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>The Right to Independence is no different. It is either a right, and therefore not requiring permission, or it is not. The founders said it was, and I believe them, and so did most people until a clever Lawyer came along and turned the whole thing on it's ear.

The problem with your interpretation of the Declaration is that you render it meaningless. Your proposal regarding the right to independence is simply not workable. That is why you get flustered if anybody asks you any practical questions like how should the existing government should determine which declarations of independence that it must honor and which declarations of independence it may properly ignore. Similarly, you are unable to cope with simple practical questions like what percentage of persons in a certain geographical area need to support a declaration to make it worthy of being automatically accepted or what geographical areas are to be considered valid for questions of independence (cities, counties states?). Without some guidelines, the government will of course be flooded with declarations. But, you can't come up with any principled guidelines and you certainly aren't going to find those answers in the Declaration of Independence. This whole model is actually coming from you.

The colonists claimed that under the circumstances they found themselves, they believed themselves to have a right to declare the colonies independent. They didn't take the next step that you take - that the existing government had no right to contest the Declaration. That's the part that you have come up with, but again, you have no specific proposals as to how that kind of system would work. And, that's because your proposal isn't workable. Don't try to hang that error of yours around the necks of our Founding Fathers. They expected a fight from Britain and they got one.

As a matter of fact, if your theory were right, you not only have an unfettered right to declare independence, you have a duty to declare independence - "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Now, do really think that the Founders meant that you have a duty to declare independence? Can you be sued for not declaring independence? Or, do you think maybe they were using the word "duty" in order to emphasize how frustrated they had become?

The Declaration was an explanation, an argument designed to justify what they were doing. It wasn't an attempt to "change the rules" of life or of revolution. They would never have imagined that anyone was going to try to use their argument to pretend that governments could no longer put down rebellions or challenge declarations of independence. You are the one who is trying to change the rules and the new system you propose is just obviously unworkable.

I have suggested that you forget about the secessionists of the 1860's. For the life of me, I can't figure out what attracts you to their attempt to challenge the obvious currents of history in which they were swimming. They were another group of history's losers.

If you want to propose some sort of secession in the future, then go for it. Learn to articulate your complaints (your "long train of abuses") and build a movement. Present the facts to the country and make your case. If you have a good case and enough support, you'll probably succeed. But forget this idea that the Founders have granted you a "right to succeed" as a new entitlement.

The problem with your interpretation of the Declaration is that you render it meaningless. Your proposal regarding the right to independence is simply not workable.

You are speaking an Alien tongue right here. I cannot even make a stab at your meaning. It is literally off the map of my comprehension. It is a concept so foreign to my understanding that I must conclude you have suggested it in error.

That is why you get flustered if anybody asks you any practical questions like how should the existing government should determine which declarations of independence that it must honor and which declarations of independence it may properly ignore.

No, If I get flustered at all, it is because such a question is beyond asinine, it is a deliberate attempt to ignore the larger point, and that larger point is that the Southern States more than met the threshold set by the founders in both Population and Geographical area.

What is the point of speculating as to what number consists of Sufficient, when we must take it for granted that the Population at founding must have been so regarded? Why spend an instant on the question?