Posted on 06/06/2012 6:18:45 AM PDT by CNSNews.com
(CNSNews.com) – Nearly one-quarter of Americans believe that states have the right to secede, according to a recent poll from Rasmussen Reports -- up 10 percentage points in two years.
The latest poll is just one of many that shows that Americans have “serious and growing concern about the federal government,” according to Scott Rasmussen, founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.
According to the phone survey released Sunday, 24 percent of Americans believe that states should be able to withdraw from the United States to form their own country, if they want. Nearly 60 percent (59) of Americans say they don’t believe states have the right to secede, while 16 percent are undecided.
“We do see that people are concerned about the federal government in a variety of ways,” Rasmussen told CNSNews.com. “51 percent believe that it’s a threat to individual liberties.
“It may just be part of a growing frustration with other aspects of the federal government,” he said.
“But I think it’s important to keep it in perspective, growing to 24 percent still means that only one out of four Americans think that states have the right to secede, it’s not that they’re advocating for it,” Rasmussen said.
Though a minority, the number has been growing. In 2010, when Rasmussen first conducted the poll, only 14 percent of Americans said states had the right to secede. A year later, the number was up to 21 percent.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 adults between May 29 and 30, asked, among other questions: “Do individual states have the right to leave the United States and form an independent country?”
Only 10 percent of poll respondents said it was likely a state would attempt to secede in the next 25 years -- “a pretty generous time frame,” Rasmussen said. “So it’s not seen as a very realistic possibility,” he added.
The survey also asked whether the federal government is a protector or a threat to individual rights, to which a majority -- 51 percent -- said the government presents a danger to liberty.
“[O]nly 34 percent of adults in this country regard the federal government more as a protector of individual rights,” according to the poll.
“More Americans than ever are expressing strong concern that the federal government will run out of money,” according to Rasmussen Reports, who also found that 64 percent of Americans are at least somewhat worried that the U.S. government will run out of money. 43 percent are “very worried” that the U.S. government will run out of money, while 31 percent of adults are not worried and 10 percent are “not at all worried.”
The total federal debt currently stands at $15.8 trillion.
Rasmussen told CNSNews.com that recent polling shows that Americans have a “growing frustration” with the federal government.
“What we’re seeing in a whole range of surveys is serious and growing concern about the federal government, about the role of government in American life,” he said. “Only about one out of five Americans believe the government today has the consent of the governed. People believe that America’s best days -- about half the nation believes -- America’s best days have come and gone.”
“Only 16 percent believe that today’s children will be better off than their parents,” he said, “that’s a horrifically low number for America.”
“And then you’ve got individual proposals, [New York City] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg’s proposal of banning large sugary drinks is supported by 24 percent of Americans, 2 out of 3 oppose it,” Rasmussen added. “So there’s this frustration that’s been building.”
Article 4.
The South fired first at Sumter.
****************************************
Yes they did.LOL. Details Details. You think ole Abe would have just let the South go with out a shot? He was pretty determined to keep the Union together wasn’t he?
Two words: Morrill Tariff:
http://www.ashevilletribune.com/archives/censored-truths/Morrill%20Tariff.html
Our new nation was a gold and silver currency and then paperbacks backed by gold and silver
Plus how many now depend on the Feds for SS and Medicare
You are deluding yourself
Whatever currency works is what should be done. Why do you presume that whatever didn’t work in the past is what will automatically be the default mode of operation in the future? You are asserting that just because a new nation attempts to emerge, it automatically will fail. Either you are part of the status RINOs or an outright leftist.
The Morrill Tariff didn’t pass until after the south cut~n~run.
"Allowed" had nothing to do with it then, nor would it now. It was a matter of tactics and numbers. This time the numbers might be in favor of seccession. After all, the North can't use the slave card this time. Furthermore all states, North and South, are now feeling the bite of tyranny.
It a whole new situation this day and age.
That’s a pretty broad answer. Care to elaborate?
How about a REALIST
OK, I’ll play...
South Carolina
I think ... people see that the federal system is not working, and that there is apparently no way to bring it to heel, that it will just keep growing and growing and encroaching and encroaching. Thus more are coming to believe that it must be dissolved.
Better than asking people if states DO have the right to secede, under the current general understanding of the word ‘right,’ why not ask if states SHOULD have the right to secede?
The civil war came about because the nation elected a president from the Abolition Party, the upstart Republican Party, over repeated warnings from the southern states of ‘over our dead bodies.’ They realized that if the North had sufficient electoral power to elect a radical Republican as president, then the South was doomed one way or another, sooner or later. The slavery issue was the one that had divided the nation into two camps that couldn’t stand the sight of each other though. It was what motivated people to be willing to go and fight - although it wasn’t a settled matter in the North either, by any means.
Ah yes, my point - that was then and this is now. It’s not a foregone conclusion that the ferals will take up arms against any that try to get out. They might find that the whole military defects too. You can’t know. Everybody is so wussified these days.
It mandated the return of slaves to the South. It counted slaves as 3/5 of a person in the context of apportionment, a compromise made with the southern states to woo them into the union. Lastly, it outlawed the importation of slaves starting in 1808. These are hardly laws that greatly protected and perpetuated the institution of slavery.
If you want to see the protection of slavery in a constitution, I suggest you read the Confederate States of America constitution where states completely lost the ability to restrict the right to own slaves.
Well, I asked what state of the USA, not what state of the CSA. Point being, it’s a little silly to claim Southern aggression started the war, when they were firing at US troops on Confederate territory. What were the US troops doing there if not committing a deliberate act of aggression themselves?
So if we accept the premises that the civil war was illegal and contrived, though its end was ethical where does that leave us? It's a can of worms to be sure.
Lincoln inserted four arguments against the right of secession in his first inaugural address.
Thanks, I still had the deleted “Jefferson clause” (from the DOI) in my head from an earlier conversation.
The Constitution contained enough protections that it required the 13th Amendment to nullify them.
Section 9 of Article I allowed the continued importation of slaves.
Section 2 of Article IV, which prohibited citizens from providing assistance to escaping slaves and required the return of chattel property to owners.
These formed the foundation for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and served as precedent in Prigg v. Pennsylvania.
And, as you mentioned, Section 2 of Article I designated “other persons” (slaves) to be added to the total of the state’s free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number.
Combined, there was no one who seriously disputed the legal authority under which the southern slavers continued their exploitation of slave labor.
I agree that the csa constitution memorialized The Particular Institution.
That was in dispute with many believing that there never was a "CSA" as a legal entity.
Point being, it’s a little silly to claim Southern aggression started the war, when they were firing at US troops on Confederate territory. What were the US troops doing there if not committing a deliberate act of aggression themselves?
They were there as per orders defending a United States federal fortification.
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