Posted on 11/30/2012 11:57:37 AM PST by Kaslin
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ..."
So begins the Declaration of Independence of the 13 colonies from the king and country to which they had given allegiance since the settlers first came to Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.
The declaration was signed by 56 angry old white guys who had had enough of what the Cousins were doing to them. In seceding from the mother country, these patriots put their lives, fortunes and honor on the line.
Four score and five years later, 11 states invoked the same right "to dissolve the political bands" of the Union and form a new nation. After 620,000 had perished, the issue of a state's right to secede was settled at Appomattox. If that right had existed, it no longer did.
What are we to make, then, of petitions from 25,000 citizens of each of seven Southern states -- 116,000 from Texas alone -- to secede?
While no one takes this movement as seriously as men took secession in 1861, the sentiments behind it ought not to be minimized. For they bespeak a bristling hostility to the federal government and a dislike bordering on detestation of some Americans for other Americans, as deep as it was on the day Beauregard's guns fired on Fort Sumter.
Our Pledge of Allegiance still speaks of "one nation under God, indivisible," but that is far from the reality in the America of 2012.
The social, cultural, moral and political revolutions of the 1960s, against which Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan inveighed to win their 49-state triumphs, have now captured half of the country.
One America believes our history is a catalog of crimes against people of color, that women have an inviolable right to abortions, that condoms should be handed out to sexually active teens in schools where Darwinism should be taught as revealed truth, while Bibles, prayers and religious symbols should be permanently expelled.
The other America sees all this as unpatriotic, godless and decadent.
One America believes in equality of rights; the other demands equality of results brought about through the redistribution of income and wealth, affirmative action, racial and gender set-asides, and quotas.
One America believes in gun control; the other in gun rights.
Now that Christmas and Easter have been expunged from public schools and the public square and the popular culture has been thoroughly de-Christianized, we Americans seem to have but one holy day of obligation that brings us all together: Super Bowl Sunday.
Where one America divinizes diversity, the other seeks out our lost unity and community. Half the country pays no federal income taxes, but half depends on federal benefits.
The occasions when we come together as one, as after 9/11 and during natural disasters such as Katrina and Sandy, seem few and farther between, and the resurrected unity rarely lasts.
Could today's America come together to build an interstate highway system or send astronauts to the moon, as we did just seven years after John Glenn first orbited the Earth?
Environmentalists would have killed Ike's highway system and the Hoover and Grand Coulee dams, as today they seek to stop the fracking for oil and natural gas and block the Keystone XL pipeline.
As for states seceding, however, is that really a solution to national disintegration? Tens of millions with Blue State mindsets live in Red State America, and vice versa. While folks in Texas may talk of seceding from the Union, folks in Austin talk of seceding from Texas.
Yet we should take seriously what is behind this desire to separate and sever ties, for it mirrors what is happening across our civilization.
The West is decomposing.
British Tories seek to cut ties to the European Union. Scots want to leave Britain. Catalans vote to divorce from Spain, to which they have been wedded since the 15th century. Flemish talk of leaving Walloons behind in Belgium. Northern Europeans are weary of carrying their profligate southern brethren and muse about cutting Greece adrift and letting it float out into the Mediterranean.
And Americans are already seceding from one another -- ethnically, culturally, politically. Middle-class folks flee high-tax California, as Third World immigrants, legal and illegal, pour in to partake of the cornucopia of social welfare benefits the Golden Land dispenses.
High-tax states like New York now send tens of thousands of pension checks to Empire State retirees in tax-free Florida. Communities of seniors are rising that look like replicas of the suburbs of the 1950s. People gravitate toward their own kind. Call it divorce, American-style.
What author William Bishop called "The Big Sort" -- the sorting out of people by political beliefs -- proceeds. Eighteen states have gone Democratic in six straight presidential elections. A similar number have gone Republican.
"Can we all just get along?" asked Rodney King during the Los Angeles riot of 1992. Well, if we can't, we can at least dwell apart.
These times demand strong action.
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke
Secession is not what we need. We need to plant our flag right here and invite the God-hating, capitalism-hating, constitution-hating wannabe totalitarians to take a hike. America, love it, live it, defend it or leave it!!
