Gazette Article: To Secede is Not to Succeed by John P. Flannery

TO SECEDE IS NOT TO SUCCEED

By John P. Flannery

I’m sitting on a ship watching 12 foot waves crest as we cut through the Tasman Sea from New Zealand to Sydney, Australia, and I’ve learned about an astonishing citizen’s petition, reportedly supported by some folk in all fifty states, that defies law and good sense (visit our traveling blog –http://downunderodyssey.blogspot.com ).

At last count, about 8,000 Virginians signed a petition that they submitted to the White House saying that they want Virginia to secede from the Union; while I can’t say whether there are any signatories from Loudoun County to secede, there are some from nearby Manassas.

At first, I thought, these petitioners wanted to cheat the electoral outcome, President Obama’s re-election, and I’m sure that’s part of it.  This, by itself, is distressing since, for myself and most Americans, we would never consider such an extra-legal, and unlawful response, to the election of the candidate we opposed, and I’m saying that applies even when, from my partisan perspective, then Governor George Bush stole the White House in 2000 with the highly controversial and unprecedented assist from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Next, I thought, we are just going to have to teach history and civics better than we are, if anyone honestly thinks, as a matter of our constitutional government, that any state may petition to withdraw from the union.  

It is daunting how many people reference documents, constitutional, legal and scriptural, that they have never read.

We had a civil war that, among other propositions, concerned itself with this precise question, whether Carolina’s John C. Calhoun was right, by his compact doctrine, providing that individual states could secede from the union. 

President Abraham Lincoln and General Robert E. Lee and the U.S. Congress resolved the matter firmly against secession and in favor of union by the results of that war.

Nevertheless, these petitioners have fellow and gal travelers in every state and Texas may be leading the pack right now with about 118,000 signatures.  To put this in perspective, that is ½ of 1 % of Texas’ population.  Hardly a ground swell.  According to blogs, supporters most frequently complain about outsiders “messing with Texas.”  To Governor Rick Perry’s credit, he does not support this initiative, says he “believes in the greatness of our union” – and we have to credit his leadership on this issue because he twice had a more “relaxed” view on the subject back in 2009.

One Texas petitioner, Larry Scott Kilgore, a gubernatorial wannabe, said Texas could survive on its own because, he wrote, Texas’ “economy is about 30 percent larger than that of Australia;”  by the by, Larry is changing his middle name, “Scott,” to “Secede.”  Mr. Kilgore has not considered Australia’s relationship, legal or economic, with Great Britain, nor, on the other hand, all those federal facilities, grants, tax breaks, or the millions in federal aid Texas welcomed to repair the wildfire damage; you also have to wonder how Texas would defend its borders with Mexico – if that concerns them – once they achieved “independence.”

At the end of the day, all these petitions may prompt, if they receive 25,000 signatures, is a White House response, nothing else, and don’t expect the President to affirm that there is any legal basis for Texas re-asserting itself as an independent nation like it was in 1846; by my estimate, the President’s “response is due” on or about December 10^th.

We are all familiar, or at least most of us are, with President Abraham Lincoln’s biblical invocation about what it means to have a house divided, and how it cannot stand.  In Lincoln’s First Inaugural,on March 4, 1861, he said, of our democratic character, “if the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.  There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other.  If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority.”

Speaking of the impending secession, Lincoln asked, “why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it?  All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.”

It is an undemocratic, egocentric, unconstitutional minority in this nation that invoke the rules of elections but, when they lose, want to pick up their bat and ball and go elsewhere – knowing not where or how they would survive, unconcerned about the general welfare or the integrity of the nation that they would compromise.

On this voyage I’ve had the chance to talk to people from Australia and New Zealand but also from Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, France, and South Africa, and, while it may not matter to our “secessionists” what the world thinks about us, they look askance at our division and political paralysis; we are all in this together including those who want to quit and be let alone, and we’d better figure out how to work together – as we’re not doing a very good job right now.

 

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