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Liberal States can’t secede from the Union, we’re just stuck with them

I would love to see Lex Luthor’s plan for Arizona waterfront property come to complete fruitation (à la Superman: the movie) as much as the next person. 

NY, Washington, and Oregon leaving would also be great in terms of having less Progressive anti-liberty policies in the great halls of Congress.

Unfortunately, we are stuck with them in the Union, and we have to try to work with them as a permanent thorn in our side. No State, or group of States could force them out, nor can they leave. 

I think it’s time to start considering the possibility that this insanity is here to stay, and like a brain-touched sibling, we have to figure out how to deal with them. 

11 replies on “Liberal States can’t secede from the Union, we’re just stuck with them”

My reading of the Constitution (Article 4; Section 4) says we are stuck with them as well: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them …against domestic Violence.” At some point this probably applies even when they don’t want that “protection”. And pragmatically, each state still has a mix of R’s and D’s, with a lot of purple in between, so achieving any separation without mass migration of each to the other and the potential for crime, fraud, and violence, makes the real secession pretty difficult to achieve (compare the 1947 partition of India between Hindus and Muslims? Turkey and Greece – I forget when? Serbia and Kosovo? Several others? The moves into and out of Israel in 1948 were pretty peaceful by comparison).

So we have to get off our duffs and figure out how to reverse the Gramscian march through the institutions that started 90 (to 120?) years ago. This essay from Law and Liberty blog suggests things are pretty well along in the Progressives/ Fascists favor, and is short on solutions, but may still interest a few of you: https://lawliberty.org/the-revolution-is-upon-us/ . We probably have over a dozen think tanks and similar resources for intellectual ammunition in this struggle (beyond BWDC of course), but what we need are the political leaders and “statesmen” who can sell our message rhetorically, plus the business leaders who can manage to take over parts of the MSM or create conservatively oriented/ neutral reporting organization. Cruz, Lee, Gingrich, Grody, Cotton, and many others make good responses much of the time but none of them have reached orbital velocity in the media the way Trump does. We need more Trump-like candid messages but without the narcissistic three year old. Still, you go to war with the Army you have …

Article 4 guarantees a Republican form of government, but how can you do that if a state wants to reformulate itself as a Monarchy? Can the Federal forces interpose and coerce a state to return to a Republic? That’s food for thought.
I agree that ultimately we need to get off our duffs and look more seriously on what we can do to help our colleagues, than to hold out hope that they will take the Eric Cartman approach and say “screw you guys, I’m going home”

It is ultimately ballots or bullets. It is live and let live or force your neighbor to live as you wish. The difference is real. It IS a life and death issue. Our time of choosing is upon us.

Once, there was no question which side would be chosen. Now, it is not so clear. It makes me sad beyond measure that death is the path that far too many of our fellow citizens have chosen.

I pray that this conflict can end without bloodshed. However all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. (I read that somewhere… I dunno where; probably the back of a Crackerjack Box)
But the wisdom of the Framers was such that they knew that when power wants to grow out of the barrel of a gun, it helps to have a barrel of your own to keep those that want power at bay. The 2nd protects the 1st. This is a fairly unique circumstance in history (Sparta believed also), and never has the populace been so well armed against the forces of Tyranny. Let’s hope that the souls who are willing to fight are not in ultimately lost in vain.

“ Unfortunately, we are stuck with them in the Union”

Why? Just speaking for me, I’m not willing to murder a single person, much less the million from the last Civil War to force a state to remain in a union it doesn’t want to. Even if there were some legal requirement they not secede (and there isn’t the War if Secession was not settled in the courts, all that was decided was that if a state wants to secede it has to be able to kill everyone who is willing to die to keep them in… are you willing to die to subjugate Oregon?) in the constitution that means nothing at all. The constitution says I have freedom of association, but we haven’t had that right since I’ve been born. It says my right to own arms must be unabridged. It has been abridged all my life. It says nothing about the right to privacy. We have no rights to privacy on any topic except where it would stop a woman from murdering her unborn child. The laws are ink on paper. They mean nothing unless rough men are ready to kill to enforce them. So tell me why states can’t leave the union.

I more or less agree with you about secession. (I don’t agree about “ink on paper.”) I think that no state trying to secede today would face a civil war, because I don’t think that any party, politician, office holder, or citizen would consider it worth fighting a war over. I sometimes think that breaking up the country is the only way to save it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the coastal states or the central states that start it. We will either end up with 50 sovereign states, or two or three, or half a dozen. I can think of several ways it could be made to work, with the possibility of eventually forming an even stronger union than we have now, but confined into something more like the box it came in, to borrow Bill’s phrase. But I think we will have to go through some evolution to get back to that.

