The Right of Secession: I'm ready to consider...

Great Debates
1

Bush is not my president; he is someone elses president. Iraq is not my war; I never wanted anything to do with it. I don’t understand my own government, I despise nearly everyone in the executive branch, and I’m not alone. In the Northeast, Bushco isn’t very popular. And we don’t feel much akin to folks in the Deep South, for instance. I’m pretty convinced if we could get rid of Romney and Finneran, we could run our own affairs pretty well, maybe strike up a nice bond with the Maritime Provinces, to which many here often feel more akin than, say, Texas.

Once upon a time, there was the New England Secessionist movement, bolstered perhaps, by the words of Thomas Jefferson: “If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Perhaps, when the conservative majority in the SCOTUS decided to effectively elect G.W. Bush on their own, they would have been chilled to hear these words of Jefferson recited: “…where powers were assumed by the national government which had not been granted by the states, nullification is the rightful remedy.”

Why should we abide another four years of Bush simply because people who share none of our values reelect him? Perhaps it’s time to leave. Peacefully, I hope. I was brought up to admire Lincoln, but perhaps he should have let the South go. And perhaps the New England Confederation was onto something, way back at the beginning of the 19th century.

It was the oppinion of our founding fathers that when the Federal authority is seen as bankrupt, those beneath should have the right to overthrow or secceed. Half this nation will be horrified with Bush in the White House another four years. The other half will be horrified with Kerry. We are a house divided, quite completely, I think. Why are we aspiring to unity when we do not really want it?

Here’s an easy solution: Split. Maybe it won’t be so hard. Maybe we’ll like each other more when we’re not forced to live the way other members of the family want to. It’s natural for the family unit to disperse, to find their own space.

I think either the individual states must wrest back far more control over their own affairs, and become much more distinct political and social entities, or perhaps we just need to form confederacies of regions and split. The Czech republic did it without bloodshed. Maybe the Civil war didn’t need to happen. We all know it wasn’t fought over slavery anyway, so was Lincoln’s goal of keeping the Union together worth the two (or more) polarized Americas we have now?

I’m starting to think not. I’m less and less sanguine each year about paying my taxes to have Washington squander it in unjust and greedy wars, pork, corporate welfare, unneeded weaponry for enemies we create through our own ill-conceived policies. If Bush and his men want a land of their own, I say let them have it. But does it have to be my hand? Must I and others like me suffer this fool as our leader until the middle of this decade? And why should those who detest Kerry simply because he is a New England aristocrat be forced to be ruled by someone so separate from their own ideals?

Is it time for an amicable split? I’m starting to like the idea more and more. A tidy divorce.

Anyone with me? Anyone think this is insane? Will Texas really miss Maine? Because, quite frankly, I don’t think Maine will miss Texas. So what’s the problem? Why are we making ourselves so unhappy together, when we could be so happy alone? It’s time for change. We wish you the best in life, sincerely, and may you prosper. But how can we really prosper together when we don’t really like one another?

“There’ll be good times again for me and you
But we just can’t stay together, can’t you feel it too?
Still, I’m glad for what we had, and how I once loved you
But it’s too late baby, now it’s too late…”

Saying goodbye can hurt, but sometimes it’s the only way. It’s not like we can’t have coffee on occasion. Maybe we’ll be happier some day, do you think?

2

Even if secession were possible, you’d never get a majority of any New England state (or other state for that matter) to vote for it. If you hate Bush so much and can’t hang on until someone else is elected, the best course would be for you to move out of the country.

3

[QUOTE=Loopydude]

Is it time for an amicable split? I’m starting to like the idea more and more. A tidy divorce.

[QUOTE]

I don’t see any advantages to breaking apart the union.

Marc

4

Why not? Why would it be so bad?

