Posted on 03/23/2010 10:08:20 AM PDT by Noumenon
And as many of them as we can take with us. That’s the time to summon my inner ancestral Celt.
The War Between the States killed, if I recall the numbers correctly, 600,000 out of a population of 30 million, which works out to about 2% of the population.
Joe Stalin killed-off (not counting the battle casualties of WW2) about 20 million of a population of around 160 million, about 12%.
Chairman Mao killed-off about 60 million out of 750 million (or so) during the Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution, nearly 10%.
Both much more than the WTBS.
While we may not have pitched battles between massed armies like Antietam or Gettysburg again, human nature suggests "significant social unrest" could dispatch 25 million Americans.
And there’s the point of the AQT.
“Looking for legit answer. If a majority of States elected to secede would it be possible or preventable?
I’m not advocating secession.”
It would be possible for even one State to secede with the consent of the others or without their consent as long as they did not try to prevent it, so the answer to the question is it possible is “yes”.
As to whether or not it’s preventable, it might depend on which States and how enthusiastic the remaining States were about doing the preventing.
If the majority of the States elected to “secede”,stay together and form a new General Government, would it even be secession?
When the United States changed the form of it’s General Government from that under The Articles of Confederation to that under the Constitution, the decision was that the ratification by nine States was enough. If the other four had elected to not ratify and to go there own way would they be the ones who seceded or would the first nine?
Remember, it’s a Union of States that agreed to a General Government, actually two of them, and to a Constitution and before that the Articles of Confederation. Take away the General Government, take away the Constitution, and you still have the Union.
I’d rather have that than secession. The delegations would be put together by the States, not the Feds. Given the level of grass-roots activism that is fueling the Tea Party movement I think there’s some real hope.
Don’t forget, anything that comes out of the Convention would still have to be passed by 38 states. It couldn’t go too crazy.
Sorry, to follow you over to a different thread. Here, however, it does seem that you agree with me. It must just be some terms I used that caused the misunderstanding. Then again, I didn't spend some 30 posts clarifying our differences as I had with non-sequitur.
To clarify, my whole concern had been with the principle of the State and the sovereign people of the state having the right to secede, which has all kinds of thorns, brambles and pitfalls in which one can get lost.
“Sorry, to follow you over to a different thread.”
I can’t complain. If you look carefully at the other thread you’ll see that I did kind of the same thing.
“Here, however, it does seem that you agree with me.”
I don’t recall ever arguing that there was no right at all to secede, although I may have argued that some stated reason or the other was not sufficient grounds.
My major gripe on secession is with the assertion that the non-seceding States have no right at all, ever, to try and hold the seceding States to the Compact.
To me that’s like saying one party to a contract has no right at all, ever, to try and hold another party to the terms of the contract. If that’s true why have contracts? What’s the point in having contracts, agreements, compacts, etc. without the possibility of holding someone to them? And if you can’t have contracts, agreements, compacts etc. to which adherence is dependable, what kind of society do you get?
I do acknowledge that there may be circumstances in which the non-seceding States do not have the right to try and hold the seceding States to the Compact.
Killing two posts with one response, I agree with your post 69 as to “all kinds of thorns, brambles and pitfalls in which one can get lost.”
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertion of better men than himself.
Not yet. If healthcare stands and they push through amnesty then maybe.
Now?
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