(1) Yeah, I think elbows needs to take the matter of India/Pakistan up with Capt. Ridley. The Brits just love their partitions…
(2) Really. As has been pointed out in this thread & the last hundred on the topic, the division is urban versus rural. Battleground Texas is a new effort to retake our state from the forces of repression; it will happen with changing demographics but we get tired of waiting.
Besides, the secession forces in Texas are a tiny, tiny nutcase minority. Even Governor Ricky mentioned secession only when Kay Bailey Hutchison (The Last Sane Texas Republican) considering becoming governor; he was posturing to his base & changed his tune in time for that abortive try at the Presidency…
Allowing states to just go their own way also ignores a monetary reality. For instance, I live in Ohio. If Texas leaves the Union, then I expect Texas to pay reparations for all of the Federal benefits, ie infrastructure and military, Texas has received from the Union. I’m not just going to allow Texas to take the Johnson Space Center and the Corpus Christi Naval Base for free.
And the 40% of the people in the south who find this loathsome, who are citizens of the US, who voted for the current president, whose right to citizenship is this country is their most basic right, who the government has obligation to defend - we would throw them to those wolves why?
Sounds exactly how the US was formed in the first place, no?
I think the answer of “because of the Civil War” misses the point. If states were allowed to seceded, there would be need for such a war. But the process would have be defined and inserted into the Constitution.
Why? If Scotland votes to secede then they’ll be granted independence. Nobody seriously doubts otherwise. Similarly, the whole of Europe collectively laughed when some Spanish general threatened to march into Catalonia should they vote to secede. Secessionist parties have spent the best part of the last decade in coalition government in Italy. Slovakia and the Czech Republic parted ways quite peacefully twenty years ago.
Those regions are fundamentally different from U.S. states. They are actually ethnic groups or nations. There are zero ethnic groups or nations seeking to secede from the United States. To the extent that there are any groups seeking secession, they are groups of individual radical conservatives with no nationality to speak of other than “American” and with no correlation to state boundaries.
I really have no idea what position you are arguing for.
The right of nations to seek self-determination, as brought up in this thread, is a right of “nations,” which is an explicitly ethnic term. A group of people who happen to sign on to a particular political platform is not a nation. A nation is a group of people with a common cultural background, history, and ancestry (that is, ethnicity), and (probably) some history – even if distant – of some kind of independent statehood.
One of the ideas this country was founded on is democracy. Allowing any partisan faction to simply opt out of a democratic state in order to avoid the consequences of democratic decision-making would fundamentally undermine democracy.
Secession requires not only a body of people who want to secede, but also some kind of defined territory that such people lay a claim to. Anyone who thinks that the political disagreements in the United States are aligned with state borders fundamentally misunderstands the political situation in the United States.
Economically and politically, allowing secession would be a disaster to everyone.
As has been stated before, no “state” actually wants to secede.
It’s not that only ethnic groups seek to be independent nations, it’s that only those with an identity that supersedes their national affiliation do. That needn’t be a matter of ethnicity, it could be religion, culture, ideology, anything discrete.
Exactly, Scots have an identity as Scots that, for some, trumps their identity as Brits.
This is not the case for Americans, not anymore, or at least for more than a tiny minority. Hence, no secession in the foreseeable future.
Exactly. We strip people of their U.S. citizenship for treason. Why should I be involuntarily stripped of mine for nothing I’ve done and no view that I hold?
Of course, we did have such fairly well defined bodies of people with explicit borders before the Civil War. But that was also before any nation thought “self-determination” was any kind of excuse.
Is this the part of the concept that engenders the hostility? I understand the dismissiveness when it comes to this subject but I’ve never understood the anger it generated in its opponents. It seems like an interesting idea to banter around.
Well, tell you what. Once a State has 51% of it’s citizens ask to leave then Congress should consider it. But I am not sure if any State even has 1% so far, certainly not 10%.
So, no State wants to leave the Union, just a few nuts.
I can’t speak for others, but the offensive part of the concept to me is that it’s contemptuous of democracy. Part of democracy is abiding by laws you don’t like passed by a government you don’t like. Sometimes you’ll be in favor of the current elected officials, sometimes not. Part of your duty as a citizen is to suck it up when you don’t feel represented, so long as the representation is fair and Constitutional.
Quitting the whole process when you don’t get your way means that democracy cannot work, the body politic will just continue to splinter and fragment once secession is a legitimate alternative to real political action.
And then what if Chelsea, Kensington, Belgravia, and Knightsbridge wanted to secede from both? Or, rather, 51 percent of the population therein wanted to?
I don’t see how it’s any different. Of course, London would never leave as suddenly all those national chains and businesses with their HQs in London, generating massive tax receipts that Londoners like to pretend are their own, would suddenly need to find a new city within the rUK to report their profits in
What of it? People keep asking this question. Am I supposed to be enraged at the thought? I certainly think it would be a stupid move, what with there seemingly being a minimum size for a state to make a go of it alone, but it really doesn’t engender the sort of anger that it seems to in many Americans. I certainly don’t think it’s treasonous to broach the subject, or even petition government for it. If a majority want it, what’s the point in resisting it? You claim it undermines democracy — so does civil discontent if a majority of people want to leave but are prevented from doing so!
