Is Red State America Seceding?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.

Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.

The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. Yet a Europe that plunged straight to war after the last breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 this time only yawned. Let them go, all agreed.

The spirit of secession, the desire of peoples to sever ties to nations to which they have belonged for generations, sometimes for centuries, and to seek out their own kind, is a spreading phenomenon. 

Rick Perry Rewrites His Own History Again, Claims He Never Considered Secession

By Ian Millhiser

Slick Rick Perry

Before he announced his presidential bid, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) was commendably honest about his radical view of the Constitution. Perry repeatedly and proudly called Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional — even doing so on video at least once. Now that Perry wants to be president, however, he has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, claiming untruthfully that he never said Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional.

Last night, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Perry showed similar disregard for the truth in claiming that he never suggested Texas might secede from the union:

HANNITY: Some people said, well, you used the term once “secession.” That’s not anything—is that something you believe?

PERRY: No, and I never used that term, at all.

HANNITY: Then why was it reported so heavily?

PERRY: I have no idea to be real honest with you, because it was never a really factual piece of reporting. It was shouted out by an individual at an event—at a Tea Party, actually—and I said “listen, America is a great country. We have no reason why we would ever dissolve this union.”

Watch it:

Perry is technically correct that he never uttered the word “secession,” but he did say that “when we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.” Just in case Perry doesn’t remember saying that he is “thinking about” seceding, he can listen to himself saying it here:

For the record, Perry isn’t just wrong about his own previously stated views on secession, he was also wrong the first time when he claimed Texas has the right to secede from the union. Just in case the Civil War didn’t resolve this question enough to suit Perry’s unusually fluid understanding of the Constitution, the Supreme Court resolved the question just a few years later in 1869. As the Court held in Texas v. White, “[t]he union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States."

South Carolinians Celebrate 150th Anniversary Of Secession

In the tragic but unlikely event that Barack Hussein Obama is reelected in 2012, our advice to our beloved South Carolina would be: "if at first you don't secede, try, try again!"  Such an outcome would surely be the result of voter fraud and would be the final "nail in the coffin" of the old republic.

From TPM

David Taintor

South Carolinians literally had a ball last night celebrating the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The secession ball, organized by the Confederate Heritage Trust -- and sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans -- reportedly featured a 45-minute theatrical play re-enacting the signing of the Ordinance of Secession, where South Carolina declared its intention to secede from the union.

According to the event's website, the original Ordinance of Secession was actually on full display at the event, and the South Carolina Senate's interim president Glenn McConnell -- an avid Civil War re-enactor himself -- was expected to attend. The event's dress code called for modern black tie, period formal or pre-war militia, and tickets cost $100.

The gala's website describes it as an "EVENT OF A LIFETIME"!!! (emphasis theirs). But South Carolina NAACP president Lonnie Randolph told The State he thinks the event is more about celebration than history, and he planned on boycotting the ball. About 120 protesters marched in opposition to the event.

"We are not opposed to observances," he said. "We are opposed to disrespect. This is nothing more than a celebration of slavery."

Thomas Hiter, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, appeared on Hardball last night, along with Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. Hiter defended the event, called the state's secession an "act of immense political courage" and went so far as to claim the Civil War didn't start over slavery.

But Robinson, of course, rejected Hiter's premise. "If it had not been for slavery, there would not have been the Civil War," he said. "There's no other reading of history."

Hiter continued to sidestep any questions regarding any potential celebration of slavery, but he was sure of one thing: "Had I found myself alive in those days, I think, I hope, to pray to God, I would have fought the way my ancestors did ... for the South."

Organizers were not available to speak to TPM before the event.

Secession in the Air

By Patrick J. Buchanan

No, it is not 1860 again.

But with all the talk of the 10th Amendment, nullification and interposition, states rights and secession -- following Gov. Rick Perry's misstatement that Texas, on entering the Union in 1845, reserved in its constitution a right to secede -- one might think so.

Chalk up another one for those Tea Party activists who exploded in cheers when Sister Sarah brought up the dread word in endorsing Rick Perry in the primary.

