Over 25,000 people in the state of Texas have signed a petition and sent it to the White House asking for permission to peacefully secede from the United States (other states are also raising petitions for the same purpose). I say, Go, Texas! If the people of that state want to secede from America, more power to them. To deny their right to do so is to deny the very principles upon which the United States was founded, for what did George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et al do except secede from England?
For those who say Texas does not have a right to secede, perhaps you can explain to us why Texas had a right to secede from Mexico in 1836 but cannot do so from America. Or perhaps Texas didn’t have a right to secede from Mexico and thus, rightfully, should belong to that country. A country, of course, which, in 1821, seceded from Spain…
The wisdom of secession might be debated, but the right is denied only by tyrants. Government, to be legitimate, must be by "the consent of the governed", and when a people no longer consent to that government, it is their right to be governed by those whom they desire. Otherwise, there is government by tyranny and slavery. Of course, Texas will not be allowed to secede; that war was fought, and lost, in the 1860s (Texas won its secession war in 1836 as did America in the 1770s). And that is the greatest tragedy in American history—the defeat of the South in their war for independence—for it destroyed the country as established by its founders and paved the way for the tyrannical, out-of-control monster that now exists in Washington, D.C.
Those who argue for secession are not traitors, not if the government has broken the contract with its people and gone beyond its constitutionally authorized limitations. Again, only a tyrant or an ignoramus would argue that the federal government of the United States remains within the boundaries of the powers given to it in the Constitution. It is the government, not the people, who has broken the contract. That frees the people to form a contract with another government, if they so desire.
As I said, secession is not going to happen (a majority of Texans might not even want it; they could lose their free Obamaphone, Obamacare, and food stamps!), but there is little doubt that, if Texas did secede, some other states would follow. And probably a lot of Yankees would be happy to see Texas (and other states) go. Indeed, New York might even join Texas; after all, when the Southern states seceded in 1861, the mayor of New York City wanted to secede with them because his city had become the largest, richest port in the country shipping slave-grown Southern cotton to the rest of the world. The North finally decided that, financially, it wouldn't be a good idea to let the South go ("Where then would we get our revenue?" Abraham Lincoln asked, since the southern states were paying over 80% of federal taxes with about 30% of the population). Money was the reason for the Civil War, not slavery. And money will be the reason no state will secede today.
Secession is only a last option—but it must be an option for a people, or there is no way to prevent a government from becoming tyrannical and destroying the rights of a free citizenry. Voting won't do it because, as we saw in this latest election, government politicians can buy enough votes to win an election and destroy foundation principles. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty (emphasis added), to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security." That is from America’s Declaration of Independence, in case the reader doesn’t recognize it. I suspect about 99% of Americans today would not recognize it.
But then, America’s founders wouldn’t recognize their government today, either.
Go, Texas!