Texas secede? (Houston: transit, money, build)

[Jrsgun]

We need to gain back our state sovereignty along with the other states and do away with this Federal Government Machine which has gotten entirely out of hand.

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[Jrsgun]

Texas needs to keep this along with freedom.

liberty - the freedom to conduct the affairs of one’s person and property without external (particularly government) limitation, so long as another’s person or property is not infringed or harmed. While comprising a specific manifestation of combined political, civil, and personal freedom, “liberty” should not be confused or interchanged with the general term “freedom.”

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[Jrsgun]

When blogging about such a controversial subject as secession, one should expect some negative comments, but frankly, we've been stunned (and saddened) at the "quality" (for lack of a better term) of the negative feedback we've recently received.

Almost every critical comment to date has been peppered with profanity, as if there were a concerted effort to affirm that the graces of civility and common courtesy were a thing of the past among Yankees, also guaranteeing that their venomous epithets wouldn't see print in a public forum such as this.

It would seem that the profanity was furthermore used as a substitute for knowledge, reason, critical thinking skills, and common sense — all of which were sadly absent from nearly every criticism.

Yankee aversion to inconvenient truth is made manifest by many (irrelevant) suggestions to the effect that former president Bush were a product of Texas, and supposedly beloved by all Texans, when in fact he was Yankee born (Connecticut) and Yankee "educated" (Massachusetts, Connecticut), and his overall popularity in Texas is no greater than it is elsewhere.

Many critics mocked that Texas couldn't survive loosing the federal funding the state currently receives, exposing their ignorance of the fact that Texas currently pays more in federal taxes than it receives in federal funding. My dog could apparently "do the math" better than a Yankee: Severing the relationship would be a fiscal advantage to Texas, not a hardship.

Others offered smarmy taunts like "haven't you ****s heard of the Civil War?" — demonstrating a clear lack of reading skills and/or adequate education (thanks, we suppose, to their federally funded Yankee "public education"). These and other bitter and hostile comments clearly exposed a predisposition to violence as the Yankee's first choice in resolving differences.

It apparently doesn't occur to these foul-mouthed statists that civil and peaceable separation is possible. Rare perhaps, but possible nevertheless. The first Southern secession of 1861 was originally undertaken in hope that a civil and amicable separation could be achieved. But Lincoln and the War Party were determined at the barrel of a gun to make "taxation without representation" a way of life, not a motivation for seeking independence, in America.

Little further evidence is needed that Lincoln's ambition has been achieved. Many Americans (especially Yankees, apparently) are well conditioned to swallow the myth that "national unity" (no matter what it costs in constitutionally protected liberty and freedom from coercive federal meddling) is important enough to defend with profanity and the threat of violence.

To say we're disappointed would be an understatement. Our Yankee critics have (perhaps unwittingly) betrayed themselves as historically and economically ignorant big-government war-mongers. The prospect of a free and independent Texas has not been tarnished or eroded nearly so much as the benefit of the doubt heretofore given to Yankee intellect, civility, and common sense.

History is replete with examples of the tragic, destructive consequences of such attitudes.


posted by Mr. Impractical at 8:09 PM 4 Comments

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[Jrsgun]

Ron Paul on Secession


From US Congressman Ron Paul (14th District, Texas):

"Last week the governor of Texas ignited a media firestorm for his remarks involving the idea of secession. He did not call for Texas to secede from the United States. He merely pointed out that the federal government was treading heavily on the sovereignty of the states and that this can not continue indefinitely without a breaking point.

"The reaction to Governor Perry’s statements has been nothing short of hysterical. He has been called treasonous for making this obvious point and opening up a discussion. I am not calling for secession either, however there is nothing wrong with a healthy and open discussion of this issue.

"America was born from an act of secession. When King George’s rule trampled on the rights of the colonies, we successfully seceded from England. It took a war, but we were well within our rights. We applauded when former soviet states seceded from the USSR and declared their sovereignty. And hopefully the United States will eventually secede from the United Nations. We pay most of the bills of the UN, yet do not have the commensurate votes, so someday we will wake up and realize that membership, for these and other reasons, does not serve our interests.