Looking back in American history, however, these ideas, these sentiments, decried as insane inside the Beltway, were once as American as "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical," wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison from Paris in January 1787, about Revolutionary War Capt. Daniel Shay's anti-tax rebellion in Massachusetts.

In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, both of these founding fathers sanctioned the idea that states could interpose their own sovereignty and nullify acts of Congress. Both were enraged by the Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adams and the Federalists, written into law to combat sedition during the undeclared naval war with France.

On taking office, President Jefferson declared the acts unconstitutional, refused to prosecute those charged and freed the imprisoned writers.

In 1814, Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the revolution and secretary of state to both George Washington and Adams, was a force behind the Hartford Convention, which argued for New England's secession and reuniting with Great Britain. Massachusetts opposed Madison's War of 1812 that had caused the British blockade that destroyed their trade and prosperity.

The war's end and Jackson's victory at New Orleans, however, aborted the Hartford movement and finished off the Federalists forever.

In 1832, it was Vice President John Calhoun who inspired South Carolina to vote to nullify the Tariff of Abomination that was killing the cotton-exporting South and enriching Northern manufacturers. To the chagrin of Madison, Calhoun invoked his and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky resolutions in defense of Carolinian defiance.

In 1845, it was Massachusetts again. Ex-President John Quincy Adams declared that admission of Texas to the Union as a slave state might constitute grounds for secession and civil war.

With Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and Republicans, the Northern party, assuming power, South Carolina, Georgia and the Gulf states seceded.

But not until after Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called for volunteers to march south and crush the rebellion, did Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas secede, rather than remain passive or participate in a war on their kinfolk.

Unlike the issues of yesteryear that tore the Union asunder, Tea Party issues are not sectional but national. Yet, they are rooted in a similar set of beliefs -- that the federal government no longer serves their interests, but the interests of economic and political forces that sustain the party in power.

In 1860, the South saw power passing indefinitely to a new regime, a Republican Party that represented high-tariff industrialists and New England radicals and abolitionists who despised the agrarian South and celebrated the raid on Harper's Ferry by the terrorist John Brown, who had sought to incite a slave uprising, such as had occurred in Santo Domingo.

What called the Tea Party into existence?

Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring minorities over them.

What they agree upon, however, is that they have been treading water for a decade, working harder and harder with little or no improvement in their family standard of living. They see the government as taking more of their income in taxes, seeking more control over their institutions, creating entitlements for others not them, plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have saved.

And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers, mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a sense of the power that they do not have.

Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their belief and that of millions more that the state they detest is at war with the country they love.

The secession taking place in America is a secession of the heart -- of people who have come to believe the government is them, and not us.

Obama's problem, like the Bushes' in 1992 and 2008, is that one thing these folks are really good at is throwing people out of power.

After Obama Fails

No American President has ever died under the flag of his birth. The composition of the United States has changed routinely throughout its history. But a constantly expanding nation can also contract, and no less than the Governor of Texas has acknowledged the fissures created by big government, socialist, totalitarians. The growing Tea Party Movement, that will be seen again during the July 4 weekend, portends that either Americans will reclaim the old republic and its Constitution, or they will reassert the rights and prerogatives of the states that preceded it.

The following essay from American Thinker considers the consequences of an "extreme backlash" to a national government that no longer reflects core American values that are still very much alive in many states.

From American Thinker
By George Joyce

A failed presidency for Barack Obama could turn into liberalism's worst nightmare. Barely six months into his term, the 44th president has succeeded in generating the most widespread and serious discussion of secession since the Civil War. Despite what Newsweek's Evan Thomas may claim, Obama is not the "God" who will bring us together but the autocratic sponsor of an overbearing, oppressive leviathan from which a growing number of Americans are seeking refuge.

That refuge, according to author Paul Starobin, will come in the form of several regional republics that reflect the diverse character of Americans no longer bound in any meaningful way by our unrecognizable Federal government. In a riveting exploration of America 's coming breakup, Starobin writes in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

"Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society."