I can tell you that the State of Texas has started to repatriate its gold bullion from New York.

I often agree and think that this federation needs to break up and reform as several nation-states, or groups thereof. The South, New England, Midwest, Rockies, Californistan and its friends as some mini-confederations. And maybe have a small Federal government as an American Alliance between the confederacies.
I wish it were possible, but the last time a State tried to peaceably secede, it resulted in bloodshed and nearly 600,000 lives were lost to settle the point that States had no power to secede.

The States cannot leave because the several States are inseparable from the Union. They You can’t granulate the Union. The States themselves have never existed outside of the Union. They are products OF the Union. They have never existed or declared in any condition where they were free sovereign, and independent States.
From the Declaration of Independence, the Union of States was formed, and the bonds of an indissoluble Union were forever forged. Never have the States acted in their own Will and Accord without the others.
The Articles of Confederation and subsequent Constitution for the United States were merely a codification of the rules which establish and distribute the position of States vs US’s powers.
No State has ever seceded from the Union since it’s founding, and no State ever can. That power was never granted to the States.

As a Texan, I’m surprised to learn that Texas did not exist as a free, sovereign, Independent state prior to joining the United States. I’m sure there are several others that would be surprised too. Virginia, for example celebrated its quadracentinial back in 2007, and its general assembly has been operating continuously since 1619, making it the oldest legislative body in America.

As for power of secession granted to the states… for 49 of them it is clearly granted in the 10th amendment. For Texas, it was explicitly clarified by treaty (the same treaty still in use every day as Texas flies its state flag at the same level as the Stars and Stripes, the only state where it is proper to do so).

But as I said above, what man has done, man can undo. And forever is a long time. If the Kingdom to come doesn’t get here for another 10000 years, do you imagine the U.S. will still exist and have all it’s current states as members? There may still be someone with a title of president of the United States (or perhaps Trump of the United States) as there was still a Roman Emperor when the United States was founded (but of course he didn’t rule in Rome) and Cyrus had the title King of Sumer and Akkad a millennia after the Sumerian and Akkadian cities had been swallowed by the desert sands… but I don’t expect that person would actually preside over anything we’d recognize or feel allegiance to. The works of man just don’t last that long, especially polities.

Interesting about Texas, I knew they had a unique treaty status, but do not know the details. As a South Carolinian, I was surprised to learn that my State declared independence in March 1776, three months before the United Colonies (then-on called States).
Where in the 10th Amendment is the privilege of secession granted? The Constitution only talks about how States can join (Art IV. Sec. 3) but nothing states that a State can leave, so they cannot.
As man does, man can undo. Yep, usually that is due to the harsh annals of time, conflagration or inundation. Or rioting. Nothing lasts forever.

“I’m not willing to murder a single person, much less the million from the last Civil War to force a state to remain in a union it doesn’t want to.”

If only it were that simple … It’s not because no state is an homogeneous chunk of like thinking people with identical goals. Let me put this on the other foot for you for a minute.

What about all your Conservative brothers and sisters who make their home, their livelihood and who have their roots and their families in a state that secedes? Aren’t they Americans with the same right to all the privileges and responsibilities as the rest of us?

Look at any Red/Blue county map from the last election. Like this one …

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countymaprb1024.png

See all that Red in those states that cast Blue electoral votes? Do you realize that every right thinking American in those “Blue States” has been struggling against the political and moral rot of leftist policies in the megalopolis cities — Is and feels about policy matters just like you?

What do you think will happen to those people when the leftist demagogue leadership in a secession state realizes conservatives have most of the money and land area that is in private hands? — When they catch on to the fact that those conservatives are responsible for most of the production of things needed for daily survival, like food? When by then they will have demonized conservatism to the point where lynch mobs are considered justified? Do you think the left is just going to let them go?

Read up on what happened to the Kulaks during the Russian revolution. That is what you’re condemning your fellow Americans to. Allowing something like that to happen makes a person just as responsible as if they’d pulled the trigger themselves personally.

If you’re thinking “Well those people can just leave, they should have moved when they had the chance”, then how would you like it if you were one of those decent, peaceful, law abiding, God Fearing, Constitution supporting, proud American people in one of those states? Wouldn’t you believe that not only has the Nation you love abandoned you but so has everyone who ever paid lip service to America — If conservatives in other states turn their backs on you? Even if they should have or could have moved, that’s tens of millions of refugees on the North American continent. Have you ever seen refugees? Are you willing to make your fellow American Conservatives into refugees?

