As important to you, perhaps, but not the same as.
Eh? The British Parliament was established in 1707, England had been a quasi-democracy for decades before the Revolution. The colonists’ revolt was the culmination of efforts to change the rules of colonies, but they were unsuccessful in large part due to lack of participation in the process that made those rules.
I’m not saying it was or was not treason; it’s a poor example of the sort of secession the Confederacy engaged in and the thread has discussed: equal states in a federal republic seceding from it.
Will I need a tinfoil hat before I hear your theories?
And so whenever some kind of economic difference – which might be ephemeral – results in some kind of definable cultural difference – which also might be ephemaral – this should serve as a basis for independent statehood?
I would add that drawing national boundaries on a rural/urban basis is not practical for several reasons, one being that the boundaries of rural areas are not static and the other that rural and urban areas are dependent on each other in economic, commercial, social, and other ways.
And did someone mention that support of secessionism is often correlated with other kinds of paranoid tendencies, such as conspiracy theories?
The Colonists knew they were voluntarily conceding their Parliamentary participation by moving to the Colonies, which they largely did for the profit potential of the business end of Colonialism. They simply didn’t foresee the eventual circumstances their children and grandchildren would face.
Participating in a Federal system where the population of voters, political clout, and foreign influence favor one segment of a society over an other can render a large element of the populace effectively disenfranchised. That’s old news. If the South had successfully seceded, the Confederate history books would reflect the blatant political disadvantage that hobbled the Southern States for the benefit of Northern business.
If you think you know the minds of the Trillionaires that own our nations, your hat works better than mine. I simply think we see their will in progress. We think we’re in charge. The rooster thinks he runs the barnyard.
I don’t support nor do I contest the right of secession. The winner is a hero, the loser a villain. If you get away with something, say, like bombing a couple of cities with nuclear weapons, and win the war, you’re the good guy. I don’t write the history.
I fully expect the descendants of the Revolutionaries to decry the same rebel spirit that gave them the right to speak freely on the subject. Like a Twilight Zone episode, the freedom fighter becomes the despot.
No need to make veiled insults. There is no conspiracy when the powerful carry out their plans in full view of all the world.
Eh? My point was that states are not homogenous units of culture, but instead arbitrary geographical boundaries that sometimes do and sometimes do not correspond to culture, economics, and ideology; as this varies with time.
Before I confront this notion more fully, will you concede a difference between seceding from an empire/nation in which you enjoy no democratic representation, and seceding from one in which you do, but are unhappy with the results?
Huge difference between effectively disenfranchised (the candidates I vote for don’t win, other states get representatives too) and actually disenfranchised (I don’t get a vote).
As to political advantages, I would describe the 3/5ths Compromise as a blatant, unfair advantage for the Southern states.
No comment, getting into a strange, unrelated area here.
Any one, in the 1770s or now, could make a case that the Colonists had the opportunity to use diplomacy, foreign intervention, and to cater cooperation from political parties and factions in England to peacefully resolve their issues with George III and the Parliament (and their darned Stamp Act). War is a complex issue. I don’t know that the Colonies would have acted any differently if they had just been out-voted in Parliament while enjoying representation.
When a powerful Military-Industrial force offers you a vote, and then does whatever they want anyway (Bush v Gore, 2000), you may not feel any better about the outcome.
I don’t agree. While there are certain “cultural” issues like guns, the main driver of today’s urban/rural divide is the delivery and/or relevance of different social services. That’s why it plays so nicely into economic narratives about (from the right) takers vs givers, (from the left) inter-regional transfer of tax dollars, (from both) the efficiency of public vs private institutions.
I think you have it exactly backwards. Whereas urban/rural used to carry strong cultural connotations (c.f. pretty much any Frank Capra movie), now it’s much more about elbowing about in the public trough (“your mass transit is socialism, but my agricultural subsidies are a sacred gift from God”)
They did use diplomacy, remember the Olive Branch petition that George III refused to read? Diplomacy becomes much harder when one side refuses the other’s right to engage in diplomacy on their own behalf.