"On a personal level, contracts you enter into can be terminated if one side unilaterally changes the terms. If a credit card company jacks up your interest rate, you have every right to fulfill your obligations and close the account. Imagine if you were forced to stay with a credit card company forever no matter what just because you previously signed up! The principle of self-determination applies to political unions as well. In the cases I mentioned above, governing organizations transformed into much more overbearing entities than originally agreed upon. Several state constitutions originally had clauses explicitly allowing them to opt out of the Union down the road if they so chose. I doubt our country would have ever come together if this were not the case. Just because the north successfully kept the union together by force with the Civil War does not mean that enslaving the states is a legitimate alternative.

"Secession is the last resort of states whose sovereignty is over-ridden by an overreaching federal government. The federal government has only itself to blame for this talk. Recently, some states have enacted laws allowing for the medicinal use of marijuana, yet these laws are basically voided by the continuing raids by the DEA, sanctioned by the administration. The federal government is also strong-arming states with stimulus money, forcing them to expand programs they know they will not be able to afford in the future, at a time when many states’ budgets are already in the red. This is not a new problem. No Child Left Behind burdened the states’ education systems and forced them through many hoops designed by federal bureaucrats in distant Washington DC rather than allowing communities to tailor education to their children’s unique needs. There are numerous other examples of the erosion of state sovereignty and many governors are frustrated, not just ours in Texas. Without the right to secede, state’s rights are meaningless.

"A republican form of government should also be as close to the people as possible, which means the decisions of local governing bodies must be respected. Where the decisions of local governments are disregarded, the voice of the people is also disregarded. The more that happens, the more frustrated and angry the people will become." — Ron Paul 04-27-2009

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[Jrsgun]

THE TRUTH ABOUT SECESSION

1) Did Lincoln receive the votes of the "vast majority" of Americans in 1860?

No, he received just under 40%. The remaining 60+% went to the other three candidates: Breckinridge (18%), Bell (12%), and Douglas (30%). Forty percent is not a "majority" of the available votes at all, let alone a "vast majority." Lincoln won because he received more votes than any other candidate, not because the "vast majority" of Americans voted for him.

2) Did Lincoln's election having anything to do with slavery?

No. He did not campaign against slavery. In fact, he was on record as having an opinion of Negro slaves as inferior folk who should be removed to another continent, and when pressed to the point, he explicitly stated that he had no intention of interfering with slavery in the South. The above authors have plainly and thoroughly documented all of this from the historical record. No one has rebutted the evidence they have published, because no rebuttal is possible—the historical facts speak for themselves, and expose the anti-slavery myth for the popularized lie that it is (at least for those unwilling to substitute opinion or myth for an objective examination the historical facts).

3) Is there legal or historical evidence that Americans' "right to be free" somehow trumps, negates, or nullifies the right of a state to secede (i.e., to voluntarily withdraw from its voluntary relationship to the Union)?

No. No such provision is found in either the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, the two documents articulating the laws and principles which comprise the foundation of the American republic. Nor is there a logical foundation for such a claim: A secession being an act undertaken by a state on behalf of the will of its people (presumably in the interest of their right to self-determination), it is a logical fallacy to assert that such an act may somehow be justifiably nullified by some alleged claim to "freedom" by the sum of the people not represented by that state, since the freedom of those outside the state is not substantially affected, threatened, or questioned by either the will of the people or the state acting on behalf of that will in executing the act of secession.

4) Was slavery the cause of the so-called "Civil War"?

No. The above authors (and many others) have demonstrated from the historical record that, although slavery in America existed as a highly controversial issue, both morally and politically, Lincoln's presidency was not founded on a resolve to end slavery, nor was the South's secession primarily motivated by a fear of any such resolve on Lincoln's part.

Instead, Southern secession was motivated primarily by what had become a long-brewing imbalance between Northern control of Washington power via higher population (and therefore voter) concentrations in the North, which, in turn, rendered Southern productivity and property subject to the whims (and taxes) of Northern industrialists. Southerners had grown weary after many years of Northern domination, in which their freedom to buy and sell was being controlled and manipulated through Congress by dominant Northerners. Lincoln had promised more of the same, so his election became the last straw for a great many Southerners.

To be sure, there were both Southerners and Northerners who wanted to end slavery, and there were both Southerners and Northerners who felt it was nobody's business to interfere with slavery. Many scholars agree that American slavery was destined to end soon in any case, and war was certainly unnecessary for that achievement: Slavery was abolished without armed conflict in most other Western nations around the same time as Lincoln's war on the South, bringing further into question the popularized myth that a bloody conflict was necessary.

