Posted on 11/14/2012 4:02:07 PM PST by Perseverando
Contemporary opinions, including those of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, say the idea of a state’s right to secede died with the hundreds of thousands of bloodied victims of the Civil War, and that the sentiment behind the dozens of petitions on a White House website seeking permission for most of the 50 individual governments to leave the union will be fruitless.
But historians would note that even Thomas Jefferson, a “pole star among political philosophers because he based his politics on the eternal, self-evidence, fundamental truths that all men are created free and equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inherent and unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” might be remembered for his opinion about states leaving the U.S.
It was in a letter to William B. Giles on Dec. 26, 1825, when Jefferson, who already had seen the fight over the states’ separation from England, the rise of a new nation and the tribulations it faced in its first decades, that he addressed the issue.
In a letter marked “not intended for the public eye,” he wrote that states “should separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left, are the dissolution of our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers.”
He continued, “Between these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be no hesitation.”
His letter, posted online at Constitution.org, sheds new light on the arguments being raised on the Obama administration’s online petition site, where dozens of petitions are seeking permission for virtually all of the states to leave the union.
The Blaze reported on a 2006 letter purporting to be from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that said, “There is no right to secede.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I thought Scalia was an originalist; that is the belief that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of those who composed and adopted it ... and the founders were silent on secession. The guns were not silent, and if that war were fought today, the north would lose.
the north would lose.
Provided the soldiers quartered here chose to fight for the states and not the feds.
Not sure it would be a north south battle...more like a Northeast/West coast vs the rest of us. But your main point is well taken.
It says We the People of the UNITED states. Should the states become disunited...as they almost were in 1810-ish and later in 1860,why should they not choose to leave.
However, if states were serious, they could start by telling the feds they were not taking the money and not following their “regulations”
I do not see anything close to that beginning to happen.
He is, except when he's not. He gave full-throated endorsement to the expansive Commerce Clause so fedgov could outlaw medical marijuana.
We can “seceed” from the federal gravy train by starting a movement in all of the red states and red counties or red towns. We can refuse to take federal money by cutting back on anything that the federal government gives us such as housing or anything else that Lyndon Baines Johnson thought up in his diabolical Great Society program. We have to roll back on anything that involves federal money and return to a slimmed down government.
No federal programs in our towns and states means that there will be far fewer federal employees who are the power source of the Democratic party machine. Democrat bureacrats give money to their bosses, must answer to their bosses if they should forget to vote and are required to hold signs and work to get out the vote. That is why they have such a huge organization which allows them to bring so many people to the polls. If there were far fewer government workers in our communites, there would be less of a Democrat Party presence in our communities. This is how we have to starve the beast of the Democrat party machine.
No, not since the States gave up their militias in favor of a standing federal army, along with other sovereign powers.
states have the power to secede from the union... it is up to the people to defend and protect that power through fighting... in 1865 the union won... but did not eliminate the power of a state to seceded.
the resolve to dissolve will be the factor. resist we much.
teeman
And that currency is blood of tyrants.
there. fixed it.
teeman
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