Is America too big? Is it time to break up the U.S.?
A week after the November election nearly 700,000 Americans from
all 50 states had signed 69 secession petitions as part of the
White House “We the People” online petition system. The missives
requested the administration to peacefully allow states to leave
the union. One petition advocated permitting states which seceded
to form their own nation. A formal White House review is triggered
by just 25,000 signatures.
Although President Obama’s reelection sparked the cascade of
petitions, advocates cited other grounds. Daniel Miller, president
of the Texas nationalist movement, claimed: “This is not a reaction
to a person but to policy and what we see as a federal government
that is so disconnected from its constituents and absolute no
regard for what its purpose was.” He added that “self-determination
is kind of the underpinning to all of this — the ability to
provide Texas solutions to Texas problems.”
One Texas petition complained that America “continues to suffer
economic difficulties stemming from the federal government’s
neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending,” in contrast to
the state, which “maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th
largest economy in the world.” Many of the petitions cited
America’s Declaration of Independence. Two state measures quoted
Benjamin Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor
safety.” One petition spoke of the necessity of separating from “a
tyrannical government.” A related bumper sticker proclaimed:
“Secede! From the United Socialist States of America.”
Not everyone was amused. On the Huffington Post Bob
Cesca
called signers “whiny diaper babies.” Others opposing secession
responded with their own petitions. Some advocated seceding from
those wanting to secede. One Texas petition advocated using
education to “eradicate” the disease afflicting the “mentally
deficient” who were pressing for secession.
And some petitions advocated defenestration for those exercising
their First Amendment right to petition the government. Two online
missives proposed deportation as a remedy. One petition urged the
president to “sign an executive order such that each American
citizen who signed a petition for any state to secede from the USA
shall have their citizenship stripped and be peacefully deported.”
No need, apparently, to go to Congress or the courts in this case.
One of these measures quickly hit the administration’s 25,000
signature minimum.
Cesca even used the “T” word, calling advocacy of secession
“technically an act of treason.” He noted that a similar effort was
punished with great force 150 years ago.
The administration has yet to comment, but promised to prepare
an answer. “Every petition that crosses the threshold is reviewed
and receives a response,” stated the White House.
Today it is the Right that is talking about secession. However,
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
pointed out that the left did so after George W. Bush was
re-elected in 2004: “… disappointed Democrats were talking about
secession, and circulating maps of America divided into ‘The United
States of Canada’ and ‘Jesusland’.” Frustration with elections and
policies are not confined to any ideology.
No leading political figure has yet signed on. The closest might
be Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Three years ago he said his state wasn’t
likely to secede, but “there’s a lot of different scenarios.” He
said he saw no reason to dissolve the American union, but “if
Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people,
you know, who knows what might come out of that?” The same year he
opined that as a onetime independent nation “we can leave anytime
we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.” But when
asked about the new petitions, his spokesman said that the governor
“believes in the greatness of our union and nothing should be done
to change it.”
Indeed, truth be told, most of the signers probably don’t want
to go. They are upset at Barack Obama’s re-election and are lashing
out — even whining a bit, though not really like “diaper
babies.”
However, if they were serious no one likely would stop them.
Although President Abraham Lincoln plunged the disunited U.S. into
a horrific civil war, today American leaders routinely lecture the
rest of the world about the importance of settling such quarrels
peacefully. They would more likely take the advice of one U.S.
Senator who, three years into America’s greatest conflict, wished
that the national government had said “erring sisters, go in
peace.”
In contrast, Cesca imagined the possibility of “an army of
disloyal soldiers and militia” seizing a handful of federal
military bases, but losing to vastly more capable U.S. military
which “would summarily wipe out an army of rag-tags.” Short of
that, he predicted that Washington would starve out the dissenters,
blocking “the power grid, pipelines, shipping lanes and, yes,
satellite and internet communications.” He also foresaw the
likelihood of “solidly blue areas inside the seceded states” which
would require emergency airlifts, à la the Cold War Berlin
Airlift.
It sounds like a Hollywood script being written. Indeed, one
wonders if Cesca became a bit excited at the thought of visiting
death and devastation upon Red States and all others who disagreed
with him. Or perhaps he was smoking funny cigarettes or suffering
from an overeager imagination when he wrote his column. The
Horsemen of the Apocalypse stalk America! The Mayans were right:
the world is about to end!
