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A petition campaign for secession launched in several American states is gaining momentum. A day ago, Texas succeeded to collect more than the 25,000 signatures needed for the petition to receive a go-ahead. Now, there are already seven states where the number of signatories has exceeded the needed threshold… besides Texas, they’re Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida. Although in any foreseeable future any secessionist move by the above states (and an unknown number to follow) is unlikely to bear fruit in terms of real secession, one should regard the move as a signal that the question is being included on the American political agenda.
The US Constitution doesn’t allow the possibility for any state to secede from the Union. The memories of the Confederation of 11 Southern states and the Civil War that followed are still fresh in the national memory. Probably, no one in the USA would like to repeat that experience, although in regional popular perception (most overtly expressed in Gone with the Wind) the southerners have the reputation as people of honour defending the core values of a free society.
The only state that has a formal exemption from the constitutional provision banning secession is Texas, which joined the Union as an independent state, and is still nicknamed the “Lone Star State”. It’s hardly surprising that the deeply-conservative state was the pioneer of the current secessionist campaign and was the first one to exceed the 25,000 threshold. It’s collected more than 100,000 signatures. However, even Texas, legally speaking, is highly unlikely to be granted independence… as far back as 1868, the US Supreme Court ruled in Texas v White case that states lacked the power to unilaterally secede from the Union.
Some critics of the petition campaign point out that the underlying reason for it is purely political and that this is nothing more than just a reaction of Romney supporters to their electoral defeat. In this sense, one can compare the campaign to the proclamation of the Confederation in 1860 as a reaction to Abraham Lincoln’s election. Nevertheless, one should not only note that Barack Obama is far from being a second Lincoln, but one should consider another small fact. Amongst the seven states that have so far collected 25,000 or more signatures, Obama defeated Romney in Florida on 6 November.
Other critics say that the secession of the states seeking it would serve the Union well and badly affect the states themselves. According to this point of view, the states seeking secession are amongst the weakest in terms of economy. “The Confederation of Takers” is what the Washington Post commentator Dana Milbank called the possible (or, rather impossible) future composition, writing, “If Obama were serious about being a good steward of the nation’s finances, he’d let them” secede, further including into the Confederation such relatively-poor states as Alaska, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Well, the above states may be relatively poor, but amongst them, only Tennessee is among the seven that have collected the needed amount of signature. Definitely, the label of “poor state” can’t be applied to states like Florida, and even less so to Texas, whose economy is booming due to vast oil reserves, and who would become the world’s 15th ranking economy in case it succeeded in gaining full independence.
Again, for the time being, such considerations don’t constitute anything more than wishful thinking. Still, the very idea of secession may not be ripe, but they’ve definitely sown the seeds for it. Back in mid-90s, I saw a map published in one of the American newspapers depicting the country in 2017. Apart from the Lone Star Texas as an independent, it showed sovereign entities like the Dixieland Confederation, Theocratic Kingdom of Utah, the Wild West and New England Republics, and some others.
However, seriously, even if one may disregard the idea of secession for the time being, one shouldn’t exclude it altogether. Do you remember what enthusiasm surrounded the enlargement of the EU some eight years ago, in May 2004? What’s become of European integration now? It’s best if we didn’t dig deeper into it, in order not to frighten the Americans. Lastly, supporting secessionist movements in countries that aren’t eager to follow American policy has become one of the basic principles of Washington‘s attitude towards global issues… from Kosovo and other parts of former Yugoslavia, to Baloch separatists in today’s Pakistan. Maybe, Washington strategists should remember the old maxim… “One who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones?”
15 November 2012
Boris Volkhonsky
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_11_15/The-Separated-States-of-America/
Editor’s Note:
Texas isn’t “rich”… it has one of the most pronounced gaps between the Affluent Effluent and the rest of us in the USA. Its labour laws are laughable and union organisers are beaten and killed in the state regularly, with the perps never found. If the federal military bases and the federal government apparat were to leave Texas, it’d fatally harm its economy, and the Texas Grand Old Perverts know it. The other states of the Old Confederacy are even deeper at the federal slop chute. You see, the “conservatives” who scream about “rugged individualism” would be sunk if they weren’t sucking off “libtards” in New York, New Jersey, California, Washington, and New England. If we didn’t have to support the rightwing parasite states, we’d be in far better shape. Such is the TRUTH of America…
I say, “Let the bastards secede! Go! It’ll destroy the rightwing in what’s left of the USA”. Besides that, we could erect trade barriers against the “New Republic” (as they wish so badly to be “rugged individualists”). (sigh) Let’s be honest… these thieving holier-than-thou sanctimonious mofos aren’t going to leave us… their leaders realise that if they left, their personal finances would be affected, and that’s paramount to the greedy and godless (especially those who maintain a “religious” veneer).
BMD
Voices from Russia 
30 September 2017. This is What Capitalism “Creates”
Tags: american conservatism, american labour, American South, Conservatism, Detroit, Detroit MI, political commentary, politics, Republican, right-wing, United States, USA
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To “punish” the unionised workers of Detroit, the capitalist oligarchs moved many factories abroad or to jackbooted neofascist Southern states (where Evangelicalism supports a vicious and cruel kleptocracy). They showed no sense of obligation to the people and cities who created their wealth… they simply cut them off and let them die. They then accused the decline on “socialism”… not their greed, cupidity, and self-centred sense of power. This is why Capitalism is evil, objectively so… it’s why all forms of accommodation with Big Capital are doomed to failure. It’s why all forms of “distributism” are nothing but capitulations to Capital and its all-consuming Greed (it simply throws a few more scraps to us workers… nothing more).
Socialism didn’t die with the USSR. Socialism had nothing to do with its collapse… nor did the USA play a role in that collapse. It came about due to Gorbachyov’s feckless and erratic personality. Russia learnt many lessons from that collapse. The USA didn’t… it’s allowing Big Capital to run amuck and destroy wide swaths of the USA. I’d note that such policies never work over the long haul… a spectre is haunting Mar-a-Lago…
BMD