During the 19th century, slavery was abolished (without war) in Argentina (1813), Colombia (1814), Chile (1823), Central America (1824), Mexico (1829), Bolivia (1831), British colonies (1840), Uruguay (1842), French colonies (1848), Danish colonies (1848), Ecuador (1851), Peru (1854), Venezuela (1854), Dutch colonies (1863), Puerto Rico (1873), Brazil (1878) and Cuba (1886). The notion that a nation-wide war was necessary for the same purpose in America is based purely on popularized, arbitrary opinion—not the facts of the historical record.

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[Jrsgun]

HAPPY SECESSION DAY! Perhaps the best evidence of how American history was rewritten, Soviet style, in the post-1865 era is the fact that most Americans seem to be unaware that "Independence Day" was originally intended to be a celebration of the colonists’ secession from the British empire. Indeed, the word secession is not even a part of the vocabulary of most Americans, who more often than not confuse it with "succession." The Revolutionary War was America’s first war of secession.
America’s most prominent secessionist, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, was very clear about what he was saying: Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever that consent is withdrawn, it is the right of the people to "alter or abolish" that government and "to institute a new government." The word "secession" was not a part of the American language at that time, so Jefferson used the word "separation" instead to describe the intentions of the American colonial secessionists.
The Declaration is also a states’ rights document (not surprisingly, since Jefferson was the intellectual inspiration for the American states’ rights political tradition). This, too, is foreign to most Americans. But read the final paragraph of the Declaration which states:

That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other things which independent states may of right do (emphasis in original).

Each colony was considered to be a free and independent state, or nation, in and of itself. There was no such thing as "the United States of America" in the minds of the founders. The independent colonies were simply united for a particular cause: seceding from the British empire. Each individual state was assumed to possess all the rights that any state possesses, even to wage war and conclude peace. Indeed, when King George III finally signed a peace treaty he signed it with all the individual American states, named one by one, and not something called "The United States of America." The "United States" as a consolidated, monopolistic government is a fiction invented by Lincoln and instituted as a matter of policy at gunpoint and at the expense of some 600,000 American lives during 1861–1865.
Jefferson defended the right of secession in his first inaugural address by declaring, "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it." (In sharp contrast, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln promised an "invasion" with massive "bloodshed" (his words) of any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled federal tariff rate by seceding from the union).
Jefferson made numerous statements in defense of the defining principal of the American Revolution: the right of secession. In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph Priestly he wrote:

Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation [i.e., secession] at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.

In an August 12, 1803 letter to John C. Breckinridge Jefferson addressed the same issue, in light of the New England Federalists’ secession movement in response to his Louisiana Purchase. If there were a "separation" into two confederacies, he wrote, "God bless them both, & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better."
So on July 4 stoke up the grill, enjoy your barbecue, and drink a toast to Mr. Jefferson and his fellow secessionists. (And beware of any Straussian nonsense about how it was really Lincoln, the greatest enemy of states’ rights, including the right of secession, who taught us to "revere" the Declaration of Independence. Nothing could be further from the truth.)


ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[awecelot]

Originally Posted by Jrsgun

Lincoln won because he received more votes than any other candidate, not because the "vast majority" of Americans voted for him.

No, Lincoln won because he received the required majority of votes in the Electoral College.

[SA747]

Support Obama!!

[Jrsgun]

) Did Lincoln receive the votes of the "vast majority" of Americans in 1860?

No, he received just under 40%. The remaining 60+% went to the other three candidates: Breckinridge (18%), Bell (12%), and Douglas (30%). Forty percent is not a "majority" of the available votes at all, let alone a "vast majority." Lincoln won because he received more votes than any other candidate, not because the "vast majority" of Americans voted for him.

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

[awecelot]

Originally Posted by Jrsgun

) Did Lincoln receive the votes of the "vast majority" of Americans in 1860?

No, he received just under 40%. The remaining 60+% went to the other three candidates: Breckinridge (18%), Bell (12%), and Douglas (30%). Forty percent is not a "majority" of the available votes at all, let alone a "vast majority." Lincoln won because he received more votes than any other candidate, not because the "vast majority" of Americans voted for him.

ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES & LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
GOD BLESS TEXAS & THE MILITARY

Keep on telling yourself that. Fact is, presidential elections are decided by the electoral college. In 1860, it would have taken 152 electoral votes to gain the presidency. Lincoln captured 180 electoral votes. The other three candidates combined captured 123 electoral votes.