Posted on 11/28/2012 9:42:40 AM PST by Perseverando
For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission, or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.
Since Barack Obama’s re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitioners for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let’s look at the secession issue.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution explicitly made the Union perpetual until and unless the States ratify the secession of a State in exactly the same means by which the State secured accession to the perpetual Union. claims that the Constitution does not forbid unilateral secession are totally false and deceptive.
If anyone thinks that 'filing paperwork' is going to lead to the FedGov agreeing with any secession movement, they are living in a dream world.
Secession is going to take force and bloodshed, in the mildest of circumstances. The FedGov is not going to let go the power it has compiled without a fight. It is going to have to be pried from the FedGov's hand by force.
Now let's see if force is going to follow, when the paperwork is laughed at and used for kindling.
Well, no. The Confederates fought for the right of white men to govern themselves, and to also forcibly govern black men.
It is a real tragedy that the secession movement was tainted by and based on the desire to perpetuate and expand slavery. The idea of secession in and of itself is not inherently wrong.
Zero states will secede from the U.S. This is all wing-nuttery that takes attention and effort away from actually rolling up our sleeves and getting back to work for 2014 & 2016.
When the Beast on the Potomac dies it will die like the Soviet Union - insolvent, unsupported and largely unmourned. Until it is too poor to pay for the brute force to compel submission however, it will destroy anyone anywhere who threatens the sweet life in Capitol.
“And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
Bumper sticker seen in South Carolina
And here I thought the whole deal had more to do with taxation without representation - the South was paying a huge burden compared to the North. I thought that Lincoln decided to "sweeten the pot" and make all the killing of those who disagreed "more palatable" by adding emancipation after the war was underway.
The problem with this notion of secession is that secession by definition means the withdrawing by a geographical section from the Union.
In 1860 this was feasible. In most of the states that later seceded Lincoln did not receive a single vote. The division was almost entirely sectional, except in the border states and a few other areas.
In our present country, the division is primarily ideological. It is sectional simply because one or another ideology predominates in that area. In even the most conservative parts of the country there is a large and active liberal minority that would, understandably, resist secession. In contrast to 1860, the highest vote totals Romney got were in Utah (72%), Wyoming (69%) and Oklahoma (67%). Most of the old CSA states came in with substantially smaller majorities for Romney.
So any seceding state would not only have to fight invading federal forces, it would at the same time have to fight an internal civil war to suppress dissent.
And since the American way for which conservatives would be fighting is based on the idea of the people ruling themselves, crushing dissent by force is pretty much a betrayal of that for which we would fight.
Apparently Mr. Williams is a Freeper. I have posted that sentence about 100 times, along with many others.
Well, no. The Civil War was not fought over slavery. Economics: Northern mercantilism. Slavery was already becoming uneconomical (cotton prices, corn the new cash crop) Lincoln freeing the slaves was an after thought—and he only freed the slaves in southern states. Missouri? U.S. Grant? Had slaves.
I think the North East power structure would let Texas and a few other states go without a fight. These are not you GGGF Yankees that charged Marye’s Heights, these are wusses.
Please forward to Glenn Beck.
Williams is correct. The hostilities did not begin until the hot heads in Charleston fired on Fort Sumter. The States voluntarily formed a union. A State can voluntarily withdraw from said union. Whether the remaining States allow this to happen or not is another matter. Power is not always right, but power is always power. Kinda like the vehicle and pederestrain. The pederestrain has the right of way over the vehicle. The trouble begins when the pederestrain exercises that riight.
So you are calling Mr. Williams a nut? Are you a racist?
Also, I’m pretty sure that I read some Walter Williams articles over twenty years ago in which he said exactly the same thing.
Exactly how were they unrepresented? The South dominated the national government right up to 1860.
The total budget of the federal government in 1860 was $60M. That's less than $2 per capita for the country, less than $7 per capita if paid entirely by the slave states, and less than $12 per capita if paid entirely by white southerners. And of course the taxes were almost entirely tariffs on imports, so the final purchaser of the imported item paid it, whether he did so in New Orleans or Chicago.
The fact is that federal taxes were a miniscule burden for anybody in 1860, and could entirely be avoided if desired simply by not purchasing tariffed items.
Do you seriously contend that this tiny taxation burden, one of the lowest of any nation in history, justified a war that cost over 600k men their lives and devastated a section of the country?
You are saying that this is explicit in the Constitution - please refer me to the provision that you are talking about. Thanks!
Loyalists had to be killed during the secession from England as well..
F—k it.... We are screwed anyway... We might as well go down swinging lets give it a shot.
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