Let me try because I think I understand Erek’s point:
I am always amazed by people who don’t understand why gun owners do not care for the increased levels of attacks against the second amendment. Especially considering that in many gun owner’s opinion, those in government are regularly overstepping their bounds.
Is that close Erek?
Civil war is unlikely. But what about the following scenarios:
1- The increasing percentage of Hispanics in California could lead to possible Secession of the State, or its breakup?
2- Huge home-brew nuclear explosion in the US causing tens of millions of casualties?
3- A mass suicide by a large percentage of babyboomers reaching their 60s and 70s while facing no livable retirement and total loss of dignity. Note that with rising real estate prices, Social Security can hardly pay for 75% of a retiree’s rent, let alone for food and medicine.
Let me attempt to rail (re-rail, un-de-rail?) my thread back from the brink of hijack death.
It sounds like a majority of posters agree that a civil war akin the to war of 1861-1865 is unlikely, if not impossible. That the state centric mentality of the time is not as prevalent today; the country as a whole is more homogenzied (i.e. American vs. Virginians or Texans); that the federal enforcement agencies (FBI, ATF, Army, etc.) are far more powerful and well equipped than any state or local miltia organizations and that any group willing enough to actually attempt to secede or rebel is likely to get destroyed by the aforementioned government entities seems to be commonly accepted.
However, several of you have put forth the idea that one or more interest groups (hackers, farmers, gun owners, religious or non-religious people, etc.) could attempt to form their own government through peaceful political means. That is, someone could vote a block of partisans into power and then use that power to create a legal enclave for their beliefs.
Assume for the sake of argument that something like this happens (Southern California becomes California Unidos, Montanans stop applying or agreeing to federal statute, whatever) what do you think would happen? Would the government allow such actions since they were accomplished via legal means or would the federal agencies still step in? And how far would both sides go? Could that situation escalate to armed conflict?
But (unless you subscribe to the Confederate theory of the Constitution) there aren’t any legal means by which a state or local government can “stop applying or agreeing to federal statute,” or by which any given area or set of people can secede, or refuse to pay federal taxes, or anything. They could pass laws or resolutions to such effect, but they would be legally null and void, under the Constitution’s “supreme law of the land” clause.
I think it would most certainly end up in repression by the US government.
If say Texas tried to secede, I have no doubt the US military would be knocking on my door the next day. I think that would apply to any sort of secession attempt.
JXJohns: That’s close, the point was that people don’t want to give up the guns while other people have guns. Some people are disturbed that some of us would want to keep guns in case the government oversteps it’s bounds. I am equally disturbed by the people who don’t realize that the government already HAS overstepped it’s bounds.
Southern California has a pretty large seperatist movement in the Aztlan movement.
Like I said, those fringes aren’t quite as fringe as people believe. It really all depends upon what the FBI chooses to do to quash a threat. With things like Ruby Ridge you got some minor grumbling, with Waco you got a federal building blown up. In the case of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, that was a very low personnel intensive operation, if a terrorist cell that small can do that much damage, how much damage could 100 terrorist cells that small do?
The same thing that is currently keeping Americans from revolting violently is the same thing that would divide the military if it’s force were turned against Americans, and that is the idea of killing other Americans. The military isn’t this monolithic alien force that can be turned against us, it is operated by our friends, neighbors and family members.
As for the peaceful political organization, that is completely feasible. As our laws become more complex and byzantine they become less and less valid. Everyone knows that with a clever lawyer you can argue any particular direction that you want. Non-profit organizations and religious organizations get tax breaks and tax exemptions. Our system is actually designed in such a way as to favor private organizations providing the basic infrastructure that we need, the more infrastructure that the average person provides for his community, the freer hand their community has to operate. This is actually what I do for a living by and large. I’ve been working for many years to get myself positioned in such a way as to have the infrastructure to facillitate community building initiatives and am involved in a few different ones.
Our core largely being in New York City has a very international perception of cultural identity, and we feel somewhat held back by provincial American attitudes toward ‘alien’ cultures. In my opinion the Federal Government is irrelevant, it is fighting very hard to maintain relevance, and I think the Fed and the UN are in the process of devouring one another. My goal is to not piss anyone off in the interim and be ready with new community based solutions when the UN and the Federal Government start to lose legitimacy, so that myself and my associates are not dragged down in the quagmire created. We’re tired of being the most glaring target for terrorism in America while at the same time not agreeing at all with the foreign policy being currently executed. There is a small secessionist movement here in New York that is gaining ground. In my opinion New York needs autonomous special economic zone status, which can only come with an amicable break from the federal government. We are moving toward a New World Order, but I don’t think it’s a world order run from Washington. Free-trade and free migration are what is necessary to an equitable world economy.
In my opinion the United States of America is destroyed when Pax Americana is accomplished. And this discussion actually highlights a lot of my issues with America. I think that people in this thread are giving very little thought to the fact that a lot of those “fringe” elements are globally connected to the “fringe” elements all around the world, and that there will be a dramatic power shift as these networks emerge and begin to be recognized. A lot of people in the New York activist community work closely with the Sandenistas (sp?) and we have thrown unpermitted street parties with thousands of people using SMS text mob messaging in order to organize those large groups and keep them moving as the group moves from downtown Manhattan to the Brooklyn waterfront.
People aren’t pissed off only about the Patriot act, many people are pissed off about the RAVE act which is overly vagued and targets young people throwing parties. This one directly affects me and people I know much more than the Patriot act on a daily basis. We’ve had businesses shut down based upon the political whim of the government, and we’ve seen the New York economy lose a good number of jobs in the nightlife industry, as well as losing massive amounts of tourism dollars to bars and restaurants that previously catered to the world tourist crowd. The crowd affected by this might well be called “Fringe”, but it is a fringe that it HIGHLY educated, highly motivated and is making moves to increase it’s political clout.
