Governor Perry caused a stink lately when he said Texas could secede from the United States and go it alone once again. If one studies what he specifically said one will see that he wasn't advocating secession but only listing it as an option for independent-minded Texans who are feeling a bit put-upon by the Federal government. It was the equivalent of a socialworker advising a battered women that she could get a divorce from her abusive husband as a way to protect her from further beatings.
Now some are calling his remarks "anti-American" but I think these folks need to have another look at American history. There wouldn't even be a United States if the colonies had not seceded from the British Empire. Later all the States united under the Articles of Confederation seceded from that contract to form the United States under the Constitution. Our beloved Texas wouldn't even exist if it hadn't seceded from Mexico.
The States have been threatening secession since the very beginning when they saw the Federal government overstepping its bounds as laid out in the Constitution. That hotbed of Yankee rebellion, Massachusetts, was one of the first States to threaten to secede during the Jefferson administration and may have actually done so based on one's interpretations of that State's actions during that part of our history.
Lincoln's War on the South did nothing to settle the issue except to prove that larger armies can beat smaller armies, especially when the large army uses genocidal tactics against civilian populations that (might) support the smaller army.
Secession has always been the American way of dealing with despots and tyrants and threatening secession has often been used to bring potential dictators back into line before they became too big for their taxpayer-supplied britches. There is nothing "anti-American" about it.
The sound of a Diamondback shaking its rattle is meaningless unless the one who hears it understands two things: the snake is poisonous and it will bite if tread upon. Just mind the rattler and leave it be and nobody will get hurt...
* My response to "Billy Yank" is posted here
That is funny...secession was used by the south when the south failed to carry a Constitutional election of one man to the office of the presidency. Secession is the result of a failure of a group of people to accept the decisions of the people in the Republic.
ReplyDeleteAnd why is it that neo-confederates like you and tommy dilusional always refer to the Revolution as some type of secession movement. The south seceded based on the fact that it believed it ratified the Const., thus creating the Federal Government and therefore could un-ratify it and return to as "state of nature" amoung the nations of the world. Funny, I don't remember the colonies creating the British Empire. Therefore the colonies or the United States could not secede from the empire. They surely could revolt and that is what they did.
Basic U.S. History....
Billy Yank...