declared its independence from Obama’s rule, what would happen? That is uncharted territory.”
Not really. We have fought two wars over the issue:
The American revolution was fought over this issue. America took the stance then that secession was a right—”When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to sever the bonds that unite two people . . . “ (paraphrasing)
Then, in 1860, America’s bloodiest war was fought over precisely this issue. In that war, The United States took the position that secession was treason.
Actual secession would bring about another civil war.
Actually i am not sure what i mean, it seems to be idiocy in rampage in America today.
The constitution allows for the people to vote for and do any thing they want as long as it is not prohibited by the constitution.
But the majority of the people are not satisfied with that, they are willing to throw the constitution away to get more free stuff from those they consider to be no good rich people.
And here we are, people such as my self talking about succeeding which is ridicules because if we do not even have the power to stop this socialism take over with the law on our side how in the world are we going to do any thing so drastic as this.
Every thing from the grade school educators to the supreme court judges are on the side of socialism and have been building up to this point for many years.
The only thing we can do is to vote and hope for the best, but for it to have gotten this way there have to be more idiots than anything else.
Right now it is just passion
> That will keep the feds busy for years. They may have to resort to threatening letters.
Nah, too expensive. The signers will eventually figure out what’s going on when they find security won’t let them board a plane or a train.
Well, there’s always Grayhound. Or they can just take it on the shank’s mare. The Constitution guarantees freedom of travel, but not freedom to contract with a common carrier.
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