This started as an offhand comment I made in the face of the current crop of people who have expressed a desire that their states secede from the union, so dissatisfied they are with the reelection of Barack Obama. My opinion is that many, if not most, of those who are demanding to leave the union, are of the same mind that Obama is unamerican or unpatriotic. I base this opinion on the fact that there was no shortage of people who expressed these views, and those who are most anti-Obama seem the ones most likely to react this way.
I lack hard evidence, such as a Nate Silver-approved poll that asks secessionists whether one or more of the reasons they voted against Obama was because they felt he was unamerican, not an American, wanted socialism (which is unamerican), was not born here, did not espouse American ideals or represent America at all or lacked patriotism. But I don’t think making the claim would be very controversial.
So I found it ironic that the segment of the population that took the most stock with Obama being unamerican were the first ones who wanted to leave the country entirely!
Sure, that’s funny. But there is a more serious side to this, namely is it ever patriotic to leave a country? Can someone love their country so much legitimately and can that country fall so far from the things that made those people love it that leaving it is actually the ultimate expression of patriotism?
Forgetting about whiny rednecks in America for a second, what if a country truly things considerably more offensive than dare elect via Democracy a black Democrat to a second term, such as (dare I Godwin) what the Nazi party did to Germany?
If I am a patriotic German in the late '30s early '40s who finds it reprehensible what the Nazis are doing to and in my country, what is more patriotic? Staying or leaving?
Furthermore, if we can agree that leaving America because Obama is reelected is silly and hypocritical and not patriotic but people could love Germany yet choose to flee a monster such as Hitler and still be considered patriots, where is the line drawn?
I suppose a good warning sign is when the current executive begin dismantling the legal mechanisms and protections one came to view as an essential part of the nation. And I mean really dismantling them, not just ridiculous hyperbole like “Obama has black helicopters over every major city!”
I could theoretically see it. Let’s say some future Presidential administration decided to really start tossing out the Constitution and getting some general support for it. At that point, I could see some states deciding that the only way to defend the rights of their citizens would be secede from the United States and preserve the genuine Constitution in their own country.
Yeah, I suppose for a political movement to be taken seriously, the number of participants should exceed and be better organized than the number of people who believe in leprechauns.
The amount of people in Texas is enough that the governor had to comment on it… And RON PAUL also was asked to weigh in - and he thinks that secession is quite an American principle!
This means that there are people in this country who voted against Obama because they considered him unamerican, but they supported RON PAUL who feels that leaving America is very American.
I am reasonably sure that the number of people who combine to have voted against Obama at least in part because they felt he was unamerican who are or were at some time also Ron Paul supporters is not a huge number. But I am equally as sure that the number is above zero.
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I am reasonably sure that the number of people who combine to have voted against Obama at least in part because they felt he was unamerican who are or were at some time also Ron Paul supporters is not a huge number. But I am equally as sure that the number is above zero.
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There are over 300 million people in the US, so you are always going to get some non-zero number of nutters. I’d say that the number of folks who are serious about this crap is about on par with the number of lefties who were going to move to Canada when Bush got re-elected (or elected the first time), or the number of lefties who wanted to take to the streets and start the revolution…or, I suppose less tongue in cheek, the number of folks who still fully support OWS in any meaningful way (or, hell, even supported it fully in it’s hayday, let alone now). It’s a non-zero number of people, and maybe even a large number looked at in isolation, but compared to the overall population it’s a drop in the bucket. If it wasn’t, then you’d see bigger changes in who was being elected and what was being voted on for public approval.
Sure…ask the Founding Fathers. Well, I suppose you can’t, since they are all dead, but maybe channel them. It all depends on one thing…if you win or not, wrt whether secession is ‘patriotism’ in the end or treason.
It doesn’t matter how many people, or how few. The question is whether it’s patriotic or not.
I am now sorry I gave all the backstory to what made me think about this but really, if just one person left the country and claimed it was because he or she loved his or her country, there is room for debate as to whether that makes any sense.
Secession cannot be patriotism to the country being left. It can be patriotic to the country being formed. So if the Navajo Nation secedes, they are not being patriotic to America but might well be patriotic to their patria as they define it. The Founding Fathers weren’t being patriotic to England.
If the South wants to secede, they might well be patriotic to Confederacy 2.0 (now slave-free!). They’re certainly not being patriotic to the USA.
Well, conceivably their goal might be to preserve life as they knew it in the USA before a recent series of political changes started changing life dramatically in the USA, i.e. the President orders the Secret Service to shoot all members of Congress…
Of course, this depends on:
-changes have actually occurred, i.e. not out of trumped up fears of things that haven’t occurred, or confident terror of what is about to occur
-the goal is to restore a system that actually existed, not some fanciful Leave it to Beaver fantasy of an idealized past that never actually was.
I’d be surprised if any modern American secessionist doesn’t combine the above two to some degree.
wouldn’t formal secession require governmental…cooperation to whatever degree?
the idea seems kind of impossible. the government has to go so far off the constitutional rails that America ceases to be as was defined, yet would still have to have enough reasonable bureaucratic wherewithal to process formal secession–and the secessionist would have to the TRUE form of ACTUAL Americanism.
i don’t think it’s possible.
it sounds lot like fucking for virginity.
And I answered you. Is a desire to secede from a country ever a sign of patriotism? Of course…otherwise we wouldn’t have a country here (assuming you are from the US). It all depends on whether you succeed or fail as to whether you were a patriot or a traitor, in the end…but the example of the colonies seceding from the UK alone means that ‘ever’ has already happened. Unless you don’t think the FF’s were patriotic.
Is this thread supposed to be about one person, or even a lot of people, choosing to leave the country, or about a region of a country seceding to form a new, independent nation? There’s a pretty big difference between the two, but you seem to be treating them as interchangeable here.
I’m sure there are reasons why a patriotic person might emigrate to another country, but I agree with Dr. Drake that a group/region seceding from a country is a pretty clear sign that they aren’t patriots with regard to that country. They probably would be considered patriots of the new country.
