I’m starting with a personal dental problem story. Bear with me. I’m going to use it as an analogy.
The Extraction Question
I had a tooth break last week. Three chunks fell off, one
rather large, plus a couple of crumbles. So I went to the dentist. I was hoping
for a repair, albeit a likely expensive one, where maybe they could do an inlay
or crown.
There wasn’t much pain involved, which was a good sign. But,
in examining the tooth, the dentist noticed a weak spot on another part of the
tooth that was mighty sensitive to the touch of his tiny metal probe. Not good.
He laid out the situation. This tooth has had a fair amount of damage; it’s next
to a partial (a removable tooth that replaces a failed root canal from over two
decades ago), and that means it’s more susceptible to bacteria and pressure. My
hygiene is excellent, but some things are inevitable. And the additional weak
spot, close to the nerve, is very concerning.
He could do a temporary fix to both areas, very carefully, and then give it a few months to see if it stabilizes or maybe turns into an abscess. If it goes well, he could follow up with a permanent fix. If that doesn’t work, I lose the tooth—and I'm out time, pain, and expense.
Or he could go ahead with an extraction. That could be
followed up by a larger partial—however, that would connect to a further back
tooth already under stress. Or we could try an implant—pending a retest of
materials I react to, which has made this impossible in the past, but which my
current good state of health might allow.
My first wish would be to keep my tooth. I like real. And I
like the integrity of real. But I had him write up the various paths forward so
I could go home and talk it over with Mr. Spherical Model.
Mr. Spherical Model, who has been through a few implants
already, was saying, it’s just going to get worse. You might as well go ahead
with the extraction and be done with it. In a few months, you have a new tooth
there, and all is well (we hope).
I think that’s the final decision, although I haven’t set
the appointment yet.
The thing I’m looking at is that decision point at which you
realize a temporary patch job isn’t going to solve long-term issues. At some
point you need to extract and rebuild.
To Texit or Not to Texit?
That brings us to the topic of the day: Texit. More
formally, the Texas Nationalist Movement. But I learned you can use it, not just as a noun, but as a
verb. To Texit, or not to Texit? That is our question.
We had an extraordinary Tea Party meeting this past Saturday,
with two very good speakers. The room was packed, with a few people needing to
stand in the doorway—on a perfect spring Saturday afternoon.
Alan’s Speech
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| Alan Vera, speaking at Cypress Texas Tea Party on Saturday, March 27, 2021 |
Alan went ahead and introduced our second speaker, Daniel
Miller, by reading what Alan called “the best 90-second speech I ever gave.” It
was from the 2016 Republican Party of Texas Convention—the world’s biggest
political gathering.
I missed that convention (my only trip ever to London). I
apparently missed a lot. There was an hour-long floor debate sparked by this
speech, ending in a voice vote badly mismanaged by the chairman, squelching the
issue against the obvious will of the body. The issue was on adding the plank
on Texas Independence to the state party platform. This is Alan’s speech:
At the center of this motion is a simple idea: Let the people
of Texas address the 10th Amendment elephant in the room.
The Republic of Texas became a state through a treaty, with
the United States—a CONTRACT.
Embedded in every contract are terms, conditions and
covenants, the frequent breach of which undermine the validity of the contract
itself.
Many Texans believe that the United States has already
grievously breached the agreement.
When this contract was signed, the United States was a
constitutional federation of sovereign states—a Republic.
Many believe this is no longer true.
The government of the U.S. once respected states’ rights and
the rule of law. Today it tramples states’ rights, and the rule of law is at
the bottom of a landfill, covered by the tiny, torn bodies of 60 million
murdered babies.
The citizens of the United States have the right to make one
bad decision after another. The government of the U.S. apparently has the right
to hurl itself toward a cliff of moral and financial ruin.
But the citizens of Texas have the God given right NOT to
follow them over that cliff.
My fellow delegates, when the chair calls for the vote on
this motion, don’t just vote “aye.” Vote HELL AYE! For our children and
grandchildren. For this dream we call Texas.
I have had mixed feelings about Texas independence for a
while. I was asking, Should we have some kind of trigger that, if the federal
government crosses a line, we automatically put Texas Independence on the
ballot? But I couldn’t come up with such a trigger—because it’s easily arguable
that any line we could come up with, the federal government has already
crossed.
But I love America. I love our Constitution. How could we
consider leaving?
Daniel Miller, President of the Texas Nationalist Movement,
gave us plenty to think about.
