Posted on 04/17/2009 10:17:36 AM PDT by RED SOUTH
Article VII sets out the provision for original ratification, and that Article IV empowers Congress to admit new States, but that no provision of the Constitution authorizes a state to leave the Union or bars it from doing so. The constitution does not say anything about states leaving.
>>Scotland tried it as well, with the name “RobRoy” I’m sure you knew that. Ending badly and becoming necessary are not one in the same. To quote the great Josey Wales, “Some governments just need killin’”.<<
Yes, yes and YEP.
This was an eye opener for me about 8 years ago, and part of what shaped my opinion on where we are headed:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Liddy.shtml
The Suicide Of Marlboro Man
The Price Of Freedom Is Slavery. Sort Of. A Little Anyway
The other days I was reading G. Gordon Liddy’s book of conservative nostalgia, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. He paints a sunset picture of former times when America was free, farmers could fill in swamps without violating wetland laws, and guns were just guns. People were independent and had character, and made their own economic decisions. The market ruled as it ought, and governmental intrusion was minimal.
The picture is accurate. I lived it. I wish it would come back, which it won’t. It was a world certain to kill itself.
What happens is that, in an independent-minded rural county full of hardy yeomen, the density of population grows, either nearby or at distant points on each side. A highway comes through because the truckers lobby in Washington wants it. Building a highway is A Good Thing, because it represents Progress, and provides jobs for a year.
It also makes the country accessible to the big city fifty miles away. A real-estate developer buys 500 acres along the river from the self-reliant character-filled owner. He does this by offering sums of money that water the farmer’s eyes.
First, 500 houses go up in a bedroom suburb called Brook Dale Manor. A year later, 500 more go up at Dale View Estates. This is A Good Thing, because the character-filled independent now-former farmer is exercising his property rights, and because building the suburb creates jobs. The river now looks ugly as the devil, but this is a wacko issue.
At Safeway corporate headquarters, way off God knows where, the new population shows up as a denser shade of green on a computer screen. A new Safeway goes in along the highway. This is A Good Thing, exemplifying free enterprise in action and creating jobs in construction. Further, Safeway sells cheaper, more varied and, truth be known, better food than the half-dozen mom-and-pop stores in the county, which go out of business.
Soon the mall men in the big city hear of the county. A billion-dollar company has no difficulty in buying out a character-filled, self-reliant farmer who makes less than forty thousand dollars a year. A shopping center arrives with a Wal-Mart. This is A Good Thing, etc. Wal-Mart sells almost everything cheaply.
It also puts most of the stores in the country seat out of business. With them go the restaurants, which no longer have the walk-by traffic previously generated by the stores. With the restaurants goes the sense of community that flourishes in a town with eateries and stores and a town square. But this is granola philosophy, appealing only to meddlesome lefties.
K-Mart arrives, along with, beside the highway, McDonald’s, Arby’s, Roy Rogers, and the other way stations on route to coronary occlusion. Strip development is A Good Thing because it represents the exercise of economic freedom. The county’s commerce is now controlled by distant behemoths to whom the place is the equivalent of a pin on a map.
This is A Good Thing. The jobs in these outlets are secure and comfortable. The independent, character-filled frontiersmen are now low-level chain employees, no longer independent because they can be fired.
A third suburb, Brook Manor View Downs, appears. The displaced urbanites in these eyesores now outnumber the character-filled etcs. They are also smarter, have lawyers among their ranks, and co-operate. They quickly come to control the government of the county.
They want city sewerage, more roads, schools, and zoning. The latter isn’t unreasonable. In a sparsely settled county, a few hogs penned out back and a crumbling Merc on blocks don’t matter. In a quarter-acre yuppie ghetto, they do. Next come leash laws and dog licenses. The boisterous clouds of floppy-eared hounds turn illegal.
Prices go up, as do taxes. The profits of farming and commercial crabbing in the river do not go up. The farmers and fishermen are gradually forced to sell their land to developers, and to go into eight-to-fiving. Unfortunately you cannot simultaneously be character-filled and independent and be afraid of your boss. A hardy self-reliant farmer, when he becomes a security guard at the Gap, is a rented peon. The difference between an independent yeoman and a second-rate handyman is independence.
