Monday, November 26, 2012

Compulsory Attendance?

The election outcome has triggered a rash of petitions to the federal government for approval to secede from the union. Texas got the most signatures the fastest but there were a couple of dozen other states which had similar petitions.

That of course has gotten the mouth-breathing political class, unencumbered by logic or information, to broadly brush the entire activity as "sour grapes" and failure to deal with the outcome of the election. No debate on the merits of the question are necessary. You are simply a foolish non-progressive with a warped sense of history if you ask to debate the question of secession.

This is the movement taken to the extreme, but it forces a consideration of a simple question:

Bumper Stickers

Please no citations of 1869 Supreme Court cases which were dealing with the aftermath of the civil war. This simple question is whether compulsory membership of a union against your will is a good thing. Does the union gain a benefit if members no longer want to be a part of it?

For a twentieth century example of a union which had members seeking secession and in which they were compelled to remain captive politically, let us look here:



Or maybe this example:

Velvet Revolution 1968

Or maybe the collapse of a confederation here:

East Germany 1989

Hopefully you can see the examples offering a parallel. No, I'm not saying we are YET similar to a Warsaw Pact or Soviet Union. But what I am pointing out is that when the members no longer want to attend the party, then you had better pay attention and not simply dismiss the concept. A club in which members don't want to be there is more than a Groucho Marx punch line.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to see you posting again!

Old NFO said...

Yep, and then there is 'this'... I'm betting if DHS has their way, anyone that signed will lose their clearance...

http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/21/defense-department-signing-secession-petitions-wont-affect-your-security-clearance/

juvat said...

Instapundit has gone on record sayin that secession is a dumb idea and proposes reinstating federalism as outlined in the Constitution. I'm not for secession, yet, but I don't think the current "I won" mindset would be willing to negotiate a return to federalism without a credible possibility of secession.

an Donalbane said...

Excellent observation.

While the odds of Texas actually separating from the U.S. are extremely remote (though, as a stand-alone republic, Texas' viability is head and shoulders above any other petitioner's), it's particularly dismaying, even anger-inducing, that the liberals, e.g. Bob Ray Sanders, dismiss it so blithely, without so much as even a thought about the reasons that so many would be willing to leave the soirée.

To be viable, a business (and in the macro sense, an economy) requires: raw resources, transportation, markets, skilled labor, capital. Does Texas have these? Check all five boxes.

To these, some will ice the cake by considering liveability issues such as climate and culture. Check two more boxes. Still, a long shot for Texas to go it alone.

But what if we upped the ante by adding OK, KS, NE, WY, UT, ID (maybe AZ & MT, too)? Well now, that would be a real continental divide, now wouldn't it? That would access lots more resources, as well as some good ski destinations. And I hear that AB, BC, MB and SK are not all that thrilled with Ottawa these days (and if they join the club, let's bring in AK & YT) - wow, Denali, Vancouver Island, Banff, Moose Jaw, and Fort Worth all in the Greater Republic of Texas? Where do I sign up?

That's all fanciful, to be sure. But national leaders who disregard and disenfranchise their productive members to redistribute the spoils to the teat-suckers would be well advised to take heed.

(Did I run over on word count?)

Robman said...

I sure wouldn't want to be part of a "union" in which the national elections are rigged.

Well, I'm just an individual, not a state, of course. I still consider myself an American. But I don't think "America" exists anymore.

Where our presidential elections are concerned, we might as well call ourselves the "United States of Venezuela".

There is no way - NO WAY - that this election had lower turnout than even 2004, not when we had a record audience for presidential debates.

There is NO WAY Romney got LESS votes than McCain did last time. Not with all the yard signs I saw in my swing state of Ohio for Romney versus Obama (at least five times as many Romney signs), not with the Tea Party fully mobilized behind Romney, the same Tea Party that gave the Dems a "shellacking" two years ago, the same Tea Party that DIDN'T EXIST FOUR YEARS AGO.

There is NO WAY this was about the GOP being "too white" or "out of touch on social issues", when exit polls clearly showed that the #1 concern was jobs/economy, which reliable polling ALSO showed voters trusted Romney on rather than Obama.

And then there's the fact that Obama did not win ONE state that required photo ID for voting. Then of course there was the Feds strong arming PA into delaying implementation of their recently passed photo ID law, Fed interference in Florida purging their voter rolls, and Fed interference in enforcemnent of Ohio's voter ID laws.

So, in an election billed by countless observers - and rightly so - as THE MOST IMPORTANT IN U.S. HISTORY...Obama wins with less votes than McCain got last time, and Romney can't even get that many votes, even with the abysmal record of Obama to run against. Yeah, right.

This really is an outrage. No wonder so many don't want to be a part of this country anymore.