5

Yes it was, Loopydude. That is, if slavery had not existed, the war never would have happened. There were other points of dispute between North and South, but all of them were directly or indirectly connected to slavery. For instance, the Southerners objected to tariffs which protected Northern industries while making the agrarian Southerners pay more for manufactured goods. The South was agrarian and not industrial, in part because geographic and climatic conditions for industry were better up north, but also because the institution of agrarian slavery, and the political predominance of a landholding, slaveowning aristocracy, stifled any attempts to industrialize the South, and repelled the immigrants who might have formed a free industrial labor force.

Today, however, there is no such issue in American society which plausibly could sharply divide us along regional lines. If we have another civil war, it won’t be region-vs.-region; it will be more like the English Civil War – different political or religious factions fighting it out across the landscape of whole country. And that would get really, really bloody, even more bloody than the War Between the States. Secession, as such, is not in the cards. States and regions could, in theory, secede; religious groups or political parties or ethnic groups or social classes cannot secede.

6

Not really. I mean long drawnout constitutional wranglings and perenial threats of seperation never hurt anyone.
:dubious:

7

Leave Texas. You can take California with you, though, along with all of New England. Texas is ours, tho, mmkay?

insert obligatory “when come back bring pie” here

8

It’ll never fly, the question having long since been decided, but at least if the US split up the parts wouldn’t be high and mighty superpowers who could throw their weight around to the detriment of the world’s good order and discipline.

9

Eh, try it.

As a northerner you’re in a bit of trouble though. Comparatively speaking the south has had the fastest population growth since the 1970s, almost 250% overall. The north on the other hand has been decreasing in population comparatively.

The U.S. military is overwhelmingly Republican, a huge proportion of military bases are in the south (a lot of that, ironically born out of the fact that they were moved South after the ACW to watch over the former Confederates.)

When the order came down to stop the secession, the North would be defeated effortlessly.

Of course you are a very radical extremist person, and you do not constitute even the barest majority of any state population. No state would activel secede, just wouldn’t happen. Even if the state was populated with secessionist imbeciles, the legislators know better.

10

Well ideally a secession would be pretty neat, but practically there are many problems with it.
First of all, the two nations would have to be 100% allied through thick and thin to remain as secure as we are today (which seems to be a little less secure than we were, say, 20 years ago.)
A conservative south would have a problem with having a liberal north as an immediate neighbor. Because of the left’s stance on immigration (the more the merrier, apparently), and border security, we would end up with a wall. Walls are not cool, politically speaking.
Would the the Northern Communist States of Amerika and the Confederate States be able to get along well enough to ward off the threats our nation faces every day? Would either of the two be able to face the hatred that we face from the rest of the world alone? Would either of the two be immunte to the hatred we currently face from the rest of the world? I doubt it. It does sound nice, but it just wouldn’t work these days.

11

I say trade Texas to Mexico for some of their oil.

12

The Czech and Slovak republics of the former Czechoslovakia were well-defined areas with separate (albeit very closely related) ethnic identities–for the most part, the Czechs lived in the Czech Republic; the Slovaks lived in Slovakia. Similarly, in the former Yugoslavia the republic of Slovenia got off fairly well, achieving independence after only a few days of fighting, because by and large all the Slovenes lived in Slovenia, and everybody in Slovenia was a Slovene. In contrast, in the republics where there were large minorities (like Croatia), or where there was no majority ethnic group to begin with (like Bosnia-Herzegovina), there were bloody civil wars and vicious persecutions.

So what exactly are the separate ethnic identities you are proposing as the basis for the new nation-states? It sounds like you want the “Gore voters” and the “Bush voters” to part ways. But if so, you’re talking about two groups of people who are hopelessly intermingled. In the 2000 election, even in a reliably democratic state like New York, there were over 2.4 million Republican voters. In Texas, Bush’s home state, there were about 2.4 million votes for the Democratic candidate. (In both cases, the minority votes were over a third of those cast.) And of course Florida split right down the middle, a photo finish. To trot out the old Civil War cliche, we’d literally be talking about “brother against brother”–it’s far from uncommon for family members to disagree about politics, and in fact I’ll bet it’s quite rare for an American to not have close relatives who vote the other way in a Presidential election.

