Editorial: Conservatives talk secession and compromise

The impact of the President Obama’s re-election has draw some interesting reactions from the right.

On the most extreme side we’ve seen people calling for secession with people in almost every state going to the White House website to petition the president to let their state leave the Union. The petition for Texas has more than 117,000 signatures according to our latest information, which seems like a lot of people but really isn’t.

Texas has a population of more than 25 million people, so the petitioners are less than one-half of one percent of Texans. It’s hard to pin down since polls weren’t around back then, but by contrast it is believed that about 40-45 percent of colonists supported the American Revolution.

The thing that always amuses me about talk of secession is that automatic reactions that range from a) Texas reserved the right to secede as a condition of admission to the Union in 1845, to b) the Civil War and/or the Supreme Court has determined that no state can secede. Neither position is correct.

Owing to its size, the Congressional joint resolution admitting Texas to the Union does allow it the option of dividing into as many as five states, but it nowhere says that Texas can leave. On the other side, the failed War for Southern Independence showed that the north had a greater industrial capacity and military might than did the south, and, as far as the courts go, the federal government is never going to say it is okay for states to break away. But states certainly can secede, and history proves it.

If you read the Declarations of Independence of both the United States and Texas, then it is pretty clear the founding fathers were secessionists. They believed to the death that sometimes people may need to dissolve their political ties with governments that are abusive to their liberties. Indeed, Jefferson wrote that people have not only the right but the duty to throw off their oppressors. However, governments – from London to Mexico City to Washington, DC – never agree that their own subjects can secede.

Of course, just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should. A free and independent Texas is fun to contemplate. The Lone Star is big enough to take care of itself, and it would be nice to see “a whole other country” that embraced liberty and limited government. Enshrine personal and economic liberty in law, join NAFTA to enjoy free trade with the US and Mexico, and watch a new national economy take off like a rocket. Unfortunately, with the ideologues we currently have running our state, it is very likely that a new Republic of Texas would be plagued by religious intolerance, a mediocre commitment to higher education, and political agendas in school curriculums. We would, however, have a balanced budget and sport very nice highways in Dallas, Austin, and Houston.

The question is moot though, because without a groundswell of popular support and the backing of prominent statesmen (who are in short supply these days), secession is an idea that is just never going to get traction.

On the opposite end of the spectrum in reaction to the president’s re-election, we see continued calls for “compromise” in Washington as the nation inches toward the so-called “fiscal cliff” – a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect in January and possibly throw the economy back into a recession. To that end, we are beginning to see some Republicans breaking away from the “no tax increase” stance, and the emboldened president continues to demonize the right, saying this week that the GOP will ruin Christmas if it doesn’t back down.

Will it never end? America doesn’t have an income problem; it has an expense problem. The government just flat spends too much money, and the best our “leaders” in Washington can come up with is a plan to save $1 trillion over ten years. How does that help us when we have a $1 trillion annual deficit and total debt of more than $16 trillion? We can’t tax our way out of that mess.

“Compromise,” it seems, is still a one-side proposition. There can be no solution to this disaster without reforming – and cutting – entitlements, namely Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But Democrats have said those are off limits. The results will be that the Republicans will cave – as they usually do – and America will get a semi-solution that gets us past January. After that, “Dancing with the Stars” will be back for a new season, and politicians will be mostly quiet until 2014.

Meanwhile…

It now appears certain that Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s great progressive presidents. Like all presidents who fit in this category, he has expanded entitlements, grown the role of the government, become a savior to the down trodden, and has championed social justice.

Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Baines Johnson have occupied similar statuses in the minds of the American public to the extent that they became known just by their initials – T.R., F.D.R., J.F.K., and L.B.J. As such it would seem fitting that, out of reverence, we henceforth refer to President Obama as simply B.O.