Posted on 09/10/2013 11:07:21 AM PDT by BulletBobCo
Barry Smitherman, head of the powerful Texas Railroad Commission and is seeking to be the state's next Attorney General, made waves last week with comments about economic collapse, energy policy and the future. However, those things only led up to a much bigger statement: "We have made great progress in becoming an independent nation, an 'island nation' if you will, and I think we want to continue down that path so that if the rest of the country falls apart, Texas can operate as a stand-alone entity with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system."
In an interview with WND, Smitherman added that Texas is "uniquely situated because we have energy resources, fossil and otherwise, and our own independent electrical grid."
"This was one of my goals at the Utility Commission, and it is one my goals currently as chairman of the Railroad Commission," Smitherman said. "That's why I stress so vehemently oil and gas production, permitting turnaround times, and everything that enables the industry to produce as much as it can, as quickly as it can."
Smitherman also said that Texas has "been very strong leading in the charge against the Obama administration."
Though Smitherman did not use the term "secession," it seems clear that Texas is at least making preparations so that it can stand, should other states around it fall. I think this is a wise thing. They see the real problems coming and are seeking to deal with them at the state level rather than allow the problems to overtake them.
I have at least one question regarding Texas. How is Texas dealing with their southern border and the influx of illegals pouring into the state? That seems to be just as much a threat as the other things Mr. Smitherman mentions in the interview.
I also have a question as to what other states are doing, if anything, to prepare for what is obviously on the horizon.
Following the re-election (which I believe was filled with fraud) of Barack Obama in 2012, people from all 50 states signed petitions to secede from the Union. The petitions garnered enough signatures, that shortly after, the White House raised the minimum signatures for response to petitions from 25,000 to 100,000. The Obama administration took its time in responding to those petitions and essentially sidestepped the issue, having Jon Carson respond with "But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don't let that debate tear us apart."
I don't think it's debate that is tearing this country apart. It's policies that are doing that. While Carson attempted to wax eloquently about secession and the Union, I think the Obama administration fails to realize that those petitions were merely a "shot across the bow." Smitherman is indicating that preparation is being made for the real deal by at least one state. My guess is that if Texas is doing this, there are other states quietly doing it as well.
The are 3 centers of liberalism in MO, and I wouldn’t necessarily categorize any as north since they are all about midway between north and south. StL, KC and Columbia are the only red spots on the MO map,and get very far outside any of them and it gets conservative fast. If the last few elections are any indicator, the state as a whole is moving solidly to the right.
Yeah, because human nature has changed so dramitically since then. Get back to me when you have something more substantive.
There wasn’t the will for americans to go to war with other americans right up until the moment that there was. I’m hoping you don’t need examples of how quickly the will of a country can drastically change on this day of all days. A state trying to sucede now would be put down fast and hard because killing is so much less personal now. In the 1860’s you needed to be looking at a man to kill him. Now it can be done from an air conditioned control room on the other side of the planet.
bttt
Of course the American voter and American people have changed since the 1850s, look at the 2012 presidential election and imagine the American voters of the 1850s leading to those issues, those candidates, or anything remotely similar.
We wouldn’t be involved in most of what politics is about today if the politicians and the voters were the same today as then, that is one of the things that fascinates us about Texas, it still echoes some of that era of American men.
Your idea that the modern democrat coalition is willing to fight to the death with the destruction of their homes and families and cities over some separation that they won’t even understand, is silly, San Francisco and Detroit and Boston, are not looking to fight WWIII on their own soil, with their own lives, against their fellow American.
For one thing, female voters wouldn't support a bloody domestic war that would destroy their extended families and the economy, and create masses of dying refugees of women and children.
Already politicians have to do baby talk and avoid foreign affairs and military issues to win the female vote, and someone thinks that suddenly the democrat party will be running candidates calling for a domestic Armageddon, because the tax collections will change?
History is important because human nature is static. It’s why Shakespeare is a classic. The issues, technology and hair styles change. Man does not. And I think you’re missing how impersonal the trouncing of Texas or any other state would be. The plebs in San Fran, NYC and the rest of flyover country would be treated to lots of footage from the nose cameras of smart bombs and from drones of Texas’ bridges, power plants, refineries and water treatment and distribution systems being reduced to rubble. I’ll ask again since I don’t think it was you I asked the last time...how many carrier strike groups does Texas have under it’s command?
Stop for a moment and examine the military conflicts our country has engaged in since WWII. Even though we've possessed the might to break the back of any enemy, we've tread lightly, pulling our punches and allowing these conflicts to stretch out interminably. We haven't decisively 'won' a conflict since 1945. Why?
It's because our people and our political leaders are risk averse and unwilling to unleash the full horror of violence we're capable of. As I've said, we no longer have the stomach for brutally crushing others through force - especially over mere political disagreements.
It's hard enough for a President to get the support to send our military against an organized and militant foe who presents a real threat to our national security, let alone, one who presents NO threat whatsoever.
One or several states seeking peaceful separation from the union present no military threat to the rest of the country. It could be argued that their leaving the union would constitute a threat to national security, but that's a hard sell when you're trying to make the case for the use of military force to compel those people to remain in the union over their objections.
We also have to remember that political union is a state of mind. When the people of a country become as divided and distant as they are in America today, only legal entanglements hold them together. Frankly, there's a huge portion of my countrymen whom I do not love. And they feel exactly the same towards me. Who's to say that they wouldn't celebrate my leaving? I'll bet you most liberals would be ecstatic if the red states chose to secede.
