The Annoyed Man wrote:equin wrote:Ericstac wrote:It's not that any one state or person wants to remove themselves from the USA, it's really America wanting to remove themselves from the current administration.. If Anyone besides the current President had won this election we wouldn't have these petitions..
Many understand the frustration and disappointment when one's candidate loses. However, to request secession because the other candidate wins on the grounds that the country has supposedly lost its values or is somehow acting unconstitutionally reveals a severe lack of credibility for one's political cause. It rises to the level displayed by a sore loser. Was the Republican candidate not given a fair chance? Were Republican voters kept from voting? Was the election a complete fraud? If so, then I could give some credence to those crying foul, but if not, then let's all do the sportsman's-like thing, take our lumps and wait to vote again another day. Does not the Constitution require the re-elected President to step down after 4 years? It's not as if he was voted to the position of monarch for life.
But let's try to put things in perspective. I think the Office of the Presidency, albeit a powerful and honorable one, is sometimes overrated and given way more credit than it deserves when compared to the true power of Congress. The President CANNOT PASS LAWS! The President can only sign them into law once passed by Congress, or can veto them, but Congress can still override the President. And as an aside, let's not forget that Republicans still control one chamber of Congress through their majority in the House. And if the President is overzealously enforcing Congress' laws or supposedly abusing its executive power, guess what? CONGRESS can shut down the enforcement simply by not funding it. That's right - Congress controls the purse strings, not the President.
I hear a lot of complaining about government spending on entitlements to Americans that don't deserve them. However, where was the outcry and calls for secession when the same entitlement programs were in full force and effect when the Republicans controlled not only the White House but also both chambers of Congress during the Bush Administration? Why was nothing done then to reform welfare and entitlements even further? Very little if anything happened on that front if I remember, and there were no calls for secession about that or the growing debt, either.
Others claim the country is headed towards socialism or some other un-capitalistic, tightly controlled market system. And I ask, where is the proof of this? The wife and I are hoping to start a business, and in my research I've seen nothing by any federal government agency hindering us to do so. If anything, it's the local and state governments, not the federal government, that requires business licenses, fees, etc. When my sister and brother-in-law tried to start a business in another country, they came running back a few months later in disbelief over how difficult it was. They returned to their own businesses in Alabama with an even greater appreciation for the business-friendly climate here in America dispelling once and for all any notion of trying to start any kind of business anywhere else in the world. And aside from business, what about professions? Does the federal government have any control in permitting doctors, lawyers, plumbers, engineers, barbers or real estate agents? Of course not. The states have that control.
How can the President wield much control over the economy and commerce when it is CONGRESS that has the exclusive power to pass our country's laws, including laws affecting commerce, free trade, taxation, and capitalistic enterprise? If the answer is by Executive Order, then again, CONGRESS has the authority to override any Executive Order if it so chooses, and even if it doesn't, the third branch of government (the Courts), has the authority to declare any Executive Order invalid and/or unconstitutional if it fails to pass legal muster.
Many of us also worry about the passage of another assault weapons ban. Again, the President has no authority whatsoever to pass a law bringing back the AWB. Only Congress can do that. The President can introduce legislation, but Congress can simply ignore it if it so chooses. And as mentioned earlier, Republican conservatives still control the House and there is no super majority in the Senate to stop a filibuster unless I miscounted the seats.
But more to the point on secession. If Republicans retained a majority in the House and a sizable minority in the Senate, how and why would so-called "secessionists", supposedly claiming to champion the Republican cause and its values, clamor for secession?
I've noticed political swings come and go over the decades in this great country. Sometimes, Democrats take control of the White House and Congress, sometimes Republicans take over and sometimes it's split evenly or slightly in favor of one party over the other. Aside from the checks and balances built into the Constitution with the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial), we still have checks and balances between the two major political parties. Secessionists talk as if the Republican party was completely wiped out, when in fact not only was the Presidential election a very close one, but the Republicans still control the House. So knowing this as well as our country's historical political swings, why give up now and call for secession?
Again, I urge my fellow Americans to embrace this great country of ours, work within the system to lawfully advance your respective political cause, and leave this nonsensical talk of secession. God bless America.
And all of this works for you if you're more of a centrist who is content to gradually drift leftward....because although everything you've posted here is undeniable, it is equally undeniable that much of what
both major parties stand for today
was integral to the socialist left's platform 100 years ago. And all of
that is made possible by
both parties—whichever is more in power than the other at any given moment—stretching past the breaking point the original intent of much of the Constitution. For instance, are you going to stand there and tell me with a straight face that the way Congress wields the Commerce Clause today is entirely consistent with the Founders' original intent? Of course, it isn't. And as more and more of the national population has migrated to the nation's large metropolitan areas, more and more of that population is willing to elect politicians who use the Constitution for toilet paper
exactly because it serves their interest to do so.
