The Texas secession debate is getting kind of real

[JALLEN]

The challenge is to find Jeffersons and Washingtons to champion the cause, and to keep the tin foil hats out.

I heard a candidate for President ask where the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Lincolns, Jacksons and Johnsons were these days. I believe he said they were all playing basketball.

I want to know where the Pat Paulsens are these days!

[JALLEN]

"Texas could exist without the United States but the United States cannot exist without Texas." -- Sam Houston

[Tracker]

I'd like to see a serious threat to secede to rein in the Federal Gov, Oklahoma is more conservative than Texas. Every county in OK voted republican in last two elections.

The richest countries in the US are Silicon Valley and around DC. Power and money flows to Washington.

I'd like to see the 17th Amendment recended. Senators original purpose was to act as lobbyists for the state governments. Now senators are being lobbied to and can thumb their nose at the state legislatures. The 17th undermined states' influence at the Federal level

Not quite I can agree to that but wow! What an interesting sidebar to the topic! I agree that California has a higher GNP than Texas, but not Maryland, or D.C. for that matter. Texas comes in at # 2 behind California in GNP. Next is New York.

BUT, want to look at something really interesting in terms of States GNP as compared to other countries GNP? This is REALLY interesting!....

Texas' GNP is on par with the entire country of Spain. California's GNP is on par with the entire country of Italy. New York....Mexico. Louisiana on par with Israel. Fascinating:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... n_2012.jpg

Oh yeah. On the wealthier counties, DC. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper ... 15c3115120

In light of this, I would highly recommend everyone listen to this.

Listen to Money And Politics - Peter Schweizer by Hillsdale College #np on #SoundCloud

Oh now that was very informative talk

[OldCannon]

For those of you that have read Chris Hernandez's book, "Line In The Valley", you'll note that the book seems to end with Texas on the brink of secession. Chris' novel didn't end in the typical denoument that you find in many novels. The war hero protagonist in the book, whose unit had managed to defeat a (plausibly-written) Mexican cartel/Islamic terrorist incursion at the border of Texas, was still shattered by the losses his close-knit unit took and a massively-ungrateful US government, who was on the brink of punishing him and his unit for their actions (interestingly - Chris' story involves a VERY bad decision made by his team, so his characters don't stand out in stark good vs evil, they stand out as human beings under enormous warfighting pressure to get things done, and that doesn't always equal making smart decisions, especially politically-correct ones). The book definitely ended with a much larger confrontation brewing, and changed the tone of the book.

[joe817]

In light of this, I would highly recommend everyone listen to this.

Listen to Money And Politics - Peter Schweizer by Hillsdale College #np on #SoundCloud

Phew. Not what I was expecting. I just now had the time to listen to all of it, and glad I did. thanks for posting mojo84.

Peter Schweizer does an excellent job of stating how rampant corruption is in D.C. Influence peddling to foreign countries, how campaign contributions are one vehicle politicians use to raise their personal standard of living, politics used as a vehicle for wealth accumulation as a first priority(at the expense of the American people's). Talk about filthy dirty!

Like Peter says at the end of the lecture, we need a Fist Full of Dollars type guy(played by Clint Eastwood) to come in and clean house in D.C.

If Clinton gets to the White House, then the debate, based on the thread title, may become more realistic.

[mojo84]

Joe, Glad you found it informative and worthwhile. Many will not listen to it because of time constraints or apathy. I believe those that do listen to it will learn from it or at least confirm what they have suspected.

He has several videos on his website that address these issues in more detail. Makes me lean more and more to secession. However, Texas isn't immune from such corruption so we would need to address these issues if we were to secede.

[TexasJohnBoy]

I'm 15 minutes into the lecture and very interested for the last 45 minutes. Thanks for sharing.

[The Annoyed Man]

A former member here sent me this link this morning. Its from a Freeper who posted in 2010, but I think his conclusions are spot on:

"Killers Without Conscience"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2509007/posts

The time is coming when we must either begin the "long march" back through the institutions to reclaim them and to restore the principles of freedom and human dignity to their rightful place, or we must separate from the killers without conscience and those who condone them. My own world-view is contradictory to, and irreconcilable with, that of the criminal totalitarians - the heirs and disciples of Machiavelli, Marx, Gramsci and Alinsky - who promote the politics of envy and victimization, and whose goal is the destruction of our culture and institutions.

"The great misfortune of the twentieth Century is to have been the one in which the ideal of liberty was harnessed to the service of tyranny, the ideal of equality to the service of privilege, and all the aspirations and social forces included under the label of the "Left" enrolled in the service of impoverishment and enslavement. This immense imposture has falsified most of this century, partly through the faults of some of its greatest intellectuals. It has corrupted the language and action of politics down to tiny details of vocabulary, it has inverted the sense of morality and enthroned falsehood in the very center of human thought."
Jean Francois-Revel, The Flight From Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information - 1991, Random House

There seems to be a sort of 'virtual secession' is underway even as we speak. It usually begins when, one by one, we arrive at the same ideas that I have summarized so far. It's the understanding and acceptance of the fact that we can't 'just all get along' as a certain Mr. R King once suggested. We're well past that. We're well past the point of reasoned debate, appeasement or compromise. Those who feel they have the right to dictate the terms of existence to everyone else are on a deadly collision course with those of us who understand that no such 'right' exists. The history of the 20th century stands in mute witness to the brutal tragedy of appeasement and the folly of compromise with totalitarian monsters. We are in fact at war, realize it or not, like it or not. At the most fundamental level, that war is being waged not so much for control of our economic lives - although that is certainly part of it - but for the hearts and minds of our children. The battlefields are: popular culture, our public schools, our institutions of higher learning, our churches and even our homes. The casualties are your kids' intellectual and spiritual sovereignty - their inner life and their freedom.

{---SNIP--}

There are many of us, and I include myself among them, who constitute an entirely different class of humanity than these killers without conscience and their enablers. We are neither interested in power nor its abuse. We are satisfied to live our lives in peace with ourselves and with others, and we derive great satisfaction in seeing others enjoy life as we do. We believe that our lives and our minds are sovereign, and that the fruits of our labors are not forfeit to the first thug who demands them at the point of a gun. We are never the initiators of violence. We judge others solely by their competence and by their character.

The final first-principles question is this: To whom does the world belong? Does it belong to those of us who wish to live free of coercion or to the killers without conscience? Does it belong to those who uphold man's life as the standard of their values, or those who uphold the standard of death?

That's just a small snippet of his post. I'm nearly done with it, but I've been reading for about 30 minutes. So don't start this until you have the time to sit down and read through it, but I assure all of you that he makes some very persuasive arguments.

[joe817]

TAM, as much as I'd like to read the article tonight, I'm afraid I might have to grab my hatchet, find the first wooden crate of tea I could find, smash it and throw it into the Trinity River.

[OldCannon]

TAM, as much as I'd like to read the article tonight, I'm afraid I might have to grab my hatchet, find the first wooden crate of tea I could find, smash it and throw it into the Trinity River.

"This made the tea unsuitable for drinking. Even for Americans."

[Pawpaw]

TAM, as much as I'd like to read the article tonight, I'm afraid I might have to grab my hatchet, find the first wooden crate of tea I could find, smash it and throw it into the Trinity River.

"This made the tea unsuitable for drinking. Even for Americans."