Starobin chronicles in fascinating detail the historical basis for America 's future balkanization. He provides a snapshot of today's most viable and vocal secessionist organizations. Starobin goes on to argue that the overbearing and stifling "Obama planners and their ilk" will probably be doomed to fail in a land replete with the Jeffersonian impulse of radical self-determination. Obama's extreme power grab, in other words, will cause a correspondingly extreme backlash:

"All of this adds up to a federal power grab that might make even FDR's New Dealers blush. But that's just the point: Not surprisingly, a lot of folks in the land of Jefferson are taking a stand against an approach that stands to make an indebted citizenry yet more dependent on an already immense federal power. The backlash, already under way, is a prime stimulus for a neo-secessionist movement, the most extreme manifestation of a broader push for some form of devolution."

By focusing most of his attention on how big unwieldy entities devolve into creative little ones, Starobin's analysis misses however the more direct personal role Barack Obama himself has played in fracturing America.

Back in March of last year for example New York Times columnist Roger Cohen told his audience he could "understand the rage" of Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Without missing a beat Cohen then concluded in his essay that the "clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years."

Has Barack Obama's been an "uplifting" presidency? Mr. Obama knew full well that his Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, dismissed the test results of white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, entitled to promotion but denied because they were of the wrong race. Surely her decision is demeaning to both white males and to those who study diligently for exams. Did the black firefighters feel uplifted or demeaned when Sotomayor ruled in their favor? Was the New Haven firehouse more unified or more divided after Sotomayor's ruling? Was Obama's Sotomayor choice uplifting or demeaning?

Indeed, from the Sotomayor pick and anti-business rhetoric to the endless lecturing about America 's sins, Mr. Obama is starting to sound a lot like his former pastor. To be sure Obama is not as grating and shrill as Mr. Wright but closer to something more like Jeremiah-lite. In other words, Mr. Obama's strategy seems to be to convince Americans to drink his socialist tonic out of sheer guilt. I'm not sure what is so inspiring about all of this.

Maybe this is why Starobin claims to be witnessing a lot of neo-secessionist activity. Wouldn't a new American devolution however be a liberal's worst nightmare? Beyond the psychosis most liberals would have to endure at the thought of losing any kind of control, the prospect of vibrant, happy, and successful conservative republics in places like Texas, South Carolina or Utah would be an inescapable spotlight forever exposing the failure of liberal ideology in a Republic of California.

But this brings up another problem. When the framers of the American Constitution favored a multi-state solution to the problem of centralized tyranny they argued that an additional benefit would be that each state could become a unique laboratory displaying the policy successes and failures to its neighbors. If the Republic of Texas chooses a classics curriculum for its youngsters, celebrates the family and tradition in its media, encourages personal responsibility in lieu of a nanny state, rewards citizens on the basis of merit, is tough on criminals, sends its politicians home after brief excursions to the capitol, is business friendly and generally leaves its citizens alone, how are those controlling the politically liberal Republics like California going to react?

What most liberals fail to understand is that their leisurely dabbling in progressive politics and moral equivalency is made possible by the existence of accumulated conservative moral capital. Remove the conservative anchor and progressive societies become dangerously seasick. I guess the lesson here is that liberals need conservatives more than conservatives need liberals (although society needs them on occasion). There is much in progressive ideology that simply seeks to undermine -- a strange method of establishing an identity.

While reading "A Little History of the World" to my kids the other day I came across an interesting observation by the author, E.H. Gombrich:

"Because the Egyptians were so wise and so powerful their empire lasted for a very long time. Longer than any empire the world has ever known: nearly three thousand years. And they took just as much care of their corpses, when they preserved them from rotting away, in preserving all their ancient traditions over the centuries. Their priests made quite sure that no son did anything his father had not done before him. To them, everything old was sacred."

When Obama fails it will be because he's convinced enough Americans to tire, as he has, of what used to be known as "America." Imagine what would have happened in Egypt had their priests adopted "liberation theology" rather than the standard of their fathers. A mere footnote in the pages of history.