He started with a story about going to the border, to Laredo,
the day before. There was supposed to be a rally for people, as he described
it, whose message was, “The federal government should fix it, and we should
shake our fists at them until they they do.” No one showed. Our turnout in one
room in a restaurant on Saturday was half again bigger than that crowd. That is
not a message people in Texas want to get behind. Their main speaker, he said, (a
speaker from New Zealand now living in Florida and has no say in the matter) spent
20 of his 25 minutes railing against Texit. Then Daniel spoke, and turned them
all.
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| Daniel Miller, President of the Texas Nationalist Movement, speaking at the Cypress Texas Tea Party, March 27, 2021 |
The Question to Focus On
There’s one question that brings it all into focus. It is
this:
As it stands right now today, if Texas was a free and
independent nation, that we had our right of self-government, we had control of
our own immigration system and our own borders, we had our own army, we had our
own currency, we had our own passports, we had our own embassies overseas, we
had our own Olympic team—wouldn’t that be great?—if we were a nation in every
single sense of the word, free, independent, self-governing, and the question
was put to us on the ballot that we were asked, “Do you want to join the
union?”
The room, filled with US Constitution-loving citizens like
me, shouted “No!” I didn’t really know to expect that.
Miller was there to persuade anyone not yet persuaded. So he
added the “benefits” of joining the union, if we were to do that today:
So let’s just lay out the benefits. I don’t want you to make
a snap decision, right? So, let’s talk about near $30 trillion worth of debt that
we would inherit overnight. Let’s talk about being crushed under the weight of
180,000 pages of federal laws, rules, and regulations that turns every single
one of us pretty much into a federal felon every single day—not a joke [someone
said “I know”]. It’s legit. I mean, that’s a benefit, right? Would you want
to live under that?
What about the fact that, if you print up all those 180,000
pages of federal laws, rules, and regulations, it’d be taller than the San
Jacinto Monument? You want to live under that weight, don’t you?
Or what about the fact that federal regulatory accumulation
costs you about 85% of your take-home pay? Or, what about the things that Alan
Vera mentioned—about 60 million dead children?
What about the fact that your money is going to be devalued
every time that they fire up the printing press?
What about the fact that they’re going to send our sons and
daughters overseas to fight in the wars of self-determination for other people
but will deny it to us at the drop of a hat? How does that sound? Does that
sound like a winning strategy for you guys? Sound like benefits? I don’t think
so.
What about this? What about the fact that, as Texans, no
matter what decisions we make here on how we want to govern ourselves, they can
be overridden at the stroke of a pen by 2 ½ million unelected and unaccountable
bureaucrats? How does that sound? I didn’t think so.
This doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me. So, again,
I ask you the question: If you had to vote today, would you vote to join the
union? [the crowd shouted, “No, no, NO” and “Hell no!”] Well, I think I
might have turned some of you guys.
If we, like America’s founders, were to write up a list of
usurpations and tyrannies, it would be longer and more egregious than those
British monarchy wrongs listed in the US Declaration of Independence—and at
least on par with those that led Texas to declare independence from Mexico back
in 1836. If you were just to list the executive orders of Joe Biden, each and
every one is a breach of contract with the people of Texas—and every other
state.
It’s Inevitable
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| Daniel Miller's 2018 book on Texit |
In 2018 Miller wrote a book, Texit: Why and How Texas
will Leave the Union (which I bought a copy of and have started reading—and
the intro includes that story of Alan’s speech at the 2016 convention). A lot
of the details and difficulties are laid out in there—and on the website TexitNow.org
(which redirects to the Texas Nationalist Movement). He
mentioned some polling that surprised me, and it’s in the book:
Support for Texas leaving the Union grew from single-digit
polling under Clinton to 35 percent during Barack Obama’s first term. The most
recent polling in Texas shows that a majority of Republicans, approximately
half of independent voters, and around one-third of Democrats support
independence (p. 18).
He broke that down a few pages later:
The Research 2000 poll was a question about perceived
benefit. The Reuters/IPSOS question was a question of political will. The
results again broken down by political affiliation, showed 54 percent of
Republicans, 49 percent of independence voters, and 35 percent of Democrats
favored an independent Texas….
Support for Texit, on average, polls anywhere from 6 to 10 percentage
points higher than those who want to stay in the Union (p. 28).
He told us that the Texas Nationalist Movement is the third
largest and most influential political advocacy organization in the state—smaller
only than the two main political parties. This is not just a fringe idea.
We talk here at the Spherical Model about the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres, so I noted when Miller said this:
Texit is, at this moment, an inevitability. Not just because we can win a vote, but because there is no way that Texas and Texans can stay in a political, economic, and cultural union with a federal system that believes the way they do.
He colorfully added,
They literally just elected a head of state that went around promoting policies that make Joseph Stalin look like Jimmy Carter.