You point to
Heller and
McDonald as examples of defense of the Constitution in action. Exactly TWO cases, which in a very
limited way protect the individual right to keep (Heller) and bear (McDonald) arms. In exactly what
constitutional world does the NFA pass? The GCA of 1968? Exactly which
constitutionally minded court refused to strike down the NFA in
Miller? There isn't one. The side which would seek to disarm you, restrict your right to carry any gun you want, any place you want so long as there is no sign on the door asserting a property owner's rights, is the side which has
dominated national firearms policy over the past 100 years.
Why is that? It is because ALL politicians are willing to trample on the Constitution if it will get them votes, and the American public for the past century has been content to be dumbed down by an educational system which is firmly in the grasp of the far left. Lawyers cynically seek to affect policy through the courts when they know that their ideas will not survive election scrutiny, and Judges, who are all former lawyers and who tend to share that world view go along with it in deciding those cases of social policy brought before them. This is damaging to the stability of the body politic. (I realize that there are many honorable lawyers and judges who take an originalist view of the Constitution, but you are FAR outnumbered by those in your profession who do not, and there aren't enough like you to overcome the damage done by the others.) You want an example? Here is one, and I am not making a statement about this issue one way or the other, only to point out how it was
managed......Do you have ANY idea of why there is no ongoing debate in France—another nation with a
Republican form of government—over abortion, but there is one here in the USA?
Here is why: The French had a chance to vote on it. We did not. That simple. Back when abortion was legalized in France, it was still a predominantly Catholic nation, and yet they legalized abortion. To this day, the Catholic church, while diminished in France, still holds a certain amount of cultural sway there.....but there is no ongoing debate over abortion.......because they had a chance, as a body politic, to
settle the issue in terms of law of the land, and of course, individual citizens are free to according to the dictates of their consciences. At the time Roe v Wade was handed down, abortion was
already legal in several states. It would most likely have been a mere matter of time before
all the states would have voted to legalize it in some form or other. Conversely,
Congress could have taken it up at the national level, and gutless politicians would have been forced to deal with it and accept the consequences of their votes. But either way and regardless of outcome,
The People would have had a say in the matter, and like the French, we would have moved on in terms of the national debate. Instead, the right of the people to have a say in the matter was robbed from them, and now they continue to agitate for or against it, according to their consciences.
Instead, lawyers and judges found
ridiculous legal fictions called "penumbras" and "emanations" under which to declare a right not previously known to exist. But those SAME lawyers and judges can't find a
plainly stated right to keep and bear arms in the naked language of the 2nd Amendment? Your faith in the system is misplaced. It is misplaced because the system in which you put your faith is NOT consistent with the system in which our Founders put
their faith.
Now, like you, I prefer an intact United States of America. I did not sign the secession petition, but not because I disagree on some philosophical level with it; rather because when a blister like Obama is in office, it is extremely stupid to put your name on a list of people who hate him so much that they want to secede, when said list is then submitted to the White House. Why did Obama do almost no campaigning in Texas? Because he knows it is a lost cause. Why did Houston not get one of the retired Space Shuttles? Political payback. Pure and simple. When Texas sends a petition to the White House telling the rest of the nation to jump in a lake, does anybody seriously think that you'll then be able to get congressgoons from other states to vote favorably in matters related to Texas? No. The petitions were a temper tantrum. Nothing more.
BUT.....I absolutely endorse the sentiment. When Ronald Reagan famously stated that he did not leave the Democrat Party, it left him; he was expressing
exactly the sentiments that many conservatives feel today about the Republican party.....me included. And a mere few years ago, our views were mainstream Republican views. We did not change. The party did. So when a nation continues to drift leftward leaving behind those who
actually believe in and are willing to stand for principles, what recourse is left to them? This leftward drift may well represent the majority of the people, who also happen to mostly live in massive cities, but that does not mean that it is either
Constitutional or
wise.
At the end of the day, one has to decide for one's self, "am I a statist, or am I one who reveres the Constitution enough to get loud and obnoxious in its defense?" Your argument, which I have quoted in its entirety above so that there can be no accusation of cherry-picking, sounds like you've made that choice for yourself, and I hate to tell you, but it is the statist position, and the statist position is that which is content to vote, even vote conservatively, and then to accept in totality the outcome of the vote, even when that outcome carries you further and further
from the values you assert to uphold. And yet you want to claim this ground in the face of an administration which, through its own naked exercise of power, ignores Congress, the courts, and the Constitution anyway?
While I think that these petitions are indiscreet and unwise, I accept them fully as that "loud and obnoxious" defense of the Constitution, and God bless people for having that passion. Personally, I take the long view. I love my country, but so did the Romans, and Rome no longer exists except as a metropolis in a socialist state. Why should the United States be any different? Why should
we not be subject to the lessons of history? Many of the
Founders did not believe that this divinely inspired political device of theirs would survive beyond a couple of hundred years, because they understood human nature—and if there is one thing that has not changed in 10,000 years, it is human nature. If a million Americans think that secession is the pathway to rededicating at least a portion of the nation to essential liberty and the rule of law instead of ever bigger and intrusive government and the rule of men, they ought to be encouraged, and anyone who ridicules them for that sentiment ought to be ashamed to call themselves "American."
