Why the US opposition to the idea of secession?

There’s currently a thread in the Election forum about various petitions from a number of states in the US asking for the right to peaceful secession from the Union. The response is overwhelmingly negative from posters there, something that I’ve also noticed in the past when the idea of secession rears its head — in many cases the idea of secession from the union seems to be identified with treason.

But why? If there’s a majority within a state that wants that, what reason is there to keep them in a union that they do not want? Why does even broaching the subject, or petitioning the government to even consider the move, warrant such a negative response? Isn’t self-determination a basic right?

Partly it’s because one really big secessionist movement we had was responsible for a civil war that lasted four years and killed over half a million people. So, that comes first to mind.

But beyond that, the US is a perpetual union, and citizens of each state are citizens of the United States. The population already has self-determination.

They exercised their right of self-determination when they applied to become part of the Union;

[QUOTE=Chief Justice Salmon Chase]
The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to ‘be perpetual.’ And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained ‘to form a more perfect Union.’ It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

…When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final.

[/QUOTE]

Secession is a word with an ugly history in this country - the last time anyone tried it, it lead to the bloodiest war in American history, and it was over something (the right of wealthy plantationeers to own human beings as property) that’s pretty much considered morally indefensible these days. The arguments being put forward by the handful of secessionists these days (and they ARE a handful - there’s no real secession movement in any state, nobody in the state house takes the idea of secession seriously, there isn’t any elected politician of either party in any state who’s pro-secessionist) are similarly quite petty - vague, undefined ramblings about gun control, gay marriage, and so on.

People are filing these petitions on the White House website because they’re peeved that their guy lost the election and now they want to take their ball and go home. It’s little more than the right-wing equivalent of “I’m moving to Canada if Bush wins!” and in another couple years none of these people will want to admit that they ever talked about it.

The states of the United States are arbitrary jurisdictions that are maintained for administrative purposes. They have a certain degree of sovereignty on a legal level—their borders can’t be changed for example very easily, and they are in charge of the law within their borders—as a matter of historical accident and current convenience, but economically, culturally, and socially, they are not separate entities. Other than for particular administrative and legal purposes there’s no reason to consider them separate nation-states with separate cultures and histories that should be free to enter and leave the union at will. The states are not like the members of the European Union.

Furthermore, allowing secession would be to significantly disadvantage the residents of those states who did not want to secede, particularly because ever since the Civil War, proponents of secession tend to be from various kinds of lunatics, authoritarians, racists, reactionaries, and theocrats.

“Self-determination” does not necessarily confer to right to split up any political entity. There’s a lot of problems with secession;

  1. Unopposed secession would inevitably lead to the breakdown of more or less every federal state that allowed it. The instant one state/province/territory wants out, they’ll vote to leave, and then someone else will want out too. The USA had many secessionist movements BEFORE the Civil War, in fact; at one point New England states wanted out.

  2. Secession never ends. Indeed, West Virginia seceded from Virginia because Virginia seceded. If Quebec secedes from Canada, can northern Quebec or west Montreal secede from Quebec? If not, why not? The populations there would be voting against secession, not for it, so why should the line of secession be drawn at the existing border? You’d have a huge, geographically concentrated contingent of people whose rights as Canadian citizens would be lost against their will. Or if you do redraw the border - well, how’d that work out for the Irish counties that voted to stay in the UK?

  3. A sovereign nation cannot work if anyone can opt out when they get pissed off. It just can’t; that’s not how democracy works. Allowing secession every time 50.1% of the population of a region doesn’t like it will make effective governance impossible, because you cannot successfully run a country larger than yourself in a way that makes everyone happy all the time.

Self determination doesn’t mean you get to redraw the map. It means you get to have a say.

I’m not saying there aren’t some situations where a people have a legitimate case for independence, but it’s usually when they DON’T havea say, like the people of South Sudan or the Soviet republics or East Timor, etc. etc. And once in awhile you’ll have a friendly breakup, like the Czechs and Slovaks. But pushing for secession from a country you’re a fair partner in is a recipe for more division and pain, not less.

We had a lengthy and rather unpleasant war over this very idea some years back.

To me, this is the key point. Secession destroys democracy.

Why the lengthy war to stop separation in America? Failed to so start. War to stop Independence in India. Succeed to preventing

I agree. It looks to me if y’all want to avoid another war between the states, years of fighting, thousands dead, the a two state solution is looking to be the best choice in my opinion.

The country has spent well over a decade being polarized, largely for profit, by 24hr news cycles, and lowlife politicians. And I don’t see you turning that train around to be honest.

Does anyone truly believe that the right and the left will ever find compromise or middle ground? You’ve had a respected middle road/compromise guy trying for four plus years. And you’re still having the real work of government held hostage by obstructionists. Does anyone really see a way out? The right will suddenly see reason, accept gay marriage, embrace this century? The left will suddenly agree to give more tax breaks to rich guys and not care about moving backward to a "Christian " government like the founding fathers intended? I’m not seeing it.

Maybe it’s time for America to take some of it’s own medicine. How many countries have they foisted the two part state upon in the name of making peace?

Let the south secede already. They can have their guns, and draconian abortion laws, they can put prayer back in school and nativity scenes back in the town hall, teach creationism instead of science. They can pursue their "everyone prospers when rich, white guys get richer’ strategy, and pour all their money into defence, build a big ass border fence, whatever turns their cranks, without being chastised my others.

Mean while, the north can have gun control, access to abortion and contraception, a continued separation between church and state, tax hikes for the wealthy, drops in defence spending, stick to science, etc, without having to battle over every stupid detail, whether god’s word trumps science.

They could have a government that serves them and vice versa. Everyone would be happier and feel much more optimistic about the future, I think.