This is going to take one hell of a lot of “ethnic” cleansing.

13

Of course, “you” elected Romney and Finneran, so it is not as though there is some monolithic New England belief system to which you “all” adhere.

14

I’m sure I’ll take some sh*t for this. Can I stop supporting our troops now?

15

I doubt that millions of retirees across the country will be willing to give up their Social Security checks for the sake of secession and political purity. I doubt that the new regional governments would want to take on the financial burden of keeping the money coming to the elderly. I don’t think I’d want to have to pay tariffs on everything transported more than two states away, nor would I care to have to show a passport every time I have to travel more than a couple of hundred miles. We would also lose the immense advantage of having a single monetary system for such a huge area and population. There will be political–and, I suspect, military–conflict between the various regional governments sooner or later. I also don’t think black Southerners and other minorities would much like the idea of not having a federal government to which they can appeal for help. There are lots of other reasons most people are not going to be receptive to this idea.

It just ain’t gonna fly, Wilbur.

It is, however, refreshing to hear a leftie admit out loud in public that he feels no sense of respect or loyalty to the United States. It’s unusually honest.

16

/sidebar

My vague recollection is that this was largely a re-eruption of a religious rather than purely ethnic battle that had been kept in check since WWII. The Roman v Orthodox thing, which in turn had been bubbling away ever since the east/west split of the Empire.

I’m pretty rusty on this. If you or Tamerlane or someone who knows the stuff would care to comment?

/sidebar.

17

Serbs and Croats cannot really be called different ethnic groups. I think you are correct in saying that their battle goes back at least as far as WWII. As for the Muslims and the Christians, we’re talking about issues going back to the Middle Ages.

18

How about this:

We accept the fact that we have no suitable candidates for the 2004 election and get behind whomever wins this time around because it is the right and productive thing to do.

Between 2004 & 2008 we, as a country, try to identify one or two statesmen who can unite and lead people of differing opinions.

This talk of secession is not isolated to one lunatic posting on a computer message board, it is symptematic of a polarized nation. One that has been polarized by the elected leadership. Shame on GWB for doing it so profoundly that he could never defend it as an accident; and shame on the Republican counterbalance that is the shambles of the Democratic party for not preparing a candidate to beat this mastermind and win the love of the nation. Kerry the war hero? Sure, he’s probably a good guy. But we don’t need a good guy. We need a leader that will be respected if not loved by his constituency. We need a leader who can reweave tattered international alliances through believable and empathetic diplomacy. We need a leader who can make good things happen at home so we can respect ourselves again. We don’t need a symbol of a failed war to replace a failure.

Jimminy Christmas! We have 290,342,554 citizens in this country as of last July. Can *none *of us get off our fat, pasty, potato-fed, survivor-watching asses and achieve some measure of polical stature in the next four years and get noticed by one party or the other? So far the only person who appears remotely capable of doing this is an Austrian ex-pat who is contitutionally blocked from candidacy!

19

That was a hijack. I appologize.

20

Bush is my president.

I didn’t vote for him. I don’t trust him. I don’t really like him. I actually feel anger and resentment and antipathy for him because of what he’s done to this country. I really can’t forsee any realistic circumstances which would make me vote for him. I think he’s a bad leader, and I hold fast to the fact that he lost the popular vote in 2000 to reassure me that all of this country is not like him.

Even so, the USA is my country, so he’s my president.

But he won’t be forever. I can wait.

My ancestors fought for this country. 5 x great grandpa fought at Bunker Hill in the revolution. I had two 4 x great grandfathers fight in the War of 1812, and one 3 x great grandpa fought in The War to Preserve the Union. (Further Mercotancestors served in the military, but were always of an age to miss combat.) The war veterans lived in states as widespread as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois. Other ancestors resided in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, New York, and Oklahoma.

So I don’t want to take my corner of the country out of the union. The whole damn country is just as much mine as it is GWB’s!

I refuse to consider such a permanent solution to the temporary problem problem of the current administration.