The irony, of course, is that it would be millions of liberals or centrists (or just people who want to continue to be Americans) who would suffer, but I guess to Bob the important thing is to make an omelet you gots to break some eggesess. Bummer if you are one of the eggs, but the up side is it will move the country in the way Bob thinks it needs to go, so whatever it takes.
[QUOTE=Miller]
The problem with this hypothetical is that you need to define why a state wants the secede before you can accurately gauge the interest of the rest of the nation in stopping them. There’s no issue that’s so divisive that anyone’s really talking about secession seriously. If there were an issue that people felt so strongly about that they wanted to leave the Union, opinions on the opposite side would likely be just as strong, making them more likely to try to stop the secessionists.
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Exactly. Today, right now, there isn’t an issue that could potentially take a state or states out of the Union. Only a small nutty fringe wants this (most I think are like Bob, who want OTHER states to leave so that they get what they want and don’t have to deal with those who they feel shouldn’t be in the Union). We’d need to know why Texas or Massachusetts or whatever wants to leave and is leaving to know whether it would be opposed by the rest of the Union with force.
Well, letting southern states go would make the USA whiter–even if it really sucked for the blacks in The New Confederacy. Letting Texas go would also get rid of lots of those swarthy Tejanos. So the “pure” states would have a neater, more uniform country. With, according to recent news stories, urban police pretty good at keeping their POC down…
Of course, it will never happen. Inspiring Democratic Texans to get out the vote in a non-Presidential year is hard. This election would have an impressive turnout. Also, what about Federal property within the borders? NASA? Here’s Wikipedia’s list of military installations in Texas. Nope.
Sure it’s worth opposing militarily. Those who dream of secession are cranks to a one. If those cranks did manage to declare secession in any given state, their military should be crushed and their leaders properly hanged. Every one of the states has too many good people to just let the cranks drag them to hell.
I’m curious if a state’s history and reason for leaving would matter. Given the illegal annexation and location, if Hawaiians were to unite behind a new king/queen and declare independence would that be more favorable than if Iowa decides to declare independence if Congress cuts corn subsidies? What if Texas who was at one time an independent country decided to leave. Is that different than California (likes to think they were once independent) or Alaska (never independent)? What if it were a good-riddance pleeeeease-leave state like Arizona?
I’m with those who don’t see what was so terrible about secession in the 1860s. Slavery is something worth fighting and dying over. Preserving the union is not.
Everyone’s talking about hypothetical reasons why a US state might secede, but we don’t even need to look that far: just look at our neighbor to the north. Quebec has several times come VERY close to seceding. If enough of them ever really wanted to do it and they were willing to do it in an orderly, reasonable fashion, would anyone here REALLY advise the prime minister of the country to use armed force to stop them from doing so? What about the UK - Scotland voted on secession just last year. Should the English have been ready to storm across Hadrian’s wall and stop the Scots at the point of a gun? I doubt it.
Say over the next few decades a strong secessionist movement grew in Hawaii. They have a pretty different history than the rest of the US, they’re geographically remote, their ethnic/demographic profile is different than most of the rest of the country. Say they really wanted to go it alone. Would any of us be willing to kill or die to prevent them from doing so? I wouldn’t. I’d be sad - it’s great having Hawaii as part of the US - but I sure wouldn’t shed my or anyone else’s blood over the matter.
[QUOTE=Rodgers01]
Everyone’s talking about hypothetical reasons why a US state might secede, but we don’t even need to look that far: just look at our neighbor to the north. Quebec has several times come VERY close to seceding. If enough of them ever really wanted to do it and they were willing to do it in an orderly, reasonable fashion, would anyone here REALLY advise the prime minister of the country to use armed force to stop them from doing so? What about the UK - Scotland voted on secession just last year. Should the English have been ready to storm across Hadrian’s wall and stop the Scots at the point of a gun? I doubt it.
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Well, there is a tiny bit of a difference between, say, Scotland leaving the UK and, oh, say Alabama leaving the Union, though I guess your example of Quebec is better since it would be similar (or more similar). And like I said, if there was a super-majority of voters in a state that really wanted to leave then I think it would be do-able (good luck getting that though). The thing is, since we don’t know why a state or the people in a state might want to leave it’s hard to say whether it would be worth opposing or not, or whether it would be opposed or not, which seems to be the majority of the objections in this thread.
If a majority or super-majority of voters voted in Hawaii to leave the Union and it was a valid and un-coerced vote I’d say that most people wouldn’t have an issue letting them leave the Union if that’s what they really wanted. It’s highly unlikely, unless things change drastically, that any state would ever have either a majority or super-majority of voters who want to leave (I mean, as you pointed out, the folks in Scotland didn’t end up voting to leave the UK, and that was much more likely), but I wouldn’t have an issue if they did, personally…and I doubt there would be much traction from people to force a state to stay if a majority really wanted that. It would be messy though, and I seriously doubt any state outside of perhaps California or Texas COULD become sovereign and survive independently (and I doubt either would want to join with Mexico :p).
I think most Texans would be vehemently opposed to allying with any of those three; conservatives tend to dislike Russia and China, and the history of the Mexican-American War rules out a Mexican alliance.
Not only yes, but I favor military force to address the extremes of nullification and freepery. They should have escalated on Cliven Bundy, and there ought to be some serious Federal warrants being thrown around Alabama right now.
Once the ball started rolling, though, it would probably gain momentum.
If a state truly became serious about secession, you’d have many secession-minded Americans flocking to that state (increasing the pro-secession vote,) while many secession opponents would leave that state (decreasing the pro-Union vote.)
I have my doubts, since I doubt Texan secessionists would have similar motives to, say, a secession movement in the South or one in the North East or Californian or Hawaiian or whatever other groups. The fringe groups who want to leave the Union in all of those places don’t have anything really in common except they want to leave the Union, and that’s not enough to build on for something like this, at least not IMHO.
A country that allows succession is not a country. Slavery was a cause worth opposing in the 1860s, but so was succession itself: Once you have the precedent of secession, you’re in an absolute anarchy, where life is nasty, brutish, and short.
OK, good point. But I think many anti-secessionists would flee Texas if they felt Texan independence was imminent, which would further reduce opposition (within Texas) to secession.
Hawaii has a sort-of vocal minority that wants independence. As in there are multiple groups of maybe 25 people each. They are not wealthy, well-connected, and (from what I’ve seen the news), not the most presentable. The non-white Hawaii is mostly Asian and Pacific immigrants of multiple generations. They would certainly not support any secession movements by these relatively small (and shrinking) group of Hawaiians.
As an aside, I wonder what a Hawaiian nation would be like. Oahu would be swiss cheese with all the US military installations. Plus the tourist industry would take a tremendous hit if American tourists needed passports. What’s left (pineapple and sugar cane are all but gone)?
A lot of people make noises about how people should have the right to self determination. But I guess that’s only high minded talk for other countries facing internal dissent, not when it’s, I dunno, California.
Of course everyone is assuming that it will be secession by an entire state. What if it’s just part of a state? What if it’s just one county, or just one town?