Yes, there would be difficulties divvying up the national debt, the armed forces, etc. But, like a divorce, it can be done. And the reason it should be done, though likely to be both ugly and difficult, is that it’s better than a damned war!

They had no problem imposing such on India, Palestine etc. maybe it’s time to take a little of their own medicine? Or at least wake up and smell the coffee to the disgraceful dysfunction that is their political climate.

How can anyone deny that the twice elected current president has given it his very best shot to form some kind of working government? And yet, it remains hopelessly gridlocked and ineffective by the actions of the people who lost the election!

No one questions this mans integrity or the sincerity of his efforts to fix Washington, I believe (beyond pure partisan hacking, of course) Yet in eight years he gets nowhere? What comes next?

I’m just saying, maybe it’s time to consider it, is all.

What? That’s exactly what self-determination means:

Yeah, but that was some years back. Today, it would be a bit different.
Suppose that succession could somehow happen today…do you think anybody in the rest of the USA would volunteer to join the army and go kill a bunch of people in the adjacent state?

When Bush got re-elected, there were (humorous) maps suggested, showing the blue states suceeding from the USA and uniting with Canada. Now, there are (less humorous) suggestions that the red states should succeed.

In some sort of imaginary universe where one of these options actually occurred, it would not lead to a repeat of the Civil War. People in Texas are not going to leave their McDonald’s, put on their national guard uniforms, march to a McDonalds in California and shoot everybody inside.

They may hate the gay culture of San Fransisco. And the Caifornians may hate the redneck culture of Texas. But they all like to eat at McDonalds, and they all like to drive on the same interstate highways to go gamble in Nevada.
If succession ever occurs, it will not lead to a shooting war. It will be more like Quebec’s attempted succession from Canada a few years ago, or the potential split in Belgium between French and Flemish speakers.

The problem is that there aren’t separate “nations” in the United States. To the extent that there are some people who say they want to accede its not because they are seeking self determination for an ethnicity or nation. It’s because they want to be free to oppress the people in their immediate vicinity.

How many?

What do you mean, let? The South doesn’t want to secede.

And the political divide you speak of isn’t a state-level affair, it’s urban vs. rural.

India was partitioned by the United Kingdom.

The areas of Israel and Palestine are the result of wars, not any imposition by the United States.

How is this unique to the U.S.? I assure you, if Normandy tired to secede from France, Paris would respond with more than just a strongly-worded letter. Very few nations in history have willingly relinquished sovereignty; unwillingness to relinquish sovereignty is what makes them nations.

One issue is the different ways the states became members of the Union.

The original 13 colonies, Texas, California and Hawaii were independent nations before joining the US. The 13 colonies joined what they thought was a Union of sovereign states. Texas wanted to be part of the Union as did California although some could argue that California was never really an independent republic. Hawaii was basically conquered through American interests and seized by the government. These 16 states I believe could have legitimate arguments for the right to secede due to the erosion of state sovereignty over the years. We can argue back and forth over Texas v. White but ultimately the question is: is it fair that a sovereign nation can join a union of sovereign states, lose the sovereignty that they were promised and then be told now you have to live with it.

West Virginia is an interesting case in that it was created by a rebellion within a rebellion. The Second Wheeling Convention was certainly not a republican form of government and SCOTUS punted on this giving up to the political pressures of the time. By all rights, WV should have been given back to Virginia after the war.

The other 33 states never had any separate sovereign status as they were always territories of other countries. Letting them unilaterally secede is an issue since basically it would be “stealing” territory from the US that they have no historical right to.

The foremost problem with this solution is its absolute lack of connection to reality. It is not “the South” that wants to secede and return to 1850 with modified theocracy and it is not “the North” that wants to progress into a brave new world of secular humanism and science. That is a portrait so divorced from reality as to be a non-starter.

Instead, there are a number of issues that divide many people scattered across the entire country. The U.S. two-party, winner-take-all political structure tends to lead some folks to believe that “the states” fall into one of two camps, but the reality is much more complex.

Based on the presidential vote of 2012, this series of maps demonstrates the pattern of voting using multiple map images to emphasize different views. Note that the “red” states are hardly limited to the South. Note also, in the maps lower on the page where purple is introduced, the way in which the patterns change. There are only a very few state-wide votes that were truly overwhelming–and those occurred in states with low populations and even lower population density.

Now it is true that a straight up vote on Obama vs Romney only tests a single decision. Certainly, that decision is influenced by many factors that do correspond to social and political trends, but they still come down to a binary decision that forces multiple conflicting views to be shoehorned into a single choice. When we go down your list of issues, we will find that each one has more or less support scattered across the country with general divisions between North and South–but the same issues finding more or less support in the East or West, between urban, suburban, and rural groups, between regions with a high population of European immigrants between 1880 and 1920 or a high population of immigrants from 1975 to today or where the population is dominated by people from other sections of the U.S. with no direct ties to foreign immigration.

The notion of letting “the South” secede has no point other than to emphasize stereotypes.

One, perhaps two, but with other factors included. I would not say that either Korea or Vietnam had a division “foisted” upon them by the U.S., (although the U.S. interference in Vietnam in the 1950s was shameful), but after those two you pretty much end the count. The U.S. had nothing to do with compelling the divisions of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Israel/Palestine, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Sudan/South Sudan, etc.

In both Korea and Vietnam, the American plan was unification with free elections, which were blocked by the Communists:

Division of Korea:

Geneva Conference

It seems to me you have a cartoon view of the political situation in the United States. The political disagreements have nothing to do with states. Allowing states to secede wouldn’t actually solve any problems.

  1. What role did the United States have in the breakup of India?

  2. Have you ever BEEN to the United States? It doesn’t sound like it.

Nor would it result in any secessions.