Thread: 15 States Including Texas Have Filed A Petition To Secede From The United States Sund

Rebel Yell: 700,000 Americans sign secession petitions to White House - YouTube

Published on Dec 9, 2012

Hundreds of thousands of Americans say they want to break away from Washington.

Residents across the land, have signed internet petitions, saying they don't want to be part of the United States anymore. Marina Portnaya has the story.

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Do States Have a Right to Secede?

by Robert Natelson on December 14, 2012

The news that thousands of people have signed a petition for their own states to secede from the union has raised this issue once again.

We’ll leave to another time the suspicion-inducing question of why so much attention is focused on the most extreme remedy for federal overreaching when the Framers’ own perfectly constitutional remedy remains neglected (the state application and convention process of Article V). In this post, let’s address only whether the Constitution—as understood by the people who adopted it—actually authorizes secession. More information on this topic appears in my book, The Original Constitution.

The text of the document does not address the issue directly. But from all appearances it seems to contemplate a perpetual union. The drafters’ views on the subject were well captured by John Dickinson, writing during the federal convention: “We are not forming plans for a day month year or age, but for eternity.”

Moreover, the Constitution is not written in the form of an interstate compact. Its structure is based on the standard form of a royal charter by which the sovereign granted power to others. In the case of the Constitution, the sovereign is “We the People,” recited in the same place that the king’s name would have been located before Independence. Recall that the Declaration of Independence already had defined Americans as “one people.”

Opponents of the Constitution fully understood the significance of this structure, and it was one reason for their opposition. For example, at the Virginia ratifying convention anti-federalist Patrick Henry reacted in anger: “Who authorized [the Framers] to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states?”

What were the views of other Founders? A popular book on the Constitution by an academic author claims that the advocates of the Constitution insisted during the ratification debates that the states were individual parties to a federal compact. The book also claims that three states—Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island—reserved in their actions of ratification their right to secede from the union.

Do you believe in the right of states to secede? Sign the petition.

But those assertions are simply false.

Here’s why:

* During the lead-up to ratification, the Federalists (the Constitution’s advocates) generally spoke or wrote of the document as a power grant directly from the people. Thus, James Madison asserted in Federalist No. 46: “The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes.” In other words, the federal government is the agent of the people, not of the states.

* Opponents of the Constitution acknowledged this. William Grayson, a leading anti-federalist speaking at the Virginia ratifying convention, summarized the pro-Constitution position as holding that the Constitution “was a compact between the people themselves”—not among the states.

* The claim that Virginia, Maryland, or Rhode Island reserved in their ratification instruments a right of secession is also false. Maryland said nothing on the subject. And although states’ rights feeling was particularly strong in Virginia and Rhode Island, neither of those states asserted a right of secession either.

* On the contrary, the Virginia ratification instrument acknowledged expressly that “the powers granted under the Constitution” were “derived from the people of the United States.” And the Rhode Island instrument stated that “That all power is naturally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.”

* Both Virginia and Rhode Island acknowledged the general right of revolution against an oppressive government, but both asserted that right for the people, not for the states. A proposed statement of the general right of revolution was rejected by the Maryland convention. You can read the ratification acts of Maryland, Virginia, and Rhode Island yourself by clicking on the state names in this sentence.

Why is there such confusion on the issue? One reason is that some in the Founding Generation did speak of the proposed Constitution as if it were an interstate compact. But this is best understood as a slip of the tongue or of the pen, since the Founders were used to thinking of the central government in terms of the Articles of Confederation, which was such a compact. (Note, however, that even the Articles were by their terms “perpetual;” there was no reserved right of secession.)

Additional confusion arises because many the Founders used the word “compact” to describe the Constitution. However, during the Founding Era, the term “compact” in this context usually referred to a general social compact among the people themselves. (On the use of the word, see Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism, pp. 16-22). When the Founders referred to the Constitution as a compact, they generally meant the word in this sense. An example is the William Grayson quote above.

