Posted on 12/16/2016 2:00:16 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 led South Carolina to try to secede from the Union. Donald Trump’s election last month has raised similar talk in California, known as the “California Independence Campaign.”
Billionaire activist Tom Steyer said in that aftermath of the election that, “It’s impossible to look at the Trump campaign and not see a direct threat to the civil liberties and dignity of California citizens.”
The leftist anti-constitutionalist Jeff Rosen is also touting “States’ Rights for the Left” in a recent opinion piece.
California can’t secede. The Civil War settled that. But there are other potential avenues by which the Golden State can leave the Union: unanimous consent, retrocession, and deannexation.
California might be able to exit theoretically — and certainly could practically — if nobody objected. Lincoln himself entertained this possibility in his first inaugural address. If the Union were “but an association of States, in the nature of contract merely,” he suggested, it could be “peaceably unmade” by unanimous consent of all the States.”
Lincoln was speaking arguendo (for the sake of argument). He did not believe that the Union was a contract among the States. Even so, he recognized that he could not stop an illegal secession if his “rightful masters, the American people,” did not furnish “the requisite means” to stop secession.
Though President Obama would probably have held the door open had Texas tried to secede during his presidency, President-elect Trump is not likely to let California go in peace.
Another alternative is to let California go out the way she came in. The common historical view is that the United States “conquered” California (along with Texas and the rest of the Southwest) in the Mexican “war of aggression” of 1846-48. This is true as far as it goes, but incomplete.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Read the Dof I references. That is at least part of the rationale.
“They give up San Diego county, Orange County, Riverside county, San Bernadino county and Imperial county — which remains a state or the U.S.”
Why do you want to keep those?
And we get it that you live there. Enjoy yourself.
They can go, but I hope they take all of their kind who have migrated to Texas with them.
isolate them off the mexican border and keep a deep water port, camp pendleton and the farms of Coachella and Imperial county,
“What’s “sensitive” about it?”
I was afraid you were going to be sensitive; maybe go off your rocker. Sorry I mentioned it.
The writer has a PHd? Really? There is not one thing in the Constitution about secession one way or the other.
PS: South Carolina DID secede.
The rest of the USA would be so much better off I say let them go take the whole state with them. I will defend to the death their right to do so.
Why would you cut off anything? CA can go. I say “Via con Dios CA”. Demonrats will never win another election again. I will defend their right to secede with my life if I have too.
No. Not one state less. As bad as CA is with it gone and any other then we will no longer be The United States of America.
CA is more trouble than it’s worth and it is only going to get worse. We would still be the good ‘ol USA. We only had 48 states between 1913 and 1958 and we were still the good ‘ol USA then.
However, I would insist on a 50 mile wide, USA land corridor from the NV border to the Pacific Ocean somewhere between LA and SF. Essentially splitting CA in half, but allowing CAs free travel between the two half’s through the corridor.
But I read the other day that the 17th Amendment is good because it keeps wealthy individuals from buying Senate seats. Instead, we get to voluntarily elect poor but honest public servants like John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein. :)
Thanks for replying.
I’m sure that many senators follow the money regardless of the campaign promises that they made to middle class citizens to win their votes.
And a major problem with probably most campaign promises for federal spending programs is that the states have actually never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to tax and spend for most of these programs.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
And since the feds are arguably stealing state revenues to establish unconstitutional federal spending programs, the states cannot afford to establish such programs with their 10th Amendment-protected powers as the Founding States had expected them to do.
"The States should be left to do whatever acts they can do as well as the General Government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Harvie, 1790.
“And we get it that you live there. Enjoy yourself.”
Native. Orange County, long time conservative stronghold, but changing sadly in political terms.
RE: But doesn’t California supply us with most of our fruits and nuts?
Why can’t we IMPORT them from the country of California? We already import a lot from other countries.
Oceans once provided a great obstacle that limited the enemy's ability to attack our homestall. Now, with ICBM’s we are never more than 15-20 minutes from nuclear obliteration. Whether the missiles are fired from California or a Russian submarine off the coast of California is not going to make that much difference.
If the possibility of Russian attack from bases in California is a concern, we could always enforce the Monroe Doctrine.
The more immediate concern is being unequally yoked with San Francisco values and receiving a daily dose of their toxins. It's like getting a blood transfusion from someone HIV positive. In other words, it is not a good idea.
Bwahahahahahaahha! Which Californicatia citizens would those be?
Plus interest. Where do I sign?
I have. But I'm not following your thinking.
Let me ask the question like this: Who would determine that California does, or does not, have a moral justification for secession?
If it is hostile secession, which it almost always is, the DofI is probably the best written rationale for the justification for secession. It shows that valid secession
1) should not be “for light or transient causes”
2) requires a certain “patient sufferance” while “evils are sufferable”
3) notifying and submitting the facts of abuse “to a candid world” (27 specific abuses are listed in the D of I) and finally
4) “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.” These are not constitutional dictates, but, as the D of I says, what “Prudence, indeed, will dictate...”
Study the DofI. It is probably the most elegant and well reasoned justification for secession maybe in the history of the world. In this case, it would center around “a long line” of unconstitutional acts of the federal government against CA.
If it is not hostile secession and the feds via Congress actually give CA permission to leave, then by the will of the people through the CA legislature there may be nothing keeping it from happening. But I personally would be against it.
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