People make more money, and buy houses in Manor Dale Mews, but have less control over their time, and so no longer build their own barns, wire their houses, and change their own clutch-plates. Prosperity is A Good Thing. Its effect is that the children of the hardy yeoman become dependent on others to change their oil, fix their furnaces, and repair their boats.
The new urban majority are frightened by guns. They don’t hunt, knowing that food comes from Safeway and its newly-arrived competitor, Giant. They do not like independent countrymen, whom they refer to as rednecks, grits, and hillbillies. Hunting makes no sense to them anyway, since the migratory flocks are vanishing with the wetlands.
Truth be told, it isn’t safe to have people firing rifles and shotguns in what is increasingly an appendage of the city. The clout of the newcomers makes it harder for the independent whatevers to let their weapons even be seen in public. The dump is closed to rat-shooting.
The children of the hardy rustics do not do as well in school as the offspring of the commuting infestation, and are slowly marginalized. Crime goes up as social bonds break down. Before, everyone pretty much knew everyone and what his car looked like. Strangers stood out. Teenagers raised hell, but there were limits. Now the anonymity of numbers sets in and, anyway, there’s no community any longer.
And so the rural character-filled county becomes another squishy suburb of pallid yups who can’t put air in their own tires. The rugged rural individualists become cogs in somebody else’s wheel. Their children grow up as libidinous mall monkeys drugging themselves to escape boredom. The county itself is a hideous expanse of garish low-end development . People’s lives are run from afar.
What it comes to is that the self-reliant yeoman’s inalienable right to dispose of his property as he sees fit (which I do not dispute) will generally lead to a developer’s possession of it. The inalienable right to reproduce will result in crowding, which leads to dependency, intrusive government, and loss of local control.
I’d like to live again in Mr. Liddy’s world. Unfortunately it is self-eliminating. Freedom is in the long run inconsistent with freedom, because it is inevitable exercised in ways that engender control. As a species, we just can’t keep our pants up. But it was nice for a while.
What color is the sky on the planet where you live?
A little truth on the subject. If you are actually interested in truth.
No! That has already been decided a long while back. Secession is nothing more than surrendering the fight and the constitution to the democrat Nazi party socialists. If you want that type of outcome move to France and become a cheese-eating surrender monkey.
I find it almost comical that there even is a question about a state’s right to secession. The tenth amendment seems rather clear. But, if that is not enough, then there is the historical record itself. Massachusetts threatened to secede about every other year during the nation’s infancy. And it all came to a head during the War of 1812.
Caleb Strong, the governor of Massachusetts refused to call up the militia. Imagine today, a governor refusing to allow a militia unit to be deployed to a foreign nation. And yet, in 1812, when Strong refused to call up his militia, there was no question. The constitution was clear, and the founders—many alive at the time, knew quite well that only the governor had the right to call up the militia.
Then, well there was the Hartford convention. You know, probably no need for me to teach that to my sons. I bet the American History AP exam doesn’t even mention it. Nah, I teach them anyway. Somebody has got to remember.
But, that whole militia bit—well it is the key. The historical revisionism has been rather successful. The War between the States was not about slavery. For the first seceding states, it was about import tariffs and railroad shipping costs believe it or not. What the history books don’t tell us today is that before the war, it cost more to ship a bale of cotton from Columbia to Charleston than it did to ship it from Columbia to Boston. And those import tariffs, well they were crucial to the propping up of corrupt and dysfunctional Northern industry. A tariff free port in Charlestown and New Orleans would have devastated the ports of Boston and New York, not to mention pretty much shut down Northern industry.
But for my home state, and Lee’s home state, well it was Lincoln’s call for militia soldiers that threw them over the edge. Yep, when Lincoln order the states of Virginia and North Carolina to send troops to kill their brothers in South Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere simply for exercising their right to secession, well it was the straw that broke the camels back. The consummate patriot Robert E. Lee the clear case in point.