Finally, as I have pointed out before, many common myths about the Founding actually were invented or gained force decades after the Constitution was adopted, and were promulgated by those who stood to gain from them. The supposed right of secession is one example.

None of this excuses the outrageous disregard of constitutional limits shown in recent years by the federal government. Nor should it discourage people from opposing federal overreaching.

But the first step to enforcing the Constitution is to understand what it does—and does not—mean.

Tagged as: secession

About Robert Natelson

Rob Natelson is one of America’s best-known constitutional scholars and a former a tenured law professor at the University of Montana. Natelson is a Senior Fellow at both the Independence Institute and Arizona’s Goldwater Institute.


Do States Have a Right to Secede?

TX Resolution For State Referendum On Independence


http://www.texasnationalist.com/independence-referendum-bill.pdf

No "State" has seceded.

No "State government" has even attempted to secede.

Secession petitions grow, but without legal weight - San Antonio ...
www.mysanantonio.com/.../Secession-petitions-grow-but-without-leg...CachedNov 14, 2012 – Crockett said that, while creating online secession petitions is an “amusing and conspicuous way to vent,” it does little to advance the political ...


IS SECESSION POSSIBLE? « The Burning Platform
www.theburningplatform.com/?p=43883Cached
Nov 12, 2012 – It appears that this is a clear-cut case of secession petition fraud. ...


U.S. Secession Petitions: Not Legal for States like Texas to Break ...
ideas.time.com/.../can-texas-really-secede-from-the-union-not-legally...Cached
Nov 19, 2012 – ... of Americans from all 50 states have signed petitions to secede. ...

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

No "State" has seceded.

No "State government" has even attempted to secede.

Secession petitions grow, but without legal weight - San Antonio ...
www.mysanantonio.com/.../Secession-petitions-grow-but-without-leg...CachedNov 14, 2012 – Crockett said that, while creating online secession petitions is an “amusing and conspicuous way to vent,” it does little to advance the political ...


IS SECESSION POSSIBLE? « The Burning Platform
www.theburningplatform.com/?p=43883Cached
Nov 12, 2012 – It appears that this is a clear-cut case of secession petition fraud. ...


U.S. Secession Petitions: Not Legal for States like Texas to Break ...
ideas.time.com/.../can-texas-really-secede-from-the-union-not-legally...Cached
Nov 19, 2012 – ... of Americans from all 50 states have signed petitions to secede. ...

The thing is they are working on it, a while back no State or Local Government would have even dreamed of doing it before.....Just goes to show where there is smoke there is fire...I am not sure I agree with the secession idea because I think it could mean divide and conquer for us all. I feel were much stronger as a nation standing together and secede from the government manipulators,judges and etc by withholding taxes, and other things they take from us against our will we need to force them to abide by the Constitution.

Originally Posted by kathyet

The thing is they are working on it, a while back no State or Local Government would have even dreamed of doing it before. . .

And NO GOVERNMENT is attempting to do it now. It's just some people signing petetions. Petitions that have no LEGAL meaning.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

And NO GOVERNMENT is attempting to do it now. It's just some people signing petetions. Petitions that have no LEGAL meaning.

Of course not....Why would the government do it to themselves??? It is the people in this Country who need to band together and put a stop to all this crap the Government is doing...

There certainly is no place in the Constitution that permits people to force their state to secede from the union.

So to attempt to do so would be unconstitutional.

The U.S. Constitution was written in the wake of the failure of the Articles of Confederation

Would States Secede to Protect Their Citizens?

Alan Caruba (Bio and Archives) Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Many, if not most, Americans are unaware that the nation is composed of separate republics with their own constitutions. They are, of course, the individual states.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved respectively, or to the people.” – Tenth Amendment

By tying compliance with federal laws and regulation to receiving funds, the states have been coerced to accept programs that limit freedoms enumerated in the Constitution and the passage of Obamacare is but one example. Some twenty states have refused to set up the mandated insurance exchanges. Obamacare grants the government complete control over the provision of medical care that every American has formerly received from the free market health system that it destroyed. It gives the federal government control over our lives in terms of who lives or dies.

