Thursday, January 28, 2021

Goings and Comings

There are some things we ought to have a conversation about in theoretical form, ahead of too much emotion or time pressure. We’ll cover a couple of those today.


A University of Texas class photo
in the shape of Texas, 2013
found here

Texit

Texas is a bit different from other states. Texas was an independent nation, not a colony or territory, before joining the United States. And it has kept the notion that it has the right to return to being an independent nation.

Let’s be clear about this: joining the United States means pledging allegiance to the republic of the United States of America, “one nation under God, indivisible.”

Very much like entering into a marriage covenant, this contract to unite with the other states—and “state” means a self-governing sovereign entity; it is not a province—is intended to be permanent. Most countries think of themselves as a state—a sovereign nation. Here in America, the United States is a state, applying that meaning. So the 50 states are actually states united within a single confederated state. Sorry if that’s confusing, but it wasn’t confusing for the founders when they did it.

So there was no intention of ever dividing again, once uniting. However, we know that marriage contracts, which are also intended to be permanent, do sometimes end. As with other contracts, they can end when one of the parties breaks the contract, meaning they refuse to abide by the agreements in the contract.

The agreements we abide by are contained in our US Constitution. It is a particular form of government. While there are democratic elements in it (voting by the people is involved), it is not a democracy, which would mean tyranny by the majority, regardless of laws, ethics, or agreements. It is a republic, which means there are representatives sent to represent the people, instead of having the people vote directly on each and every issue.

But it is also a particular kind of republic. The representatives can’t go do whatever they deem best on any given day; they must adhere to the limitations of the contract—the Constitution. What we have is a constitutional republic. That is what Texas—and each of the other states—signed on to join.

I am very much in favor of keeping connections that I value. But you can’t do that on one side only. There’s something about loyalty you have to get right. It’s a two-way thing. Being loyal to someone who is not loyal to you doesn’t maintain ties. You have to know what principles you’re acting on and be loyal to those principles—which will include loyalty to those people who are loyal along with you.

Loyalty to a person, or even a group of people, is the wrong idea. Yes, you want to be loyal to the person you’re married to and the people in your family. That means you seek the best for them. It doesn’t mean you follow them down a wrong path. You don’t hide a child from the law when they have done a heinous crime, for example. You don’t support an unfaithful and unrepentant spouse in mockery of your marriage contract.

So, how does this relate to Texas and the United States? If and when there comes a time when we can no longer say that the United States of America is a constitutional republic, then the contract is broken. This is not something to take lightly. As it says in our Declaration of Independence,

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

That comes just before the list of abuses in the Declaration, many of which are grievous, but many we will recognize today as much milder than what we’ve been suffering under a federal government that is usurping ever greater power.

To name just a few relatively new ones:

·       Government refuses to hear the evidence of voter fraud that has affected the state of Texas (and all the other states), dismissed the case as if it were none of our business how much other states use illegalities to affect the outcome of their elections.

·       Government has refused to protect our border—the longest length of which affects the state of Texas. Texas has long had to spend from its own treasury to do the border protection work that the federal government refuses to do. And then, when illegal aliens are apprehended and turned over to the federal government, the federal government sets them free among legal Texans, and requires Texans to pay for their food, housing, and education—and to suffer their crimes.

·       Government has trodden on our natural God-given rights of religion, speech, and assembly; has collected information to be used against us without warrant; and is attempting to disarm us so that we have no self-protection.

·       Government has attempted to control what is taught in schools, and to limit as much as possible the choice of parents to use non-public forms of education. Particularly, government has tried to institute a false history about our country and its founding, meanwhile indoctrinating our young people with harmful sexual deviancy.

·       Government has attempted to label as “terrorists” anyone who doesn’t go along with its usurpations. There is clearly a political double standard, and justice is no longer blind.

·       Government is currently in the process of arranging circumstances so that dissent will be stifled, and opposing views will never again have an opportunity to gain power by the normal means of election of legislators and executives, or appointments to courts who will abide by the written law. This includes threats (studies underway already) to pack the court, and to add states designed to give more representation to the current regime.

·       Government threatens to de-platform any dissenting voices, and threatens to “unite” by “cleansing” dissenting ideas from public discourse, using political prosecution, incarceration, and “deprogramming,” or brainwashing, and recruiting large tech companies to discriminate based on ideas or opinions, even affecting the ability to buy, sell, and making a living.

The list could go on almost endlessly. But that’s enough for a demonstration that we need to have the discussion.

Rep. Kyle Biedermann
from his Texas Legislature page
In Texas our legislature meets every other year for about five months of regular session, plus sometimes a limited special session (this year that will happen to address redistricting once the census data is available). The session just got underway a week ago. One of the recently filed bills is HB 1359, filed January 26, 2021, by Rep. Kyle Biedermann, of District 73, around Fredericksburg. It asks for the following question to be placed before the people on the November 2, 2021, ballot:

Should the legislature of the State of Texas submit a plan for leaving the United States of America and establishing an independent republic?


I’ve thought about this idea for a while. Actually, practically every Texan has, because we’re unique in our awareness of our sovereignty. Under Obama, I wondered if we needed something that would trigger such a question to be put before the people for vote. I thought it would be a longer process: put it in the party platform, propose bills to the legislature through multiple sessions, eventually pass something that would only come before the people once some particular egregious federal government actions were taken. And, who knows; it may still take forever.

But things have seemed compressed lately. We did indeed get a plank this past year in the platform:

65.          State Sovereignty: Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. Texas retains the right to secede from the United States should a future president and congress change our political system from a constitutional republic to any other system.

