As it turns out, many people in Texas want to secede to form their own country. I believe, however, that they would never actually try, considering they still want the benefits of being U.S. citezens. But I also acknowledge that Texas would be able to sustain an oil-based economy. With recent dicoveries of oil in Canada and the suggestion of buildiing a huge oil pipeline to Texas, I would suggest to you Texans out their “Wanna secede from the union? The do it after they give you another huge supply of oil!” But I am afraid I am a loyalist to the union. Although any time now would be a good time, considering the fact that a huge fraction of the whole armed forces are overseas at the main focous of all current U.S. military operations. Without further ado, do you believe Texas would ever secede? And would it be succesful? My personal guess is they will never try it, but if they do the odds might be too perfectly in their favor.:eek: Uhh that was a long one, wasn’t it? (The last question does not need to be answered.)
The odds would be in their favor? A small country with no military right in the center of the US?
Yeah, they’ll last.
What I meant was they would survive temporarilly. You have to remember that our army is busy at the momment, and I may be wrong, but with huge oil fields, you would probably be able to sustain an economy. An economy that can be used to fund the military. Although in terms of actuall troop numbers I see where you are going with your argument. But, as I said before, this is your opinion I want, not mine. I was merely trying to re-explain in greater detail my opinion while considering you responding directly to my opinion.
I could almost see the Republic of Texas turning into a 21st-century South Africa, stratified between whites and “coloreds”, in this case mostly Mexican in origin.
Only if we’re lucky.
How many Texans are we talking about here? Because last I checked, those Republic of Texas loons were a decidedly tiny minority. The answer is no. There’s no political will in Texas to separate from the Union. It isn’t 1861 any more.
I agree with you - but just wanted to point out that our governor is a proponent.
Meh, just saturate the place with American flags and dopey patriotic songs if you care about keeping Texas in the union.
Or tell them NASCAR will drop Texas from its circuit.
They’re building a Formula 1 track near Austin. That’s a major step toward leaving the US.
how do you know that at no future time in history the liabilities of being US citizens will outweigh the costs?
I am quite willing to grant that they will try at some point, either as a state secession or as part of a larger effort to carve out another nation in union with other states unhappy with Washington. Whether they would succeed at it is another matter. But even the threat of such action can be a useful form of political pressure, much like the threat of “fool’s checkmate” in chess is a major factor dictating strategy, regardless of the frequency of games ending in this way.
Gad, if only pinguin had gotten the news a day earlier…
There are about 79,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and fewer than 50,000 in Iraq. That’s out of a total of 2,455,837 U.S. military personnel.
In other words, that leaves about 2.3 million troops ready to fight the insurgency. If we believe the nationalist’s claim that 31% of Texans believe the state has the right to secede, that would put the number of possible insurgents at about 7.8 million. So all they have to do is form a militia with 1/3 of them, and they’d have the U.S. military outnumbered.
No, Texas will not separate from the United States as long as the United States exists as a functional state.
Now, could Texas make it as its own country? I posit that essentially any of the fifty states could make it as their own country.
The problem is, the states are so interconnected, and the Federal government plays such a large role even in the fiscal and regulatory life of State governments that in our reality any sort of separation would be devastating for the State in question.
But let’s say that back in 1776-1789 the ultimate ending was that instead of creating a new constitution with a strong central government (well, strong only compared to the previous) we become a very loosely affiliated collection of states. Sort of an 18th century version of a European Union. There are many countries in the world that are smaller than even the smallest American state, and they more or less exist just fine.
Some of the smaller states certainly would be military protectorates of the larger states, but they wouldn’t be any less viable than say, Luxembourg or Iceland.
Except Hispanics are in high places in Texas in politics and business and most of them are fairly educated and well off as opposed to blacks in South Africa.
Hyperbolic rhetoric anyone?
You aren’t considering a shit about any real-life military tactics/strategy/organization etc… The “militia” don’t have tanks, planes, artillery, machine guns, etc., most of them will at best be armed with shotguns and handguns. Plus if the secessionists organize a militia, the US federal government can easily mobilize tens of millions of men for a massive campaign like World war II where America’s army went from being 160,000 or so to well over a million and eight million by the end of the World War II.
Plus at any rate Texas is too well integrated into the US to secede. One reason why the South seceded were economically speaking they were on a different level from the rest of the Union. Texas, on the contrary, is one of the richest states of the Union .
Well, I’m assuming Texas seceding in the first place was triggered by some radical political upheaval that will be taken to extremes once the U.S. Constitution is no longer in play. This could be triggered by a general collapse of the U.S., but it could take the form of whites seeking increasingly harsh controls to preserve their way of life as they perceive it.
Or, in the interest of fairness, the Hispanic-majority that is sure to rise in Texas over the next few decades gets radicalized and decides to set up a race-based system of their own, with Spanish being the sole official language.
In any case, something bad.
Based on that article, no, Perry is not a proponent of secession.
I get so tired of people confusing us with California, or Arizona. Mexico looms large in the Texan character, it’s a major part of who we are.
As for the OP, under such an apocolyptic scenario I could see Texas as forming the core of a new Southwestern nation incorporating parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma and possibly Arkansas, not out of some kind of latter day imperialism but because such landlocked states would have a hard time surviving economically on their own.
You can’t think of any potential setbacks that would prevent you conscripting tens of millions of men and forcing them to kill their fellow Americans?
It doesn’t have to be a civil war scenario. The states could call a new constitutional convention and have power peacefully devolve. Far fetched, of course, but I believe the most plausible scenario under which Texas could be independent again.
Seeing as how Texas has 3 of the top 10 major US cities running out of water (that would be 3 of the top 6, actually), they should probably take pre-emptive action to ensure a water supply prior to secession.