ObamaCare: Secession or Nullification?

This past weekend's passage of "Healthcare Reform" in the House has been followed by much weeping and gnashing of teeth (not to mention a moderate surge in the ranks of the Texas Secede! Facebook page.).

Many folks seem to be fretting over some combination of the further erosion of personal liberty and responsibility, the additional economic devastation and tax burden, the stark imposition of top-down state socialism, or simply an apparent triumph on the part of the Democrats.

Many voices in Texas are calling freshly for secession as the logical response — but perhaps it's still too early...

Right now, unlike any other time in US history, a nullification movement has taken hold — and is growing — in most of the US states, including Texas. This means there is a strong, public-centered, and legally-informed opposition to the bloated despotism reigning in Washington, and a growing intent to invoke the Consitution itself to tell both the White House and Congress that their "federal laws" are null and void wherever they cross the line drawn by the Tenth Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

State legislatures across the country have enacted resolutions, bills, and acts warning Washington that the people and the states are fed up with the power- and money-grabbing habits of the bipartisan monopoly that's dominated US politics and government for over a century.

Perhaps secession is not the only option at this moment — and it may well be avoidable if the nullification route has its constitutionally intended effect — which is to not only stop the Washington behemoth in its tracks, but also to put it back within the limits unambiguously defined by the Constitution itself.

Texans would do well these days to check out the Tenth Amendment Center and get involved right here in Texas. Austin and Governor Perry should know Texans want Washington's meddling tentacles kept out of Texas. This calls for a resolve in Austin to get each of Washington's unconstitutional activities (i.e., most of them) out of Texas, starting with a big "NO" to top-down federally mandated socialized healthcare.

ObamaCare is only the most recent in a long line of DC's despotic assaults on the people of Texas and their liberty and property. It will take a few years for Washington to start implementing it, if it even survives the many legal challanges already lining up for it among the several states. Meanwhile, secession will always remain an optional response to this accumulated conglomeration of unlawful federal impositions.

But a unified voice from the people of Texas, offically delivered to DC from Austin, could go a long way towards not only stopping ObamaCare, but turning back the tide on innumerable other usurpations Washington has been foisting on Texans over the years.

Just imagine, for example, how empty would be threat of withheld (unconstitutional) federal "aid" to Texas, in the face of Texas' refusal to allow the collection of Washington's (unconstitutional) taxes on Texans and their property in the first place. The feds would be deprived not only of both the carrot and the stick, but also a pony to ride on — leaving Texans to enjoy their lives, liberty, and property in peace.

...and if that can't be had within the union, we can still leave.

Olberman's Obtuse Oratory

An alert reader recently brought to my attention Keith Olberman's Rant over Texas Governor Rick Perry's refusal to rule out secession as an option for Texas.

While I don't think Perry's comments were anything but disingenuous political posturing (he's always been an opportunistic hack of the Republicrat mainstream, and shows no signs of changing those colors), Olberman's histrionic response exposes remarkable measures of both ignorance and intellectual laziness worthy of enough contempt to pretty much eclipse any embarrassment I might feel for Perry.

Olberman wastes no time revealing his true nature, as he starts off by calling Perry "Governor Asshat." So much for common courtesy.

Though he feigns a measure of civility by suggesting the other states might give "permission" for secession, his historical ignorance is betrayed by his failure to take into account the fact that Texas didn’t wait for the anyone’s permission when seceding from Mexico or the U.S. (the first time), nor did the first American states, when seceding from Britain. It isn’t clear where he gets the notion that "permission" is a relevant — let alone necessary — factor today.

Mr. Olberman's predisposition towards tax-and-spend Big Government plundering as a norm comes out next, as the first consequence of secession he announces is "Your taxes would shoot through the roof!..."

But his conclusion is predicated on the (false) assumption that all Texans share his (religious?) belief that the status quo in government-provided "services" (mostly at what is ultimately the barrel of a gun) is a desirable norm. No longer compelled to finance endless ventures in imperialism and "nation-building" abroad, and Big Government welfare-state socialism at home, Texans could actually enjoy a decrease in taxes, once the tethers of "American" bureaucratic bloat have been cut.

Olberman brags that FEMA has sent over $3 billion to Texas since 2001. That's less than $400 million per year — a tiny fraction of what the US government plunders from Texans in taxes annually.