The Process
There’s a pretty complicated process to go through—as Britain
experienced in Brexit. But the first step is simply to gauge the will of the
people. Put it on the ballot for them to vote on.
The first step toward that was to put it in the Republican
Party platform. That was finally accomplished in 2020 (an online convention
with no floor debate—but the committees put it in and kept it).
The next step is to put a bill before the legislature. Rep.
Kyle Biedermann has filed HB 1359. This simply says the question should
be put before the people of Texas. (Ask your representative to sign on as a
co-author.)
And the people's yes vote would not suddenly accomplish it; as with
Brexit, it would require the legislature to lay out a plan to accomplish it in
a given length of time, so all the details can be worked out. The question
placed on the ballot would be:
"Should the legislature of the State of Texas submit a
plan for leaving the United States of America and establishing an independent
republic?"
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| The Battle of San Jacinto, where Texas first won its independence, painting by Henry McArdle, found here |
What About War?
We did have some serious questions—in that room, and that
will need to be dealt with to educate the people of Texas between the
legislation (and passing a bill its first session is a huge challenge) and the
November election. So let’s deal with a couple.
One was, pointing out that the last time Texas tried to leave
the union it didn’t go well: If it comes down to it, are we willing to fight
our neighbors over this?
Good question. Miller had a pretty good—although not a yes
or no—answer: We’re not in the 19th Century anymore. He said,
We have literally seen an explosion of self-governing
independent nation states around the world over the last 75 to 80 years. As a
matter of fact, in most instances in recent history, independence has been the
solution to years of civil war. Sudan is a perfect example. I think it’s one
and a half million lives lost in the Sudanese civil war, and it was not until
they decided to separate that the bloodshed ended. So, what we have seen here
is a process that has developed over the last 75 to 80 years. And for us, it
ultimately needs to get in a referendum.
He added that just over half the US military would side with
us. They’re not going to bomb our local Walmart because we—what? We voted the
wrong way? They’re going to behave like Khaddafi or North Korea while the world
is watching?
They’ll be practical. Economically too. War would interfere
with infrastructure and cause misery.
While some people would be happy to see us go, in general
they would be against it (I’m thinking because we could set a chain reaction
such as the USSR saw at the fall of the Berlin Wall). But there’s not much they
could do to stop us.
Will We Have Freedom on the Other Side?
A question I got to ask related to whether we could keep our
freedom after regaining independence. Our governor, who had certainly convinced me before
taking office that he revered our US Constitution, had no qualms about locking
us down and ordering us to wear facemasks this year, and then expecting us to
praise him for finally setting us free a couple of weeks ago. And we have our cities the way they are
now—Democrat-run. And Austin, our capital, Republican leaning but nowhere near
as pro-freedom as we ought to have, based on both the US Constitution and our
Texas Constitution. How do we know we can preserve our freedoms? Miller answered
frankly:
How will government be any better? I’m going to tell you
right now, post-Texit is not a utopia. It’s not. There is no guarantee that
it’s a utopia. They’re not going to come out here, and suddenly there will
never be a pothole again. You may not get your trash picked up one day.
It’s not a utopia. Nor is it a promise of that. But it is a
promise that we can have the ability to make it better.
And here’s why. Part of the reason that our state and local
officials are allowed to skate by with so much is because the attention of the
people is distracted by the federal circus that goes on.
If you want proof, go out into this restaurant, grab a random
person, and ask them who the speaker of the House is. They will probably tell
you Nancy Pelosi. They probably will not tell you Dade Phelan [Speaker of
the Texas House]. And therein lies the problem.
With the attention being drawn to Washington, DC—and
rightfully so, because they’re the ones that keep their thumb on us so much.
But it allows these folks to skate by. It allows our elected officials to treat
elective office in Texas like a triple-A ball club, like tryouts for federal
office.
The moment that Texas becomes free and independent again,
that stops. There is no higher office than that which they can get in Austin.
There is no greater service that they can give than to serve the people of
Texas. And without that distraction of Washington, DC, who here would keep a
much closer eye on what’s going on in Austin or right here in our own cities?
That’s the benefit of Texit.
We Need to Texit
I found Daniel Miller’s presentation of the Texit idea persuasive.
As much as I would prefer a whole, intact United States abiding by the US
Constitution, I think it’s time we recognize we can’t recover that. All we can
do is patch up that cracked tooth to postpone the inevitable.
Extract. Heal. Rebuild. According to the principles that
bring us freedom, prosperity, and civilization.
I haven’t been fully ready to say it before. But I’ve now
come to the conclusion: We need to Texit.
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