So I don’t see a civil war per se, but a revolution of some kind is coming, most likely non-violent, but unlike the sixties it’s not being run by impractical demagogues, it’s being run by people who are building the infrastructure to support their philosophical leanings, while building upon much of the groundword laid by our parents’ generation. The thing I find the most interesting about it also is that it is largely untouchable by the powers that be, because it will be these companies cropping up that will largely be fueling the next economic boom, that will hit in full force around the end of '06.
Erek
What is this RAVE Act? Is it federal or state?
Erek
How many arrests have been made under this act?
It does? By what standard? Is this just a restatement of some resolutions passed by MeCHa in the early 1970s?
I don’t know how many arrests have been made. In New York it’s a little skewed because Giuliani setup a Nightlife taskforce and attacked a lot of things. There have been a lot of clubs shut down. I don’t know how many promoters have actually gone to jail, but parties get shut down constantly, and they go and remove liquor and cabaret licenses, things like that. It’s not so much that people are going to jail over it. At least not anyone I know. It’s more that it kind of puts us on the outside of society, so they can mess with us put us in a bureaucratic morass that’s difficult to get out of, that way it never really needs to get to court where things can get overturned. This attitude has lead to some really stupid stuff. For instance, the club Twilo, which was the hottest club in New York in the late 90s had someone OD in the club. Out of fear of getting the club shutdown by calling the paramedics, they hid the person in a secret room. This secret room wasn’t on the plans the city had for the club, so that is what got it shut down, I believe the person died. So what it’s done is create an adversarial culture where we are afraid to call upon those services that are created to help us because one of our “customers” took some drugs. Private parties are one of the ways around this, so I for the most part like to throw private parties, because the legality of private parties is much different from a public one.
Erek
Alright, I suppose I overstated it. It’s probably at the level of more of an underground pop culture phenomenon than anything, but there is an undercurrent amongst a lot of Mexicans in LA who believe that Aztlan should be seperate from the US. I doubt Mayor Villaraigosa is down with it. 
Erek
Well, certainly a constitutional amendment granting independence to a specified region would be a legal mechanism for secession. All it would take would be a 2/3 vote from the house, a 2/3 vote from the senate, and ratification by 3/4 of the state houses. What this means is that there is no unilateral mechanism for secession, but if a supermajority of the United States agreed a state, region, or territory could become independent.
As for mswas complaining about the RAVE act and the misgoverning of New York City and New York nightlife, and how that leads to seccessionist thinking, I simply don’t get it.
This is a LOCAL ordinance, proposed by the MAYOR and enforced by the NYPD. It isn’t some distant, unaccountable and tyrannical federal government imposing its will on the helpless citizens of New York City, it is the people of New York city tyrannizing themselves. How would secession help? Wouldn’t secession mean that the mayor and city council would have vastly increased powers, accountable to no one outside of New York?
This isn’t the provincial red staters holding back the cosmopolitan avant garde blue staters, you’re doing it to yourself. Why exactly do you blame the provinces for local ordinances again?
Actually independence is declared by the province seceding. It is then up to the original state to decide whether or not it wants to go to war to retrieve it.
That’s because it’s not merely the rave act, and the rave act isn’t simply about nightlife, it’s about an overly vague law that gives politicians a free hand to choose whether or not to excercise authority over an entity within it’s jurisdiction.
The RAVE act is federal. New York secession isn’t about the RAVE act, it is about the fact that New York has little in common with the rest of the country. We don’t even have a whole lot in common with other “Blue states”. New York City should be autonomous for many reasons, economic and political. It doesn’t make any sense that Texans can vote on laws that affect New Yorkers and vice versa. I gave the examples of the nightlife crackdown here in New York because that is what I know. I think an independent NYC would have very different drug laws for instance.
No, the provincial blue states are holding us back as well. New York is kind of centrist in a way, most New Yorkers have conservative leanings and liberal leanings. I don’t think Californians votes should affect us either. As for me I’m young and only now getting to where I can actually affect social change. Like I said, I don’t really think NY should secede in the standard sense, I think it should become a Special Economic Zone and be a city state, we’d still be connected to the North American landmass, but we’d have a freer hand to deal with the rest of the world. As the seat of the UN I don’t think it makes sense that New York is under the jurisdiction of the United States. However, New York is kind of split amongst those that absolutely hate Giuliani, and those that love him. He definitely put a dent in crime, but he also put a lot of small businesses out of business by bringing in the Disneyfication of New York. That certainly is local policy that has done that, without a doubt.
I’d say probably the greatest reason for New York secession is that New York is the biggest target for terrorist attacks, and that Bush’s policies are endangering us but not really the rest of the country.
Erek
Ah, to be in college again and have such sweet dreams. I understand what you mean by “fringe” elements mswas, and that you feel these elements have power. But you feel that because the government and its agencies allow you that power. Make no mistake, if your “fringe” elements became dangerous to the stability of the US in anyway…you would be gone before you could ask “Why?”
bolding mine
Just curious, what in the heck are you talking about.
At Kent State, the soldiers fired live ammo into an unarmed crowd. There were no (traceable) orders to do so.
Would it satisfy you if NYC (or perhaps the whole New York metropolitan area – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Metropolitan_Area) were made a separate state of the Union? (The remainder of New York State might be renamed “Hudson”.)
Thank you, Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor, I’m well aware of that, I just wondered about the words “military riot”.
I believe they ‘resigned their commissions’ rather than deserted. 