That is indeed a complex question, but rather irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Yeah, still avoiding this tangent into shadowy forces.
Ah, but’s it’s not just guns. Take same-sex marriage, for instance. It has no economic import, and is not part of a giver/taker narrative. Yet, we see that same urban/rural split at work, whether in North Carolina or Maine.
I’m not saying there are no economic differences or competing interests between rural and urban America, just that the cultural ones are more pronounced and powerful.
The economic split between the rural and the urban used to be far stronger. Issues like free coinage of silver, tariffs, and opposition to banks and railroads were predicated on a rural/urban split. With the decline of agriculture as an economic force, this trend has abated sharply. Check out the Omaha Platform, THAT’S what it means to have economic differences between the rural and the urban.
Except that they usually get what actually happened wrong. What they claim, didn’t really happen. Cite.
Florence King ain’t all that good, as a spokesperson, nor as a commentator on Americans, or American Conservatives, as she claims. She is, nevertheless, amusing, which is her only claim to fame. I enjoy what she writes, but I don’t take it seriously.
She speaks for me, as a conservative, with about the same authority that Misha or Katie speak for all cats. Or I speak for them, as a member of our household.
Katie sniffed my hair-care products, this evening. I really don’t take her opinion into account. I give Misha much more leeway, but that really doesn’t amount to much. Florence King is given much less consideration.
Parties throughout history have used cultural wedge issues in order to push their economic program through. See the early Republican rebranding on the slavery issue in order to force through a Whig economic platform.
A quibble (and likely a bit of a pedantic one at that).
Isn’t it true that I actually could vote away your right to free speech, due process, and citizenship? That is, so long as my vote was part of a legal election of a Congress and various State Legislatures that duly fulfilled the requirements in the Constitution to create one or several Constitutional amendment(s) that:
Removed your free speech rights
Removed your due process rights
Caused your state to be booted out of the Union
Required you to wear a pink clown suit at all times
What I’m asking is: isn’t there a legal and proper Constitutional process whereby all of those rights you mentioned could be taken away from you? (Ignoring, for the sake of argument, that that would ever actually happen).
Also true. I was responding to the idea that democratic principles required allowing a state to secede if a majority of its citizens wished to. My point was that a simple majority vote is insufficient to make such major changes to our structure of government, because the framers of the Constitution were wish enough to put the process you refer to in place. I should have emphasized the “majority” part, though, I can see how that was unclear.
Just for thoroughness, to point #3, Afroyim v. Risk and Vance v. Terrazas prevent natural-born or naturalized citizens from being stripped of their citizenship, though of course changes to the Constitution could alter that as well.
You should have, because I never got the sense that you were distinguishing between 51% vs 67% vs any other number as a critical line beyond which secession would be acceptable. I thought you were saying a logically indissoluble union with NO right of secession is not only preferential but a sin qua non of democratic government.
I object to there being no escape. I am fine with making the requirement for escape difficult to achieve, as long as it is achievable. If 98% of the people of Hawaii want to become an independent nation, I do not see the wisdom or the ethics in stopping them.
Oh, my reply to I Love Me, Vol. 1 was in regard to my statment that:
Meaning that, as structured, such changes require far more than a simple majority, and with good cause. Point was, we already accept that a simple majority is not the be-all, end-all yardstick of democracy, and with changes to the Constitution, anything can be made legal or illegal.
With regard to secession specifically, I affirm that it is never morally acceptable to secede from a democracy, unless:
The nation was the creation of outside actors, meaning popular sovereignty never existed. Example: a state formed by an empire for administrative purposes; or
The nation was created on the basis of ethnic identities that are the primary identities of the people of the nation, and this is the basis for the secession; or
There has been a complete breakdown of democracy into tyranny, and peaceful means of change do not exist.
I acknowledge, as above, that it could be legally acceptable in the U.S. with an amendment to the Constitution.
Yeah, I need to exercise more discipline in these cases.