Why would anyone want a society where our original founding principles are celebrated and honored? Why would anyone want a place where violent crime was a tiny fraction of what the US has today? Why would anyone want to have a small, efficient government? Why would anyone want a military where people are promoted and honored for achievement and ability, rather than for the color of their skin, or their gender...? Why would anyone want a country with a highly effective public education system and the freedom to home-school at will? Why would anyone want a country where individual rights are protected by ever level of government, and politicians run political campaigns based on which one of them would protect individual freedom and provide a safe, secure nation for our families and our descendants? Why would anyone what a country that established strict criminal penalties for voter fraud and then ensured each legal vote was carefully and accurately counted.
Why would anyone want to offer our children and grandchildren a better environment in which to grow up than we gave this generation of Americans? (sarc)
It would be better to separate peacefully.
I wonder if anyone has noticed that it is not Americans who are stirring the pot.
problem there is,
places like N.Y. and Calif. where that is exactly what the vast majority is.
And they all ain’t leaving.
If constitutionalists move to redder regions and vice versa, we can push for de-facto secession by some states beginning to cut off most social welfare benefits, encouraging their moochers to move to a blue state that will be happy to support them.
Let federalism work. See how well rust-belt union states do under nearly pure Marxism. Let Texas become a libertarian republic. Etc. We should permit 50 experiments to happen, with folks voting with their feet. Takers will migrate to places that still hand out welfare to all comers. Makers will migrate to red states where hard work is rewarded.
At this point, the federal govt just won't permit this, but as its power declines with declining American power generally, they won't be able to enforce federal diktats in Alaska or Texas or even Tennessee.
The problem is more deeply rooted than simply disagreeing.
Half the country wants to forcibly take from the other half with the barrel of a government gun.
The latter half just wants to be left alone.
The only possible compromise, which we have been operating under for decades, is that the former half only takes part of what the latter half has.
That’s not enough for them - they want it all.
We must either capitulate completely, fight them, or separate.
Cuba.
The only thing keeping some states from contemplating secession is fear. Think about a union based on fear. Not really a republic, now is it?
Problem is Obama carried 23 other states in addition to CA and NY. What is Iowa’s excuse? Or New Hampshire’s? I could go on....
Who is John Galt?
We need to get back to the basics. We are losing because the American Spirit is changing from enterprising individualism to dependency as a replacement for achievement.
We need to stop thinking a solution from the government is what we need to help.
We need to start changing hearts and minds. Neighbor by neighbor, block by block, city by city, church by church, school by school.
As long as people see dependency as a means to achievement, no change in government will change anything. Problems will just follow whomever splits themselves apart.
Politicians will always be politicians, they will pander to whom they think will give them votes and money. Until the public’s attitude is changed, nothing will change.
Bottom up, not top down.
Precise and concise, but very well said.
You misspelled feral government.
I submit the "fun" part of socialism is over. The run on the Treasury was easy as taking candy from a baby. Spending $6 Trillion over 4 years was the "fun" part, now the so called greedy producers will pay the bill or else. We are are entering the "not fun" phase. Where we will start to actually feel the pain...
While we are a ways from Social War such a war will be the only solution. A terrible solution.
Correct.
My thoughts (again).
I do not see the necessity for the vast portions of conservative values territory to "secede" so much as it should be a priority for such conservative values territories to suggest that the communist agenda "progressive liberal" values territories be (first) "invited to withdraw" from the union of constitutional adhering original intent united States.
It is they that no longer want to live under the framework of the Constitution.
They are the ones that should leave.
They are the ones that want to re-write the Constitution.
Let them.
On their own.
They can have their teaming masses of Obama-droids.
We will keep our conservative population, our "flyover" country, our "makers."
They can keep their "takers."
We can live within our budgets.
They can invent their own currency and "print" it forever under their "QE-Infinity" policy.
We can keep our "oppressive and unnecessary" military.
They can keep their FEMA, TSA, Obama-Youth, etc.
We can keep our "dirty and polluting" oil fields, coal mines, pipelines, nuke plants, natural gas fields, etc.
They can "live" off of their solar panels and wind turbines.
Yes, if they are so "oppressed" by this constitutional Republic they should invoke their beliefs into action by accepting our gracious offer to simply and peacefully withdraw from our union.
.
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