Do you seriously think that once secession is accomplished, it will end there? That those states controlled by those people will be satisfied with a status quo thereafter? Right now Texas is becoming more purple than is comfortable as the urbanites of Blue states flee the consequences of their busted policies for more fertile economic ground — Bringing those same attitudes and politics with them. They do the same and more so if the state they live in secedes and collapses as it must? Ever hear of the Domino Theory?

Do you know how much wealth is in and contributed to national interests like the common defense by any given secessionist state?

No my friend, and I really am your friend, I’m not slagging on you. It’s not that secession would lead to peace, it would lead to war even IF we refuse “to murder a single person, much less the million from the last Civil War to force a state to remain in a union it doesn’t want to.” Secession is just another brick ripped from the foundation of the American Republic and war will be upon you whether you’d have it or not. To quote John Donne, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”. It would be best for all if you try to understand why that is so.

I’m not advocating for Civil War btw. I’ve seen a civil war up close and personal as I was in Southern Lebanon in ’81 – ’83. I do not wish to see that kind of horror in the United States and the only thing I can imagine worse than that is no United States at all. If we allow secession of states with fellow Americans living in them, people who greatly desire to remain Americans, then the United States will fall, sooner rather than later. Our political enemies will be as happy to take The Republic apart piece by piece as they would to see it collapse all at once. They’re already well versed in and accustomed to that tactic, they’ve been pursuing it for centuries, since the Founding.

While I’m not advocating for civil war, I’m not altogether ruling it out either. Things have gone from bad to worse and I understand your frustration. I think there’s much about the current state of affairs that badly needs to be rectified just as you seem to think too. But …

There are lines once crossed that cannot be uncrossed again and we can always hope for a resurgence of something where laws aren’t just “ink on paper”. I think we’re seeing some of that right now, though I won’t hazard a guess on the depth and duration of it. If you want the bad things to get worse, then let America fall and see what’s left when the dust settles. Just because you don’t have everything you were promised doesn’t mean it’s wise to throw away what you do have and I’m not talking about personal geegaws. Don’t let good be the enemy of perfect because you don’t know who’s going to come out on top if America falls. If you turn your back on other Americans, it will fall eventually. There’s less hope of that getting you what you want if that happens than if it doesn’t

We might no longer have the strict adherence to originalism that once existed and I’m making no excuses for that. I think we need to move back towards that too. We still live better and have a political system more responsive to the will of The People than 99.99999% of human beings that ever lived in human history. Perspective is important. My suggestion is that it’s better to improve on very good and strive for perfect than it is to demand perfect or burn it all down for falling short of the ideal. .

If you live in a Red state, count your blessings not your chickens before they hatch. If leftist militarism succeeds in America one of the biggest milestones will be the successful secession of various states. At that point, the days of your Red state are numbered. What will be your position when your state goes Blue and votes for secession? Not willing to take up arms even then? Are the people in seceded states less American than you until your state votes Blue and secedes too?

One way or another, many will die if that sort of thing is allowed to happen. It’s not “murder” if the war is just. I can’t think of anything more just than keeping the Republic intact with liberty and justice for all.

I would not “die for Oregon” but I have and would again put my life on the line to preserve and defend the Great Republic of the United States of America and her citizens, no matter what state they live in. I took an oath to that effect and it means a great deal to me.

I’m not originally from there but I lived in the Soviet Socialist Republik of Kalifornia for a long time. I managed to conglomerate the resources and circumstances to get the heck out of there. Few things ever made me feel as good as looking at California in the rear view mirror for the last time but … Bill Whittle has chosen to stay and fight. I’m on Bill’s side. I think he should get the heck out of there too but it’s his choice not to leave and that doesn’t make him any less a real American.

Like I said, I’m not trying to slag on you at all. From what you said I’m wondering if you’ve considered all this too. Because these things are important and they are part and parcel of what makes America great.

I have a lot more I can say on this topic but I think I’ve gotten my points across as far as I’ve gone. I’m not trying to offer solutions in what I’ve written here, I’m simply pointing out the catastrophic results of allowing secession and how “not wanting to ‘murder’ etc.” is a mistake that leads to actual murder of innocents. I’d be happy to civilly, politely discuss this with anyone who is interested.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

-Pastor Martin Niemoller

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