Posted on 03/31/2010 6:36:03 AM PDT by kingattax
After 230 years, are the American people coursing toward eventual divorce?
Our polarized society increasingly ponders what would happen if American conservatives and liberals simply agreed that their differences had become irreconcilable, and redivided the nation to go their separate ways.
Which side would prosper and experience an influx of migration from the other? Conversely, which side would likely become a fiscal and socio-political basket case?
Any reasonable person already knows the likely answer. One need only compare the smoldering wreckage wrought by liberal governance in such states as California or Michigan with the comparative prosperity created by conservative governance in such states as Texas or Utah.
We can also examine the past 400 years, during which immigrants abandoned Europe for an America founded upon the fundamental principles of limited government and individual freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
bump
sound familiar ?
Yes.
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ..."
A secession would not be polite and non-violent. Tyrants and Marxists aren’t stupid. They know very well that their lifestyle depends on our labor. They won’t let the slave class leave without a fight.
The Civil War was fought, not about slavery, which at best was only a side issue, but about the right of a State to secede from the Union. The right was put down by force of arms, and the subdued nation, the Confederated States of America (actually only a loose alliance between a number of autonomous governmental entities) was occupied and placed under martial law, the effects of which lasted more than a century. This right of secession was NEVER determined to be either legal or illegal by any court of law.
The United States itself was the result of secession from the British Empire.
But of course, history is not taught with this lesson in mind.
We could let them have the North East corner and it would not change Americas outline that much
Sounds familiar.
Also logical -
there is no way a freedom loving people can live in under the same political jurisdiction as those who insist on their slavery.
Those insisting on slavery inherently are willing to use deadly force to impose their will on us, and we’re just starting to realize that equal resistance will be required for us to remain free.
Yes it was. Texas v White 74 U.S. 700 (1869) Link
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. ... We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
that’s what “they” want us to do! Then they can divide and conquer.
I doubt we would have ever reached this point had the federal government not been allowed to overstep its authority. All the liberals could have had their states where they could do their grand socialist experiments and have left the rest of us alone.
So now we have the whole nation painted with one broad brush. What works for the folks in Maine is expected to work for Texas and so on. Never was intended to be that way, the states were each different and there was strength in the diversity. So now we are in this fine mess and headed for conflict the root cause of which in my opinion is a federal government that got too big for its pants.
That is possible, but I see a potential for USA dissolution in the same manner and for many of the same reasons as USSR dissolution.
I can see the federal government becoming so unpopular, inept, expensive and ossified that no one will care when it dies of its own weight and incompetence.
Large portions of the Roman empire failed the same way. People were relieved when that insatiable taxing authority collapsed.
I do NOT see this as an optimal outcome, but I do see it as possible.
The fall of the Soviet Union remains mind boggling to me. It could certainly happen here. Unchecked parasitism will always kill the host.
PING
“A secession would not be polite and non-violent.”
Also involved is the large amount of “Federal” property that would be on the wrong side of the border, no matter where you draw the line. Then there is debt- one side would be left holding the already unpayable bag.
The decision to involve the military would be strongly influenced by this enormous pile of money, debt, responsibility, and real estate.
I am game for dividing up into Conservative USA and Liberal USA. We get ALL the military and nuclear weapons since they are opposed to them, we get all the oil fields since liberals are opposed to them, we get all the mines because liberals are opposed to them, and we get all the dams and the water behind them because liberals are opposed to them.
And just to show good faith and how much we love them despite our differences, we will supply them will all the marijuana, cocaine, heroin, meth, and LSD they can stand at discount prices.
I wonder which country libertarians would choose?
I think the left needs to go live with the Palestinians where they would feel comfortable.
Anathema to a leftist - they know better, and YOU had better fall in line and comply.
Seriously, this is THE driving motivation behind the left crapping their pants over the "S word". It's not that they know they'll lose all the producers and attract all the freeloaders, it's the lack of control over their fellow citizens that drives 'em nuts.
That’s correct, but Lincoln’s defenders will of course claim that the states didn’t have a right to secede back then or some tripe about how the war was really about slavery.
And it would give new meaning to the "Great Divide"
The rat bastards have taken over all the nice places and that just isn’t fair. We need to evict them from California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado. And prevent more of them from moving to Idaho and Texas.
In principle, I agree with the concept of secession ... that a State may voluntarily remove itself from the Union.
Legally and practically — as in the American Revolution and Civil War — it just isn’t going to happen without military engagement and victory by the seceding States.
SnakeDoc
Does anybody else get pissed off when people claim the Civil War was not about slavery? I hated it when my liberal professors started preaching that tripe.
And the Lost Causers will want us all to believe that slavery didn't exist.