Rather ironic isn’t it. James Madison, the “father of the Constitution” was president. The nation declared war on a foreign nation, and a sitting governor refused to send the federal government militia troops. Madison didn’t do squat. But, just a few decades later Abraham Lincoln is president. Dude wasn’t even BORN when the constitution was written. He asks the states to send troops, not to fight a war against a foreign enemy, but to fight their own brothers. When the governors refused—he raged war against them.
It is a no brainer. States have the right to secession. Lincoln was an ass. He didn’t free a single slave in the Union—while Sherman was burning his way through South Carolina Union slaves were loading ships in New Orleans. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in Confederate territory, of which Mister Lincoln had ZERO jurisdiction. It continued the practice of slavery in Union controlled areas like New Orleans.
So, we right back where we were over a hundred years ago. Yes, the states have a right to secede. And yes, if one attempts it and we have a dipshit bastard president like Lincoln, well the fool likely to attempt to FORCE that state back into the Union. And oh yes, he was a bastard child, the product of an domestic servant affair, not a marriage—and there in lies the reason that the family refuses DNA testing on leftover brain material available from dozens of “scraps” or even hair samples as the dying Lincoln was plucked like a chicken while lying on his deathbed.
You signed up just to post this BS?
I find it all very interesting, and it is evident that the public schools are not doing the job of education that they should be.
That however does not make you any less of an A$$hole.
sure you can secede....but by superior force only.
i’d say the record is fairly clear on this
come down to Dixie, we still venerate our dead who tried.
looks like we may have to again..alas
United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 1: "Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof."
Would not passing a Bill of Secession be a "public act", which all other states are bound by Article IV, Section 1 to give full faith and credit, with Congress entitled only to prescribe the manner in which such acts shall be proved?
In other words complete surrender to their demands. No thanks.
What would be wrong with "complete surrender" to the terms of a state that decides that a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, and that it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security? Just as either member of a marriage should be able to leave that arrangement at will, even if the other objects, any one state should be able to leave the union at will. The Founding Fathers clearly considered such a course to be a fundamental right and duty, as indicated by their public declaration of that belief during the period from July 4 to August 2 of 1776. I am not advocating secession, but I cannot imagine anyone who believes in freedom or in the Constitution itself claiming that it is not an implied right of any voluntary union and a stated right in the 10th Amendment.
So, which part would you care to dispute? The Hartford convention? Shipping cost before the Civil War in the South? Import tariffs? The whole Union slaves loading the ships in the Yankee port of New Orleans bit. Caleb Strong and his refusal to sent militia troops during the War of 1812? Lincoln getting plucked like a chicken? His bastard birth, born of an illegitimate affair?
Oh yeah, talk to me about public education. Try getting some your ownself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Convention
http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/histprof/founders/attended/strong.html
http://www.liveauctiontalk.com/free_article_detail.php?article_id=435
http://www.carolinacountry.com/storypages/ourstories/abe/abe.html
As a matter of act, I am a high school dropout.
I took care of that business a long time ago, and I have a Degree that satisfies my employment needs.
Not that it is any of your concern, but I do not mind sharing some.
Meanwhile, back at the rant......You sound like a sore loser. Lincoln this, Lincoln that.
The Confederate States lost a war.
Guess what happens when a war is lost.......
His Story.
United States Constitution, Article VI: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
If the public act violates the Constitution then it's null and void.
What would be wrong with "complete surrender" to the terms of a state that decides that a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, and that it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security?
What if the rest of the states say that you're nuts and that there hasn't been a long train of abuse and usurpations?
Just as either member of a marriage should be able to leave that arrangement at will, even if the other objects, any one state should be able to leave the union at will.
You don't leave a marrige at will. You get a divorce and go through a legal proceeding that ends the marriage in a manner that protects the interests of both sides. What you're talking about is abandonment.
The Founding Fathers clearly considered such a course to be a fundamental right and duty, as indicated by their public declaration of that belief during the period from July 4 to August 2 of 1776.
But nothing in their writings indicates a belief that the partition could be done unilaterally.
I am not advocating secession, but I cannot imagine anyone who believes in freedom or in the Constitution itself claiming that it is not an implied right of any voluntary union and a stated right in the 10th Amendment.
It's not a voluntary union in the way you mean. Territories don't declare themselves states and send congressmen to Washington. They are admitted, and only with the permission of the other states and only when that permission is given. If permission is needed to join then why shouldn't permission be needed to leave? And as for the 10th Amendment, the power to admit a state and to approve changes of status once they've been allowed to join is clearly a power reserved to Congress by the Constitution.
Not that it is any of your concern, but I do not mind sharing some.
Then share me some. Was the Hartford convention a myth? And how about Massachusetts? Spoiled little leftopver vassel state of the Dutch West India Company that would scream like a spoiled child threatening to secede throughout the first years of this nation.
Me, I got an education too. Got some pieces of paper, big whoop. But, I don’t live far from Turkey Creek. Books—well they nice. But it’s the people, and the families—they hold the hidden secrets that the powers that be strive to hide. Abraham Enloe was Lincoln’s father. The people that have lived in this fine valley since before the Revolution, they know the truth.
Ane yes, I, like the neighbors that surround me, are some really sore losers. Our ancestors wrote the predecessor to the Declaration of Independence, the Mecklenburg compact. I just go in the opposite direction of Turkey Creek to get to the crossroads where that compact was signed.
They formed the first “free state” on the continent. The state of Franklin. They comprised the overmountain men, the ones that won the Revolutionary War. And during the War of Northern Agression it was the 26th of North Carolina that gave the most blood. The 26th of North Carolina, the largest independent militia in the United States today.
And yeah—Lincoln was an ass. One of the first “white shoed” lawyers, he may have split some rails on the farm as a child, but as an adult he represented the rich and the powerful, the railroads that were draining the resources of the people, the new industrialists that were enslaving our children. He was the worst president this nation ever had. Heck, he was the LAST one that the United States of America ever had. Johnson and all the rest were puppet figureheads, a mere token substitute “king” atop the Mercantalistic Republic of North America. And today, the similarities between Obama and Lincoln are striking.
A little truth on the subject. If you are actually interested in truth.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:
P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard’s Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.
On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:
I received yesterday your Excellency’s letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed.
That's our fundamental disagreement. There is no specific ban on secession in the Constitution, so by the Tenth Amendment, the states have that right (and only the force of arms can override that basic human right, in the same way as unlawful force can override any other human right). Living Constitution believers think there ought to have been such a ban, so they think that there is an implied ban. I disagree.
What if the rest of the states say that you're nuts and that there hasn't been a long train of abuse and usurpations?
What if in a divorce your soon-to-be-former spouse says you're nuts and he/she only abuses you when you deserve it, and besides, it's good for you so it's not abuse? You can still get a divorce even if the other partner doesn't like it. Due process is required, but the process is unilateral and the other party has no say in your decision - legal approval is essentially assured if one party makes that choice.
But nothing in their writings indicates a belief that the partition could be done unilaterally.
Um ... Read the Declaration of Independence, especially the signatures. I don't find King George III's signature anywhere on there, not even his governors' signatures. It was unilateral. George decided to make it a war, and that war was ended bilaterally, but the secession was unilateral and could have settled the question peacefully.
But nothing in their writings indicates a belief that the partition could be done unilaterally ... the power to admit a state and to approve changes of status once they've been allowed to join is clearly a power reserved to Congress by the Constitution.
Nope. Admitting states is an enumerated power, but forcing them to remain against the will of the people of that state is not enumerated, so it's not a federal power. It is quite clear from history that the Founding Fathers would not have intended to include that as a federal power, and it is quite clear from the Constitution that they never specifically listed that as a federal power.
I don't think secession is a good decision at this point for any state, but that is not my decision except for my own state, nor is it your decision or Obama's decision, except for your own state or for Obama's adopted state. Freedom means something, or it should, and that decision is a basic right of free people.