An attempt to order our military to violently crush a secessionist movement would also likely backfire on any CIC who tried it. He'd be asking Americans to fire on their own people, which would create immediate and disastrous effects up and down the chain of command. Such an order would cleave the military in two, and could even result in the arrest that President and his chief lieutenants.
So static that the American revolution and the French revolution are so completely different, and why with the completely different make up of the electorate of 2012 and 1860, we have the same exact politics as that period.
In your military experience, how did you divide up those you served with and their willingness to serve the left by going to actual war against their home states and families as our world enemies cheered it on.
2012 Americans would not support a Civil War, that was from a different people, a different nation, a long time ago.
Ask your waitress about it.
At its most base level, yes, but cultures evolve and mature over time. The attitudes most Americans hold today, are far different from those which were prevalent in the 19th century.
Literally bombing our fellow citizens into submission over a purely political matter would be a barbarism beyond all endurance for Americans of this era.
We don't even have the will to bomb countries who are actively rattling sabers at us now. Countries who possess the means and the will to truly hurt us.
I don't doubt that a President like Obama would attempt to use the military in a show of force to cow a secessionist state, but pulling the trigger is a whole 'nother matter. Soldiers in Afghanistan are bound by some of the most draconian and suicidal rules of engagement in history. I can only imagine how restrictive such rules would be if a President sent troops to cow an American state over a question of secession.
Bottom line, the U.S. military will never be deployed to prevent a state from seceding.
The left may hate our guts, but they don't have the will to see their fellow Americans bombed into submission over a purely political matter. They'll let us go our way before they'll allow a single bullet to fly.
Hell, they barely have the will to support a military response to nations that pose a real threat to us.
You’re not dealing with a government as it was in 1861, you’re up against a quasi-fascist regime more likely to behave like the USSR or china. And don’t forget that the country just south of you is ALSO a socialist-fascist country, who would side with the feds if they saw something to gain from it.
A state or states can be as peaceful as the want about leaving but I’m telling you that whatever asshole is sitting in the oval office is going to see that as his/her moment to be held up in history as the next Lincoln and will spill as much blood as needed to bring a rebel state back under control. You think brutal things like the NY draft riots and Sherman’s march to the sea have been bred out of us just because it’s 2013?
Lots of dead on both sides with a good amount of dead civilians unlucky enough to get caught in the middle. I’m pretty sure the french of that day bled and died just like the american colonists. And yeah, you’re going to get some differences between 13 colonies on the other side of the planet deciding to sucede from the empire and a situation where a monarch is deposed, executed and the old system of government is replaced.
Dog, I hate to be so blunt, but you're just flat out wrong about that.
If a state were in the process of gathering men and arms to militarily oppose the federal government, then it stands to reason that a sitting President, the Congress, and the people, would support deployment of the U.S. military to stop it. I have no doubt that they would.
A state that simply intends to peacefully severe it's political bonds with the union will not receive any such response. No President, Congress, nor the people, would have the will to murder their own countrymen in order to force them to remain in the union under those circumstances.
Even in 1861, it took the underlying cause of emancipating the slaves to motivate the northern states to crush the southern rebellion. Slavery was an affront to God and the Constitution, and an enormous sin against mankind. It was right to end it, even if it took force to do so.
Without the issue of slavery attached, it's doubtful that Lincoln could have persuaded the rest of the country to make war on the secessionist South. There's no doubt he would have tried, but I don't think the North would have had the heart to maintain a vigorous military campaign of death and destruction against their southern neighbors over secession alone. The moral issue of slavery was what propelled them forward.
If the current regime had the guts and fearsomeness you believe it does, you and I would have already been relocated to the FEMA gulags. The Republican party would have been outlawed, and the Constitution repealed. Every Tea Partier would have been executed for 'crimes against the state', and all of our property redistributed to Obama's favored minions.
Yeah, the little traitors up in Washington salivate at the thought of doing all that, but they don't have the stones for a real fight. Just look at how they've emasculated our military in recent decades. You think an army infiltrated with so many basket weavers, carpet munchers, and prancing princes is going to seriously challenge a populace who not only FAR outnumber them, but who would also be fighting to protect their very lives, families, and homes? Think again.
Like I said, explain all this to your teenage daughter and the counter help at the Burger King, tell them why they all have to fight a bloody, destroying war, to keep Texas and some other states from doing some restructuring.
There are no causes or passions of the people who created the nation and their sons.
States at some point will start breaking off, and it will not lead to war.
What I was trying to tell you there, is nobody much cares, teen voters don’t care, Hispanic voters don’t care, women voters don’t care, the vast majority of people who would have some interest in this as a political issue, would be conservatives supporting it, the average democrat voter would not tolerate calls for Civil War.
The key word is “yet”.
You’re still not able to get your hands around the impersonal aspect of it. There won’t be a whole lot of boots on the ground. Any state that tries to leave, no matter how peacefully will have all of it’s infrastructure destroyed from the air by remote controlled, unmanned weapons. After that, they will be blockaded and starved to death. Any targets of opportunity would be destroyed from the air. You don’t think all those new unmanned weapons systems were only intended to be used on brown and yellow people on the other side of the planet, do you? That’s just where they are field testing them to work out all the bugs.
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