with Martha Quillen
Conservative pundits and politicians have long rallied their followers by fomenting fury, but you’ve got to wonder if they’re going too far when they start fomenting revolution.
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann often urges revolution, presumably in the metaphorical sense. In March she said, “I want the people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”
Then last April, Texas Governor Rick Perry told reporters at an anti-tax tea party that Texas might have to secede if “Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people.”
Soon, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and former House majority leader Tom Delay were defending Perry’s position, and the popular pundits went on to defend secession as something states should have a right to do. After that secessionist zeal soared.
The idea of secession is old news in Texas where there’s a wide range of secessionist groups and the issue is a favorite ballot addendum. On the whole, Texans aren’t for it, but contemplating secession is pretty traditional down there.
This ballot business may have led some people astray, though — including Governor Perry. In April, Perry told his audience that Texas, having been a Republic rather than a U.S. territory, had entered the union with the right to secede.
That isn’t true. Texas entered the union with the right to divide and thereby add an additional four states if it so desired — but not to leave at will.
In 1869, the Supreme Court held that secession is illegal. In Texas v. White, White and a bunch of fellow bondholders tried to claim that Texas couldn’t take them to federal court to decide an issue because Texas (then operating under a provisional reconstruction government) had lost that right by seceding. But the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution represents our country as an “indestructible union, composed of indestructible states,” and thus Texas had never really left the union.
Modern secessionists tend to regard that decision as wrong and also cite a host of other reasons to support their cause, including the popular claim that the annexation of Texas was never legal in the first place.
And there were certainly a few quirks in how Texas joined the union (which isn’t too surprising since it was the only independent nation ever to do so). Texas was admitted to the union in 1846 by a Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress, which required only a simple minority vote (rather than by the formal annexation treaty which congress worked on but never quite worked out).
You would think if the annexation of Texas wasn’t done right, the U.S. might be able to throw it out. But would that necessarily mean that Texas could secede? After all, Texas wanted to join the union way back in 1836 when it first became a Republic, but the U.S. didn’t want it; and again in 1846, at which point the U.S. did want it. And the state also reunited with the Union after the Civil War (although it doubtlessly would have preferred to win the war and stay out).
At this point, that’s all history, though. Now all that really matters is whether Texas or any other state should be able to secede. And Hannity and Beck aren’t the only ones cheering on that idea.
Very few people weighing in on a ThinkProgress blog about Governor Perry’s secessionist announcement sounded too upset at the prospect of losing Texas. Instead, typical reactions to Perry’s speech were: Bye. Bon Voyage. Great. Good. Don’t let the door hit ya…. Hurray. Could you take Oklahoma with you? Alabama? Nebraska? Mississippi?
Secession is indeed gaining notoriety these days, and so it occurred to me that perhaps Ed and I could join the action and support the cause by forming: “Liberals for Texas Secession.” Or “Coloradans for Texas Secession.” Or “Forty-nine Other States for Texas Secession.”
If Fox News is any indication, supporting Texas secession is a great career move, and I suspect our groups might become even more popular than the Texas organizations already promoting secession — especially if Texas threatened to become five states with five governors and ten U.S. Senators as its original entry provided for.
But there are downsides to Texas secession.
First of all, several of the Texas secessionist groups include Central Colorado in their plans for the New Republic of Texas. That’s right, folks; Texas once claimed land stretching clear up through New Mexico and Colorado and on into Wyoming, which would put the San Luis Valley, Salida, Buena Vista, and numerous other Colorado mountain communities in the new nation.
I don’t want to have to change my address, though. Or buy all that new stationery, and deal with a whole new postal system, and maybe be forced to join a militia and fight a war. So thanks, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, but no thanks. If you want to secede, take your own states with you – instead of mine.
Until recently, the Texas secession movement struck me as a curious artifact of a singular history – bold, brash, and even more amusing than Guffey’s habit of electing a humane but non-human mayor.
But current events are turning talk about secession and revolution into something far more ominous. At a rally in Austin participants gleefully shouted that the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants. And at Glenn Beck’s recent 9-12 event in Washington, signs represented President Obama as a Nazi, a Marxist, Stalin, Hitler, Satan, a liar, thief, African, Muslim, Jew, fascist …
These days right-thinking folks are getting meaner, ruder, and more hateful, waving Confederate flags, indulging in racist taunts, singing “Barack the Magic Negro,” carrying guns into town hall meetings, clamoring for revolution, and displaying “You Lie” bumper stickers to celebrate South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst during the congressional address.
It doesn’t seem to matter that Wilson’s outburst was bizarre. The present bill doesn’t cover illegal aliens; nor will it fund abortions; or establish death panels. Such charges are wholly bogus — just like all of that blather about Obama not having a birth certificate.
Republicans keep yammering about a lack of enforcement regarding illegal aliens, but what is there to enforce? We’re talking about a national health insurance plan here. If your paperwork isn’t in order you won’t be eligible for supplements or benefits; it should be that simple. (But wouldn’t it be just like conservatives to launch a whole new, highly expensive investigative agency and then build a bunch of new prisons in order to reduce health care costs?)
Conservatives claim that Democrats don’t get it; that Washington isn’t listening; and that they aren’t being heard. But they are being heard, and Democrats do get it. We know that a lot of conservatives dislike Obama’s positions almost as much as liberals despised Bush’s wars.
But does that mean conservatives should be threatening violence? Calling for revolution? Contemplating secession? And screaming for blood?
To what end? In order to incite riots? Inspire shootings? Or encourage an assassination?
The conservative community’s recent devotion to tough talk, racist innuendo, Confederate flags, secession, and anti-tax rhetoric strikes me as deeply ironic. The Republican Party was founded as an anti-slavery party, and Abraham Lincoln, the first Grand Old Party President, was the supreme anti-secessionist.
Then later, Republican Theodore Roosevelt became the first real champion of business regulation and taxing the wealthy. T.R. supported an inheritance tax (or death tax, if you will) to assure that inherited wealth wouldn’t lead to an American aristocracy with enough resources to control the government.
Issues change over the years and political parties change. But I never thought that the Republicans would be the ones to advocate revolution and rioting, armed rebellion and mayhem. That just doesn’t sound like most of the Republicans I know.
I suppose armed insurrection is fairly traditional in the U.S. (what with the Revolution, and War between the States and lynchings), and Republicans do talk about tradition a lot. Yet when Republicans started talking about taking back America and returning to how things used to be, I always thought they had Andy of Mayberry in mind. I never realized they meant civil war.
Martha Quillen resides in the proposed New Republic of Texas with her husband Ed, as does her mother, sister, brother-in-law and two nieces who live in the Dallas area.