But plenty of evidence that secession without the consent of the other states is illegal.
Living Constitution believers think there ought to have been such a ban, so they think that there is an implied ban.
You would put James Madison in that category? He wrote on several occasions that secession required the consent of the states.
What if in a divorce your soon-to-be-former spouse says you're nuts and he/she only abuses you when you deserve it, and besides, it's good for you so it's not abuse? You can still get a divorce even if the other partner doesn't like it.
Yeah, by going to court and getting someone else to say your divorced. You cannot walk out and call the marriage over. If you continue to use the marriage analogy then unilateral secession is like one spouse walking out and abandoning the other. The marriage continues regardless.
Um ... Read the Declaration of Independence, especially the signatures. I don't find King George III's signature anywhere on there, not even his governors' signatures. It was unilateral. George decided to make it a war, and that war was ended bilaterally, but the secession was unilateral and could have settled the question peacefully.
That was a revolution, a rebellion. There was nothing legal in the colonist's actions and they didn't pretend that they were. If you want to equate the South's rebellion with the Founder's revolution then I have no problems with that, and would say it's a better comparison than your marriage analogy. But don't forget the major difference - the Founder's won their rebellion. Make sure you win your's.
Admitting states is an enumerated power, but forcing them to remain against the will of the people of that state is not enumerated, so it's not a federal power.
Admitting the states and approving changes of status - splitting, combining with other states, any change in their border at all - are all powers reserved to the Congress. Likewise the power to approve a whole host of actions that, if taken, would impact the interests of the other states. Why should walking out of the Union be any different? It's a change in status. It definitely impacts the interests of the remaining states. Why shouldn't they be protected as well?
He was wrong, as we see by the fact that such a restriction was expressed after the fact and not included in the Constitution itself. This is no different from Jefferson's Dandury Letter implying a strict separation of church and state different from the actual words of the First Amendment. The Constitution is binding and does not change just because an individual later wrote a letter expressing an opinion.
Yeah, by going to court and getting someone else to say your divorced.
In other words, by due process. An act of that state's government passed by both houses and signed by that state's governor would be due process, even if a socialist in our White House didn't like it.
That was a revolution, a rebellion. There was nothing legal in the colonist's actions and they didn't pretend that they were.
I take it you don't believe in natural law. Secession of one or more states follows from natural law as a basic human right. Of course it wasn't "legal" under British law. Secession is, however, legal under our Constitution. Granted, Obama could turn it into a civil war, but that would be his choice. He need merely permit free people to exercise their human rights, and it would be peaceful.
Thanks, but Madison was there. I'll take his opinion and that of the Supreme Court on whether unilateral secession was wrong.
In other words, by due process. An act of that state's government passed by both houses and signed by that state's governor would be due process, even if a socialist in our White House didn't like it.
In your analogy only one party is declaring the marriage over. What's to stop the other side from declaring it isn't? What makes one right and the other wrong?
But if a single state can declare the partnership ended then why secede at all? Why not just expel the states you don't like, toss them out of the Union against their will? If a state can leave unilaterally then why can't they expel unilaterally too?
I take it you don't believe in natural law.
The problem with natural law is that if you ask 50 people what it means then you'll get 50 different answers.
Of course it wasn't "legal" under British law.
And yet you compare their actions with secession.
Secession is, however, legal under our Constitution.
Not unilaterally, no.
Granted, Obama could turn it into a civil war, but that would be his choice. He need merely permit free people to exercise their human rights, and it would be peaceful.
The war would lie in your hands.
That was settled in 1865 with a big NOPE.
The winners were legally and morally wrong, mind you. But it was settled on the negative by main force, which, in the end, is really all that matters.
As I've pointed out before, I think even on this thread, the only thing that was settled in 1865 was whether the 1861 secession was legal.
Nothing else was settled. What would happen if Texas, for instance, declared itself independent? Short of an act of war, there really isn't the US could do to stop it, and once there is a war, the question of the legality of secession is then reopened.
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