My records show the concept was introduced in the Constitutional Issues subcommittee in 2018 as well, but it didn’t make it into the final platform. That was two years into a Trump presidency when it didn’t seem urgent. Now, suddenly, it does.

I don’t find explicit wording in the Texas Constitution allowing for secession, nor any disallowing for it. Nor do limits on the states in the US Constitution specifically say states cannot secede. But it is understood generally that we are “indivisible”—that is, we can’t divide ourselves off. And there was a Civil War fought to keep states from seceding (other issues, such as slavery were involved, of course). Texas was one of those seceding states in the 1860s, brought back in by war.

No one currently talking about Texit wants war. We want freedom. We want to belong to a country abiding by the Constitution of the United States, which we still view as law and feel loyalty to.

So, we’re at the stage of marriage counseling. If the party that has strayed from the terms of the marriage contract refuses to repent or even move toward accommodation—and in fact continues to abuse the party that has held to the contract—then there may be a need to separate.

When Glenn Beck mentioned this recently, he stated plainly that he doesn’t think we should secede (he lives in Texas); he thinks those who don’t want the Constitution should leave.

I agree. I love our Constitution. But, just as an abusive and unfaithful husband shouldn’t have the power to keep his wife in a contract he has broken, nor beat her back into submission, the US federal government shouldn’t have the power to force Texas to stay where the government isn’t the Constitution we signed up for, but is instead a totalitarian regime attempting to wipe out our freedoms, our prosperity, and our civilization.

If there must be a separation, can we do it by retaining the Constitution—along with any other states that want to retain the Constitution—and allow the remainder, who prefer a socialist form of government, to go their separate ways?

If we’re in that marriage counseling stage, we need to be able to talk as if such a separation is on the table, for leverage to encourage repentance of the contract-breaking party. As our founders did with Great Britain, we need to know we have tried every means to work through the differences and have our grievances redressed.


The White House, viewed from the Washington Monument, September 2015
 

DC Statehood

I’m not giving myself much space for this second large issue. But it’s pertinent as well. Washington, DC, is a particular kind of entity, intentionally. It was set up as the seat of federal government, outside of all existing states, so that no state would be either favored or burdened with the logistics of maintaining the federal government.

It isn’t unique. The Vatican, for example, is a city entity of its own, located within the city of Rome, but not part of it.

The District of Columbia was limited in size, ten square miles, set up as mainly official spaces: the capitol building, the White House, monuments, museums, and government office buildings. It was not intended to be a city where people lived—except as a second home while performing their government duties. Even services, such as restaurants, could employ people in the city who lived without.

I remember a discussion, early 1990s, on radio with host Barry Farber, who in his youth had worked in the capital. But he lived outside the city, I think in Virginia, so that he could retain his right to vote. I hadn’t taken notice of that distinction until then. But to those living and working there, it was a two-century understanding by then: if you want to have the right to vote, you have to maintain a residence in a state.

Over the years, DC has been expanded. Three rather large areas were annexed in the 1880s. It is now a large city, including work, industries, and services well beyond the maintenance of the federal government. It is so big that living outside the city while working inside the city isn’t possible for all. That space that got annexed is where workers live. That’s why it was a bad idea to annex the larger area.

If you look at the reasons for setting up a capital outside of any state, then you can see why it is unthinkable to grant statehood to the federal capital of the United States. In Federalist 43, James Madison wrote,

The indispensable necessity of complete authority at the seat of government, carries its own evidence with it.… Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy.

His vocabulary is challenging for people raised on memes and tweets, so let’s just say that people living in the capital’s state would have unfair access and influence on the legislators and government officials, and those officials would feel beholden to that state above other states, because the work they must do is accommodated there.

In 1961, the residents of DC were given an electoral college vote. But, without becoming a state, they don’t have their own US representative. That single delegate gives them limited voting power, similar to Puerto Rico or American Samoa. Personally, I believe it is wrong to give legislative representation to DC. Who are they representing? Those involved in their major industry—the federal government. The city itself has a mayor and a governing board, elected by the residents, overseen by the federal government. The people have input into that representation.

Again, people who choose to live there were supposed to know they were making a decision that disallowed them from voting. And it would be better if the residential and nongovernmental businesses had not been annexed into the US capital city.

One thing about that city: they love big government. It is their bread-and-butter industry. So much so that they don’t seem to mind that it has brought them crime and poor schools—from which they are not allowed to escape.

It is their taste for big government that makes the issue pertinent right now, under a Biden administration. He promised (threatened) to pack the courts: by adding as many justices as he wanted, in order to guarantee a majority who share his opinions; and by adding states such as DC, Puerto Rico, and maybe Guam, if he could guarantee two Democrat senators and as many congressmen for each. The purpose is to guarantee perpetual power to his party, nothing more. Any talk of “fairness” is just rhetoric.

If the concern is actually about getting representation to the residents of DC, the rational solution would be to split the city and return the annexed parts to their original states, limiting DC to its original 10 square miles, which were never intended for permanent residents.

 

Both of these discussions are in early stages. But they wouldn’t be discussed at all if the federal government were not usurping authority. Let’s have the discussion while heads are still relatively cool. Again, if we’re at the marriage counseling stage, you have to be able to speak freely. If you shut down discussion, then you’re not only breaking the contract, you’re making sure it stays broken.

 

Extra Reading

·       Texas Constitution  

·       HB 1359 bill text, authored by Rep. Kyle Biederman 

·       Here's Why Washington D.C. Isn't a State” by Tessa Berenson for TIME, April 15, 2016. 

·       TEXAS SECEDE! FAQ 

·       Parting Company” by Walter E. Williams, Nov. 28, 2012. 

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