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.
And after you have withdrawn... then what? What happens when you little enclave also goes south?
Will you then try to secede your region, or town?
For instance, has Texas closed it’s borders? How long would it be before Texas is California? I know you think that’s a laugh, but in 1970 California was 70% plus white middle-class people.
Today it’s 43% white middle-class people.
By 2040, you never know what you could be facing down there.
Folks, cornering ourselves is not the answer. It’s time for states to confront the federal government, not cut and run from it.
Why should we abandon vast regions of the nation to live under communism?
I can’t believe what I am reading other Conservatives saying. We would have fought Russians if they tried this. And now we’re talking about just letting it happen.
HELL NO!
With the exception of the original 13, states don't voluntarily join anything. They're admitted. Their request for statehood can be, and has been, turned down and there's nothing they can do about it.
Agreements imposed by war can be undone by war.
As the body count built into the many hundreds or even thousands from feints, probes and sabre rattling and as alliances and divisions became hardened would the modern electorate really act the same way that those hardened white males did 144 years ago?
Would our military entanglements and obligations around the world even allow for a military challenge of that scale?
I don't think the mushy blue state voters and the female voters would elect politicians that wanted to start a bloody war here in America just to keep some states from what would amount to seceding on paper, (since our relationships would be mostly the same).
I never heard anyone here damn the electoral college. Not once. Not ever.
Some thoughts from Jefferson:
“We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:270
“Certain States from local and occasional discontents might attempt to secede from the Union. This is certainly possible; and would be befriended by this regular organization [of the Union into States]. But it is not probable that local discontents can spread to such an extent as to be able to face the sound parts of so extensive an Union; and if ever they should reach the majority, they would then become the regular government, acquire the ascendency in Congress and be able to redress their own grievances by laws peaceably and constitutionally passed. And even the States in which local discontents might engender a commencement of fermentation, would be paralyzed and self-checked by that very division into parties into which we have fallen, into which all States must fall wherein men are at liberty to think, speak, and act freely according to the diversities of their individual conformations, and which are, perhaps, essential to preserve the purity of the government by the censorship which these parties habitually exercise over each other.” —Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811. ME 13:20
“Should... schism be pushed to separation, it will be for a short term only; two or three years’ trial will bring them back, like quarreling lovers, to renewed embraces and increased affections. The experiment of separation would soon prove to both that they had mutually miscalculated their best interests. And even were the parties in Congress to secede in a passion, the soberer people would call a convention and cement again the severance attempted by the insanity of their functionaries. With this consoling view, my greatest grief would be for the fatal effect of such an event on the hopes and happiness of the world.” —Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1820. ME 15:283
“I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820. ME 15:250
“The idea that institutions established for the use of the nation cannot be touched nor modified even to make them answer their end because of rights gratuitously supposed in those employed to manage them in trust for the public, may perhaps be a salutary provision against the abuses of a monarch but is most absurd against the nation itself. Yet our lawyers and priests generally inculcate this doctrine and suppose that preceding generations held the earth more freely than we do, had a right to impose laws on us unalterable by ourselves, and that we in like manner can make laws and impose burdens on future generations which they will have no right to alter; in fine, that the earth belongs to the dead and not the living.” —Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, 1816. ME 15:46
... understand - this last one is the one used by liberals to validate a ‘living constitution’ while throwing out the principles of liberty upon which the country was born.
The problem is the federal government has become an oppressive leviathan - much of it unconstitutional. How do you fight that when this growth is even supported by many states and is further supported by the media?
During the nationwide tea party yesterday, where tax paying citizens peaceably assembled to voice their concerns with this very growth and abuse by the .gov, they were mocked by their government, mocked by their elected leaders and mocked by the media.
You are not alone!
I don’t undestand why any of us, in any state, would want to force the people of a state that does not want to belong to the Union to do so.
Whatever happened to the concept of self-determination?
If Texas, or any state (or states) is not happy being part of the United States, then I say let them go, and good luck to them.
As to some of the details:
There are American ex-patriate citizens all over the world, so I don’t see a problem with citizens of TX keeping their American citizenship and remaining in a secessed TX if they so choose.
Likewise we have U.S. military bases in sovereign countries all over the world (whether that is a good idea or not is subject of a different discussion). I’m sure Texas could accomodate that situation temporarily until those bases could be phased out amicably.
Secession doesn’t have to be bloody or via force of arms. I don’t see why one group of free people would want to force another group of free people into an agreement that doesn’t benefit all. If Texans believe they would be better off as their own country, then they ought to be free to give it a go.
As I understand, it is correct “Texas can become 5 states”. Might be a really good move since it would most likely put 8 more conservatives in the Senate and stop Odumba from totally destroying the nation.
Wouldn’t that depend on the terms of the treaties bringing the various states into the union? If one included the right to secede and others did not.....
I don’t know about all this succession talk, but I do know that Dear Leader believes in keeping the peace by allowing, even demanding, establishment of separate governments when there is disagreement. Look how strongly he supports a Palestinian State.
I would rather live free in a stand-alone state that follows the Constitution, than in a union of 50 under a socialist/oppressive federal government that does not.
My strategy of getting in the good graces of Jon Stewart? What the F are you talking about?
Conservatives are 30% of the US population. So long as we are successfully painted as the lunatic fringe, we'll never have a majority again.
Talking about things like SECESSION is absolutely NUTS and alienates the middle third of America that's not so politically active, aware or engaged. Of course, it's the same middle third of America that the left and the right needs to WIN ELECTIONS - You know, the important part of running a country from your ideological perspective.
It starts with just you folks did. It starts with a movement. It starts with public awareness. You weren’t alone out there. Democrats came out and joined you. There may have only be 5 to 30% of them out there, but they were out there.
You build on this. You awaken people and explain to them what our founding was all about. You explain our rights to them. You turn them on to good reading materials.
Folks, it’s embarrassing to say this, but our side has been reticent to spread the good message. The Dems are out there selling the leftist bilge all the time. Where is our army? When was the last real drive to register new Republicans?
When was the last time you heard your local officials sounding like our founding fathers? Hell, as often as not they sound more like dufus wanna be Democrats themselves.
I don’t accept that this nation is lost. Ronald Reagan would never accept it.
That is the right question. As others have suggested, "can they" is a question to be decided by the leadership, or perhaps by force of arms if the socialist in our White House opposes the decisions of free men. "Should they" is a question that has to be answered first.
I do not think that time has come, yet, but I would still cheer if a conservative state left in response to the excesses and usurpations of the thugs who have taken power in our country. I would pray for the success of any state or states that left. I might even move there if they wrote a good constitution ... something like ours but with the line "and we really mean it" after each of the first ten amendments, or whatever it takes to convince lawyers and totalitarians that written laws have meaning.
Because they would not survive and we could then reclaim them. and since we cannot survive in the communist spiral we have been sucked into by staying in it, we need to survive some other way
How do you figure that? Texas is to the right of the U.S., what enemies do you think that they would become a haven for, Californians, New Yorkers, the Democrat party, Now, ACLU, NEA, Acorn?
I don't think so. The process of creating a state is not done through treaty, which requires only a vote in the Senate. It's done through enabling legislation that both Houses vote on. Legally, Texas and California became territories of the U.S. through treaty, and states through a vote in Congress. And once they became states they had no more and no fewer privledges than any other state enjoys.
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