"Other agencies sent you another $1 billion just for hurricane Ike last year," he says, boasting about what amounts to a mere .6% of the state's current $150 billion budget.

Later he throws in another billion in Pell grants as an afterthought. (Tellingly, while I was able to find unlimited government sources for discussions nitpicking over the amount of each of these socialist "education" giveaways, no overall budget numbers for the total Pell grant welfare program was to be found. Hmm...)

Then he starts listing all the meddlesome socialist programs, police state bureaucracies, and war machinery he presumes Texas will want to replicate, both betraying (again) his personal dedication to Big Government statism and his (largely erroneous) delusion that Texans somehow share his love for the welfare/warfare state. "You'll need your own Gitmo," he says, as if Texans actually want to pattern their independent republic after the US imperialism model — complete with torture and without habeas corpus.

He also presumes that the "gringos" will "pull out" — again revealing his aversion to civility, and forgetting that Texas was a Mexican state with a white minority in the first place, and that by and large, Texans of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds get along fairly well, as long as folks like Olberman aren't around to fan the flames of racism.

Mr. Olberman is already reaching when he starts whining about nuclear waste disposal and the big business sports franchises have become — as if these would somehow uniquely become more severe problems for an independent Texas than they are for any state or country. His use of TV ratings and sport franchises as an argument against secession shows just how far he puts the prosperity of Big Business "sports" and Big Business mainstream media above the principles of liberty and self-determination.

He suggests that the US will want a border preventing commerce and free movement between Texas and the US, as if the US federal government will somehow be able to a better job than it has already, without the tax revenue it currently plunders from Texas.

His blathering about the effect of a Texas secession on US politics is moot. (Why would or should Texans care?)

The "scare tactic" he invokes of seeing Texas reunite with Mexico is another non-issue. The US government's taxation, intervention, and imperialism all dwarf those of Mexico by an order of magnitude, so why exactly should Texans find the prospect of "joining Mexico" so terrible? Every year, many Americans (Texans included) are already voting with their feet by relocating to Mexico, where they are basically left alone by the local and federal governments.

All in all, Keith Olberman's hysteria over the prospect of an independent Texas has plenty less to do with facts and sound reasoning than an irrational zeal for what has become the fascist norm in American economic and political life. It's no wonder that he can't stand the idea of the second largest economy of the country pulling its contribution from the federal trough — why, all of his favorite Big Government programs would lose a big chunk of their raison d'être, and (more significantly) an even bigger chunk of their plundered funding.

His taxes would shoot through the roof!...

We Get Comments... (#1)

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.

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

Mindless Obedience, Anyone?

Recently brought to our attention was a quasi-anonymous bulletin board posting by one "TVC184" in response to our FAQ, which read:

"The very first question shows that the right to secede is bogus. As it states, there is nothing in the Texas Constitution that allows such a secession.

"The answer then states that Article 1 Section 1 states that we have to follow the United States Constitution. The answer quickly tries to explain this away as saying that they only have to follow the Constution [sic] and not the US President or Congress.

"Well duhhhhhh.... the US Constitution is what gives the Congress and President their power. The slanted answer is that we have to follow the US Constitution.... except the parts we don't like.

"I don't buy it. The first answer clearly says that no such power allowing Texas to secede exists in the Texas Constitution. Then the political spin starts where they can obey the US Constitution but somehow ignore the President and Congress listed in that very document. Hmmm....."

The first thing we noticed was the writer's apparently mindless obsession with the arbitrary (but false) notion that the Constitution says we're required to "follow" or "obey" the president and Congress — particularly when they aren't obeying the Constitution. The fact is, Americans (the president and Congress especially) are required obey the rule of law — not men. But the writer of the above comments mindlessly embraces the notion that we're all obliged to "follow" and "obey" the president and Congress instead of demand that they "follow" and "obey" the Constitution.

Turning both the law and logic on their heads, our writer ("TVC184") is suggesting that the absence of any constitutional provision either for or against secession somehow renders secession a prohibited and "bogus" notion, and that unconditional "obedience" to presidents and Congress is the perpetual obligation of Texans.

Frankly, the very idea that we are somehow obligated to "obey" a president and/or a Congress that openly defy the clear limitations imposed by the Constitution is unmitigated evidence of shameful ignorance — the same kind that mindlessly acquiesces to the falsehood that the US Constitution "gives power" to presidents and Congress, instead of delegating it on behalf of the people, as both the US and Texas Constitutions explicitly state.