As noted on the website of the Tenth Amendment Center: “The Founding Fathers has good reason to pen the Tenth Amendment.”

“The issue of power – and especially the great potential for a power struggle between the federal and the state governments – was extremely important to the America’s founders. They deeply distrusted government power, and their goal was to prevent the growth of the type of government that the British has exercised over the colonies.”

“Adoption of the Constitution of 1787 was opposed by a number of well-known patriots including Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others. They passionately argued that the Constitution would eventually lead to a strong, centralized state power which would destroy the individual liberty of the People. Many in this movement were given the poorly-named tag ‘Anti-Federalists.’”

“The Tenth Amendment was added to the Constitution of 1787 largely because of the intellectual influence and personal persistence of the Anti-Federalists and their allies.”

Their worst fears are coming true as the nation heads into 2013. In just four years, the Obama administration, through its profligate borrowing and spending, has brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse and, as we have seen, the refusal of the President to negotiate anything than the current Band-Aid to avoid the “fiscal cliff” for another two months, has brought the nation to a point where the collapse of the U.S. dollar is not just imminent, but likely.

When that occurs the individual states may elect to secede in order to avoid having the federal government nationalize their National Guard units or take control of their state police to enforce whatever measures it might take to control the population. Individual state law enforcement authorities in cities and towns would need similar protection. Reportedly, massive amounts of funding have been directed to them to ensure their cooperation.

It would be a means to protect their citizens insofar as state constitutions grant the same rights as found in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It would not surprise me to see Texas lead the way. Others would follow.

You know things are bad when historians like Arthur Herman, writing on the January 3 Fox News, says that “Washington’s Republicans and Democrats alike have become the toll collectors on the road to serfdom.”

Citing recent riots in Argentina, Herman said that “Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s wealth get mugged by those who spend it—as just happened this week in Washington.”

If the private sector manages to rally this year, it may buy some time before the midterm elections in 2014.

A letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune summed up the problem neatly. “Let’s look at what we have learned from this election: Twenty-one of 22 incumbent senators were re-elected, and 353 of 373 incumbent members of the House were re-elected. The American people have re-elected 94 percent of the incumbents who were running for re-election to an institution that has an approval rating of about 9 percent.

This indicates, as an electorate, we are a nation of idiots. We’re now stuck with the useless, dysfunctional government that we deserve.”

The U.S. Constitution was written in the wake of the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the first attempt to unite the states for the common good of the growing nation. It is the product of some of the finest minds, the most dedicated advocates of liberty, to gather in one place at one time. It is the oldest, living Constitution in the world. It was adopted on September 17, 1787 and ratified in June of 1788.

On December 17, 1791, the first ten amendments—the Bill of Rights—were ratified. It is a list of immunities from interference by the federal government and the fears of the Founders are now being borne out by a government that is too large, borrows and spends too much money, and has departments such as the Homeland Security that threaten the rights of free speech, travel, and other freedoms. Every U.S. citizen is now subject to government surveillance more typical of a totalitarian government than one that respects and protects their personal security and rights.

This is why the United States could find itself in a rebellion that will rival the causes of the Civil War, itself a state’s rights conflict in addition to the issue of slavery that had hung over the Constitution since its ratification; an effort to “kick the can down the road” the Founders agreed to in order to get it ratified.

It is not beyond the imagination that a deliberately created crisis would prompt individual states to withdraw from the Union to protect themselves and their citizens, otherwise known as “the people.”

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Alan has a daily blog called Warning Signs.

Alan can be reached at acaruba@aol.com

Older articles by Alan Caruba


Would States Secede to Protect Their Citizens?

No state has seceded.

No state is going to secede.

This is all entertainment from The Theater of the Absurd.

theater of the absurd - The Free Dictionary

www.thefreedictionary.com/theater+of+the+absurdCached - Similar
A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing ...