Posted on 05/13/2016 1:18:26 PM PDT by GraceG
I have been reading about the periodical votes the Texas legislature makes about secession and pondered on it a while and thought a bit about it and came up with a few things.
1. We have a set of procedures for adding a state to the union in the Constitution.
2. We don't have any set of procedures if a majority of a state's population want to no longer be part of a union.
3. If the formation of the country was the voluntary gathering of states to form the union in the first place, then wouldn't forcing a state to stay against the majority of it's inhabitant's will essentially by tyranny?
4. If you added a process for a state to leave you would by default make that process be somewhat harder than if a territory wanted to become a state. Say for instance Saskatchewan was able to leave Canada peacefully, but then after a while wanted to become a state of the United States, if they wanted to leave later you would want an ever greater majority to on the vote to leave than the vote to join.
5. The civil was was caused by the illegal actions and military actions of the southern states ganging up, forming their own country illegally and then attacking the north. (though there is still some debate who fired first). If there had been a legal process and procedure for states to leave and then later form the confederacy, would the civil war had been averted if they had in that case "stuck to procedure" ?
6. Does a government body that has a process for admittance of smaller entities, but doesn't have any process for them leaving. Does that make that government a Tyranny by default? Does this make the United States a Tyranny by definition? What about the European Union? What about NATO, or the UN even?
Just some pondering about the very nature of "Unions" in the Nation-State sense.
The politicians figured out it was easier to bypass the Constitution and rule by bureaucracy, something they've consistently expanded upon since Prohibition. And you have to admit, if no one has been willing to stop them, why would they stop?
Your arguments were debated for a long time and finally settled by a horrific war.
**************
At the cost of over 600,000 lives and considerable economic devastation and debt. Was the war worth the cost? A question for the ages.
[ After the federal government goes bankrupt the US will split into about 6 different countries. ]
Or 10 FEMA regions, depending on whom you ask
The south did not just leave they then attacked the union fort which was a federal facility and declared themselves to be at with and in rebellion to the US
Move? Nonsense. I have no obligation to move. I can still tolerate life under the tyrannical “U.S. Government.”
I don’t have to pretend that it’s a legitimate government, however. It ceased, definitively, to be a legitimate government on Jan. 22, 1973, when it declared itself to have the authority to decide that some human beings are not people.
An interesting and provocative question. Good comment.
These things are never decided by laws.
They are decided by facts and events - power, money, debt, violence, common purpose or disunity.
The Roman empire was united, until corruption, debt, inflation, decline and imperial overreach made people in the provinces decide they were better off out - and the emperors could do nothing about it.
You are as delusional as Beck
The Union had the right to withdraw its forces from Ft. Sumter. It had no right to wage total war, or to make the return of the Confederate States to the United States into an object of war.
[ The south did not just leave they then attacked the union fort which was a federal facility and declared themselves to be at with and in rebellion to the US ]
Precisely, had each southern state legislature held a sate vote to leave the union with at least 2/3 vote saying to leave, and then had state referendum(s) with 3/4 or more of the populace wanting to leave as well, they would have had a hell of a lot higher moral “high ground” to leave and then did nothing to antagonize the north then things would have turned out a hell of a lot differently.
we have a procedure for states leaving the union. the last time any state tried to use it we had the civil war.
Say, for example, California. I would be comfortable with a 50 or 100-mile wide stretch starting at the Pacific going east, with Los Angeles at the south and San Francisco at the north. Leave the rest of what is called California today in the United States and secede from what's left; they can call it Brownville (after the current Governor). Or we could call the remainder Fremont.
Basically, we vote the LA to SF portion off the island, on a bigger scale. They don't think they need us, anyway.
I'm sure other people could come up with similar proposals.
Why should they withdraw? It was federal property.
I notice that you never say anything. You just toss epithets.
It's as if they said in 1861 that the South was not allowed to leave; but in 1865, they said, until they passed certain laws, they would not be let back in. The positions are contradictory, though they are expedient political rationalizations. In both cases, they retain for the federal government leverage that they really shouldn't have.
Go ahead. Leave.
I hope your social security is all paid up, because I will be using it.
Thanks. Bye.
LIncoln had no intention except to force the South into War. LIncoln instituted the income tax, that was illegal. LIncoln suspended habeus corpus that was illegal. One can find over ten actions he took that were illegal under the laws and struck down by the courts. He further condoned the pillaging and rape by Sherman of property and person on Sherman’s March through GA and SC. If there are two people who should never have a monument or honor it is Lincoln and Sherman.
Didn’t you recall the Pledge of Alligence?
“....Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all....”
Of course we will have to update that to today’s standards.
Outstanding post.
I wonder if Lincoln had had the wisdom to foresee the eventual terrible human costs and deprivation of the Civil War would he have still pursued it? At some point the costs of the war became self-evident. Perhaps there may have been an opportunity for a truce between the two sides before things got out of hand.
It was no longer in the United States.
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