Cesca did make one fair point. Most of the states with the
strongest support for secession are the biggest “moochers and
freeloaders,” receiving substantial financial transfers from the
national government. The Washington Post’s
Dana Milbank made the same point: Missouri gets $1.29, South
Carolina gets $1.38, Louisiana gets $1.45, and Alabama gets $1.71
for every $1 in taxes paid.
With secession “that gravy train would cease to exist,” noted
Cesca. He went on to suggest that everyone in America would be
helpless if they weren’t collecting federal goodies and looting
everyone else, which is nonsense — pervasive subsidies and
bail-outs make Americans weaker, not stronger. But some people
currently demanding their freedom might not be quite so enthused
about freeing themselves if they knew that meant they would be on
their own financially.
Behind all the silliness is a serious issue, however. Why
shouldn’t people be able to reorder their political arrangements if
they wish? Must whatever has been put together be forever kept
together? In an otherwise hysterical column, Peter Morrison, a
Texas Republican Party activist, reasonably
asked: “Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same
government?” Indeed, why?
There’s no inherent reason why any particular group of people
should be in community with any other. Slavery will always stain
the cause of the southern Confederacy, but what principle justified
slaughtering thousands to hold the country together? Unionist
Horace Greeley declared in the New York Tribune: “We hope
never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the
residue by bayonets.” Then-Col. Robert E. Lee opposed secession but
explained: “a Union that can only be maintained by swords and
bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place
of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.”
In many ways we are a badly divided people. Noted
Patrick Buchanan: “While no one takes this movement as seriously as
men took secession in 1861, the sentiments behind it ought not to
be minimized. For they bespeak a bristling hostility to the federal
government and a dislike bordering on detestation of some Americans
for other Americans, as deep as it was on the day Beauregard’s guns
fired on Fort Sumter.”
Americans soon may face the issue from the other direction. On
November 6 residents of Puerto Rico voted for statehood in a
confusing plebiscite on the island’s status. Puerto Rico, conquered
by the U.S. during the Spanish-American War, currently is a
commonwealth. There long has been a small independence movement,
but the majority of Puerto Ricans traditionally preferred
commonwealth to statehood. This time the majority rejected the
“present form of territorial status,” after which they voted on the
alternatives of independence, statehood, and “sovereign free
associated state.” Statehood won with 61 percent.
The mere fact that someone wants to join the union doesn’t mean
it should be invited to join. That applies to other potential
aspirants as well. There once was serious talk of Canada breaking
up, and Patrick Buchanan mused on which provinces should be invited
to become American states. Even if America’s northern neighbor
dissolved and some of its parts wanted to join the U.S., it
wouldn’t necessarily make sense to say yes.
Rather than arguing about secession, it would be better to
revive federalism. The national government has grown into a monster
Leviathan, attempting to micro-manage the lives of 314 million
Americans. Yet Washington is dominated by unrepresentative elites
which are largely beyond peoples’ control. Frustration and anger
are justified.
What to do? Reynolds wrote: “Let the central government do the
things that only central governments can do — national defense,
regulation of trade to keep the provinces from engaging in economic
warfare from one another, protection of basic civil rights — and
then let the provinces go their own way in most other issues.” If
you’re not happy, you don’t have to secede: just move to another
state.
This has the advantage of fulfilling the original constitutional
scheme. The national government was supposed to have only limited
and enumerated powers. In contrast, according to James Madison in
Federalist No. 45, states were to be concerned with “the lives,
liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order,
improvement, and prosperity of the state.”
Bigger is not always better. Europe is discovering that reality,
as opposition rises to continuing efforts to shift more power to
the European Union and Brussels, and secessionist sentiments grow
in Belgium’s Flanders, Spain’s Catalonia, and Great Britain’s
Scotland.
Concern is likely to only grow in America. Washington is ever
more imperious and unaccountable; it does ever more that should be
left to other governments and, more important, to other
institutions. Inflammatory rhetoric aside, Americans face a crisis
of government.
Secession isn’t likely to prove a practical answer. Instead of
breaking up the United States of America, people should focus on
devolving authority to states, localities, families, and
individuals. Rediscovering federalism is should become the new
mantra in Washington.