Now we understand how south felt not about slavery as this is not about health
It’s not going to happen. The last time it was tried the District of Criminals waged a war using citizens of the northern states as useful idiots to destroy the South.
If it is tried again by any state you will see D.C. pull out the big guns.
Is not secession always by force of arms? Is there a single instance of a peaceful parting of the ways? Serious question - I don’t know the answer, but I’d be surprised if there were. As noted up-thread, the people who leech off the labor of others won’t take kindly to being deprived of the fruits of that labor.
Colonel, USAFR
This defeatist attitude has got to go.
Just because your opponents decide to play hardball doesn’t mean you take your glove and go home.
Does the Constitution mean anything to us? or is it OK if some twit uses it for TP?
Lose the “secession” talk. Focus on restoring what we still have, not tearing it apart because someone doesn’t play by the rules.
I think you have that backwards the red states are the ones that are the welfare recipients of government largess. That is they get back more than they pay into the government coffers.
"Twenty one of the thirty three states who get back more than the taxpayers in those states pay in are also states who voted for John McCain in 2008. In effect, the wealthier Blue states are subsidizing poorer, more rural Red states...much as urban counties usually subsidize rural counties on the state tax level."
It existed but it nothing to do with the reasons for the war. The war was rooted in the desire of the South to be free from Northern authority and more substantially, an imperalistic desire among the leadership in the South to form a pan-Caribbean empire with other primarily agricultural societies in Latin America.
It’s one reason Southerners ended up going to Brazil because they viewed the war as leading to the inevitable destruction of the Southern agrarian-foreign trade based society.
It’s truly about slavery this time.
Our slavery to the state.
I wonder which country the liberal Jewish demographic would choose, given their propensity to vote (D).
Then don’t come to the South because most of us are taught that. And we are taught that because it is the truth. The idea that the war was about slavery was propaganda plain and simple.
Canada exists as it does because Britain, having taken a beating from the American revolution, realized that a peaceful parting (which includes a formal, if thin, ongoing connection via figurehead monarchy) was preferable.
I know what you’re getting at, but to be a serious country, the new conservative US needs salt-water ports besides the Gulf of Mexico.
BUT, if we get ports on the central coast(s) - Atlantic and/or Pacific - then the other USS will be split up....
Lincoln didn’t give two rips about slavery with regard to the civil war.
It had to do with a people getting out from under the statist thumb.
It probably is a very good bet that it can and must happen here. It is a logical result of the aftermath of the cold war. We had two super powers embark on perhaps the greatest technologically driven war in the history of the planet. The war ended when the Soviet Union went fiscally bankrupt. The costs of the war could not be sustained by their communistic economic system. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union sent shock waves through the Cold War industry here in America. It was a shock to the economic system. Many highly and perhaps overly skilled workers were suddenly out of work. Then of course we had literally insane representatives ask for peace dividends of all things. At a time when we should have been retooling and reinvesting in our infrastructure, we blew the money on expendables. In recent years we have had entire economic sectors collapse (High Tech, Real Estate, soon to be Health Care Industry). The governments are closing hundreds of schools and laying off thousands. The collapse is occurring right now. That is why they want some Wag the Dog scenario for their media outlets.
Oooooo, now threats! I love it! I’ll actually be in the South in August. I’m not worried, by the way.
And what about the socialist island of Chicago?
I wonder how much of that is farmers getting subsidies *not* to grow things?
Didn’t see any threats in that.
Just that your viewpoint would not be what is common, and if you’re not comfortable with that, it would be best if you didn’t go there.
Thank God Thomas Jefferson didn’t think this way.
Once they get through amnesty, and they will, its all over.
Without breaking away, all we’re doing is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Of course not.
The war was rooted in the desire of the South to be free from Northern authority...
And the fact that this desire suddenly manifested itself with the election of a President opposed to the expansion of slavery was purely coincidental, right?
It’s one reason Southerners ended up going to Brazil because they viewed the war as leading to the inevitable destruction of the Southern agrarian-foreign trade based society.
They went to Brazil because once their rebellion was over that was about the last place where slavery was legal.
-Livingston, 1996
Why did the South want to be free from Northern authority? What was the main problem with the North?
A military coup and subsequent forced reboot of the Constitution would be a day at the beach in comparison. What the hell, we're already so far outside the bounds of our founding documents anyway. How can we really expect to fix it via Constitutional means?
And what is the one common feature in all those incidents? The partition was done with the agreement of both sides of the issue and after negotiations which settled all possible areas of disagreement before the separation. There is no reason why secession, should it come to the U.S., shouldn't be accomplished in the same peaceful manner so long as it is done with agreement of both sides, those leaving and those staying.
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