Our "TVC184" is also apparently ignorant of the fact that secession is how both the United States and Texas Republics were born. Secession is rendered neither "illegal" nor "bogus" by either of their respective Constitutions, and in fact the founding documents of both entities clearly indicate that people have a right — an obligation — to change their government if they're not happy with the current one (and it's not referring to "voting").

A Confederate Soldier's Revisionist Legacy

Around mid-February 2009, we received some unsolicited emails from fellow Texan Darrell McEver of Leander, "10 Generations" of whose "family have fought and Died for this Country, the Confederacy, and Texas." On the face of it, that's a very credible claim (I did the math), with the average span between generations being roughly 23 years and 4 months.

But in this story, that's where Mr. McEver's credibility both begins and ends.

His purpose in writing wasn't to boast about his family's role as fodder for the war mongers of American history, but to inform us that:

"The Civil war was about The Vast Majority of American Citizens voting to end Slavery by the election of Lincoln. It was about Americans wanting to end injustice. The rights of states to Secede was far outweighed by the rights of ALL Americans to be free. ...If there had been no slavery there would have been no Civil war."

Those four short sentences contain four abject falsehoods, to wit:

1. Lincoln was elected by a "vast majority."
   
2. Lincoln's election was about ending slavery.
   
3. a state's right to withdraw from its voluntary relationship to the Union is somehow trumped by "Americans' right to be free."
   
4. slavery was the cause of the War of Northern Aggression—popularly (and erroneously) called the American "Civil War."

When told his assertions were only popularized myths, Mr. McEver assured us of their reliability, because he was "quoting [his] Great Grandfather from Vidor Texas," who was "a very young private in the Confederacy."

With due respect to both Mr. McEver and his great grandfather, neither a man's having been a private ("very young" or otherwise) in any particular army, nor his being from Vidor, Texas, is a logical basis for substituting his beliefs for the scholarship and historically-informed writings of the likes of Shelby Foote (author of the three-volume "The Civil War"), Thomas DiLorenzo ("The Real Lincoln"), Charles Adams ("When in the Course of Human Events"), or Kenneth Stampp ("The Causes of the Civil War").*

So let's examine each of the four (false) claims of Darrell McEver and his great grandfather.

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.

Finally, Mr. McEver saw fit to assert that "when it comes to States Rights and Secession today I remind you" that the Pledge of Allegiance contains the word "indivisible... Americans, by oath under the Hand of the Almighty, completely and purposefully acknowledge that the United States of American is indivisible."

It apparently doesn't occur to Mr. McEver that:

1. not all Americans voluntarily recite or assent to "the pledge"
   
2. with the exception of its mentioning "liberty and justice for all," nothing about "the pledge" reflects the spirit or principles of the American founders
   
3. "the pledge" is neither a legal document, nor based in law, and as such, is not legally or morally binding on those coerced to mindlessly recite it at government "schools" and political functions
   
4. "the pledge" was originally crafted (1892) by a socialist in the interest of fomenting a spirit of socialist nationalism in which individual liberty itself was to be subjugated to the supposed "greater good" of the whole nation
   
5. the phrase "under God" had no part in the author's original text, and was only added 62 years later (1954)
   
6. neither "the pledge" in general, nor its containing the word "indivisible" in particular, by any means carries any legal force whatsoever, let alone that sufficient to nullify the inherent right of a people to self-determination, as formally recognized in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Texas Constitution.

Thanks to his Confederate soldier great grandfather, Darrell McEver is just one of many Texans (and other Americans) who have been conditioned to accept without question the mythologies of the American federal government. Too busy (or lazy) to examine the historical record itself, they are duped into believing — and repeating — outright falsehoods about American history, as popularized and perpetuated by our government, media, and academia, and (to his own shame) even a veteran of the Confederate army.

This habitual displacement of truth by such popularized myths in the public mind seems to go hand-in-hand with popular acquiescence to the big-government national-socialist agenda perpetrated from Washington by the twin ruling parties. That being the case, any hope for genuinely positive change awaits a popular awakening and abandonment of both habits.
___________________________

* For those either unwilling or unable to examine the historical record as brought to light in the above cited books, a small sampling of the scholarship they embody may be found here.