If I were rigging the election for Obama, I would have tried to be a LITTLE less obvious. I would have had Obama get, say, 65 million votes, and Romney get maybe 62 million (at least a little better than McCain did). I would have let Romney win in at least ONE key swing state, like Iowa maybe.

This is just so blatant. I feel like I did in the wake of 9-11, that a terrible crime has been committed against this nation. Only not by an outside enemy, but an enemy 'inside the gates'.

Robman said...

I guess given the above, I should add what I think really happened.

There was a "two-pronged" attack on the election itself.

First, the standard tricks of illegals, early voters voting again, dead people voting; i.e., all the things traditional sleazy Chicago-style Dems are known for.

Then, I believe electronic voting machines in key areas - not really the machines themselves, but rather, the server to which voting data was transmitted - were tampered with such that literally millions of Romney votes simply "disappeared", as if they were never cast. Simply dumped.

This would not have been done nationwide, of course. This would have been done in selected areas in order to make it look at least minimally plausible.

That's what I believe happened.

Welcome to the United States of Venezuela.

Anonymous said...

Robman, agree with you 100% on the voter fraud angle. The numbers don't add up. I believe Obama lost in a landslide and both parties establishment,are invested in an Obama "victory" and a "New World Order One World Government" Slave State ,that victory would help bring in.The elites are desperate to keep us from finding out the truth. Everyone take heart and realize we are still in the majority despite the media's attempts to make us think otherwise.

Anonymous said...

Robman, I believe you summed it up pretty well, now lets hit the reset button on these libtards, and secede.
I am from Texas and I approved your message and mine. Secede from the libtards and let them pay their own damn bills.

Ex-Dissident said...

Robman,
I agree with you. More than a million Americans reacted to these election results with an instinctual "I want to get the hell out of here." feeling and these are the people signing these petitions to secede. For every signature, there are probably at least 20 people who feel likewise but have not placed their name on such a form. Think about it: tens millions of Americans want get away from corrupt DC...possibly over 100 million of Americans.

This secession nonsense is not such nonsense, and what your gut tells you to do, should never be dismissed. In the end, we may well dissolve this union. Our country is far weaker now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Corrupt governments usually become weaker with time. If the democrats really want to build a socialist state, if they really want to be back in the USSR, then their socialist utopia will be very short lived. Soviet Union fell apart because it was weak. The only thing that will keep this union of North American States together is economic strength, and that is not the road we're on.

WishfulThinkingInOK said...

If ya'll decide to succeed, please take us with you!

We still won't rout for Mack Brown any more than you will for Bob Stoops, but hey other than that we agree more than disagree. How about the two star republic?

CCK said...

Too bad We've got that liberal hot bed of New Mexico in between us, cause a Texas/OK/AZ republic is exactly where I'd want to be.

Understand it could be bozeman montana that leaves and I'll be on the first flight there.

Robman said...

I hope it doesn't come to the country breaking up. It shouldn't come to that.

I saw an interesting map in the WSJ - at least a semi-non-corrupted media source. It showed official polling results on a county basis, not a state basis. So, it was red vs. blue COUNTIES, not states.

That was pretty revealing. Many of you might be surprised to know that most of California is RED.

The blue sections are mostly major metropolitian areas in the upper midwest, east coast, and west coast. Big liberal college towns and some megacities (where voter fraud is easier to carry out). That was it.

At least in terms of land area, the overwhelming majority of the U.S. in pretty much EVERY state voted for Romney, and those are the official figures, not taking into account the blatant vote padding for Obama and the amazing vanishing Romney votes.

If states try to secede, I worry that will give Obama & Co. the excuse they are looking for to establish an actual military authoritarian dictatorship so as to "restore order", you know.

Why do you all suppose that Lincoln flick is coming out right now, just after the election? And to underscore the point, the recent Time Magazine cover, "What would Lincoln do?"

Must all be coincidence, I'm sure...

We need photo ID for voting as a national law. We need to go back to paper ballots with better oversight. We need something like a responsible media.

The media is the central problem, backed up by the educational system.

We could run an opponent to Obama's anointed successor (I expect this to be Hillary...you know, that's the deal they made...now it will be time for 'the first woman president'). No matter how ruinous Obama's second term would be, no matter that the opponent our side fielded could be George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all rolled into one, with the media we have today, they'd be demonized to the max so as to brainwash a braindead public into repeating the mantra, "Gee, the Republicans can't field a decent candidate", etc. And if that doesn't work by itself, then the election itself is massively tampered with.

In other words, a replay of the one-two punch we just witnessed.

I don't know if this can be fixed. If it can't, maybe the country will break up. Maybe there will be chaos.

What a terrible shame, given the incredible wealth and potential this country still has, in spite of everything. Trashing the Garden of Eden, it seems...the oldest story around, I guess.