Texit Is an Action Verb

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

Alan Vera, speaking at Cypress Texas Tea Party
on Saturday, March 27, 2021

Alan Vera was our first speaker, on election integrity, a subject on which he is a national treasure. I consider him and his wife, Colleen, to be friends in my local political circles. When we (the local Tea Party board) were looking for speakers, we hadn’t yet confirmed him, and I went ahead and asked the Texas Independence Movement whether they could send a speaker. (I had heard Daniel Miller in a Crossroads interview.) They said yes—the same day that Alan confirmed. I was concerned about fitting them both in, but it turned out to be serendipitous. They were old friends in this battle.

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.

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

Daniel Miller's 2018 book on Texit

Miller has been working on this issue since 1996. It has been a long, hard road. But he says Texas Independence is now an inevitability. The trend has been moving toward it for a while. And with the current occupant of the White House, it’s likely to take a leap.

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?"

 

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 19^th 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.

Dissolving the Political Bands

This past week was a historic time. The impeachment trial ended with a vote that there was no need for calling defense witnesses, or any prosecution witnesses in addition to the 18 testimonies given in the House. The official acquittal should happen Wednesday. It would be a good thing if some brave Democrat broke away from the pack, to at least make the acquittal bipartisan.

While that has been going on, the President signed the new USMCA treaty. He attended and spoke at the March for Life. He proposed a possibly workable peace solution in the Middle East. More Constitution-following judges have been appointed. Trade disputes with China seem to be working toward a better conclusion than expected. Economic news is good. There’s probably more good news—which we're sure to hear about in Tuesday night's State of the Union address. Imagine the good we might get done without the distraction of Democrats claiming he should be stopped.

But beyond our shores, the big news is the final deadline of Brexit. Friday was the last day that the UK was part of the European Union. It was a long time coming. The British people voted in favor of leaving the EU in 2016—almost four years ago. That’s a long time to get things lined up for what should be a fairly simple process.

Nigel Firage, final address to EU Parliament
screenshot from here

But the good thing is that it was accomplished—without bloodshed.

As we know from the Declaration of Independence,

When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

Declaring the causes is what the rest of the Declaration of Independence does.

Here in Texas, we’re a month away from celebrating our declaration of independence from Mexico, which accomplished a similar purpose.

In these cases, as with Brexit, there was a necessity to separate, to dissolve the political bands. It’s a rare thing indeed to have this happen without bloodshed. Congratulations to the Brits.

Nigel Farage has been their minister to the EU parliament for some twenty years—all of that time attempting to work himself out of a job by exiting. As he said in his brief farewell address to that Parliament, a couple of days ahead of the deadline,

My mother and father signed up to a common market, not to a political union. Not to flags, anthems, presidents—and now you even want your own army.

The European Union was not sold as a “United States of Europe”; it was sold as a joint economic alliance. What it became was usurpation of power worthy of admiration from many a dictator. And the voice of the people has been squelched. As Farage pointed out,

In 2005 I saw the Constitution that had been drafted by Giscard and others. I saw it rejected by the French in a referendum. I saw it rejected by the Dutch in a referendum. And I saw you in these institutions ignore them, bring it back as a Lisbon Treaty and boast you could ram it through without there being referendums. Well, the Irish did have a vote, and did say no, and were forced to vote again. You’re very good at making people vote again.

But what we’ve proved is, the British are too big to bully—thank goodness!

If the EU had been what it claimed originally to be, only an economic alliance, there would not be a Brexit. But the UK was fed up with their sovereignty being ignored. They were fed up with decisions important to them being overridden by some bureaucrats in a foreign city. They wanted to retake their sovereignty, to be their own country again. It was as simple as that.

Brexit supporters celebrate in London as the
clock reaches 11 PM on January 31, 2020
image found here

There are some complicated details, to reset trade negotiations that must change under the new circumstances, happening over the next 11 months. But as Farage summed it up:

Once we’ve left, we are never coming back, and the rest, frankly, is detail.

Congratulations to our friends! Like them, “We love Europe; we just hate the European Union.” We don’t hate a people, or a nation. We’re in opposition to a statist tyranny wherever we find it.

It occurs to me to ask the theoretical question of what it would take for such an exit in our indivisible United States. We are not the same type of project as the EU; we are not a simple economic agreement that morphed into a centralized total government. But it’s helpful to remember what we are and what we did not agree to.

Our government was created to join multiple sovereign states (which means actual self-governing nations, not provinces) under an umbrella central government with limited purposes. That government, according to the preamble to the Constitution, is to

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

There are enumerated powers granted to this federal government. Nothing else. And there’s a pretty solid list of what the federal government cannot do, just for clarity. (I listed the powers and restrictions here and here.)  We have this all written out in our Constitution. We are a people with the rule of law, rather than ruler’s law.

So, theoretically, as long as we have our Constitution protecting us, we are indivisible. But what happens if powers are usurped, and some ruler steps in dictatorially ignoring our Constitution?

We’ve had small-to-medium usurpations going on since the beginning. Andrew Jackson did some. Teddy Roosevelt did some. Woodrow Wilson did a lot, and he set things in motion for more and more usurpations. Franklin Roosevelt pushed the envelope further.

We had more than we could stomach under Obama. The Supreme Court struck down his attempts at rule-by-dictate 96 times. There were other times he got away with things—like Obamacare, which was the first time the government was allowed to force people to purchase a good or service against their will. But Obama was frequently checked by the courts, at a much higher rate than his predecessors. He lost 44 cases unanimously, which of course included his own appointees. 

But, now, we have an entire slate of Democrat presidential candidates who openly propose socialism as a replacement to our constitutional government and free market system.

Socialism is dictatorship. It is ruler’s law. Adding the word “democratic” before the term is akin to “democratic slavery,” which is what slavery was before we eliminated it in a bloody war. A majority voting to take liberty, life, or property from some minority may make it democratic, but it’s still slavery.

What if one of these openly socialist candidates were to win? Would this break the contract that unites our states? Not immediately—and the checks and balances in the Constitution are key. It would definitely be a problem if such a president were to be aligned with a socialist majority in both the House and the Senate. But for at least a time the judicial branch can rule against such a president’s edicts. We appreciate the success President Trump has had in appointing two read-the-law judges to the Supreme Court, and—well, here’s the count as of today according to Wikipedia:

As of February 3, 2020, the United States Senate has confirmed 187 Article III judges nominated by President Trump, including 2 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 50 judges for the United States Courts of Appeals, 133 judges for the United States District Courts, and 2 judges for the United States Court of International Trade. There are currently 18 nominations to Article III courts awaiting Senate action, including 1 for the Courts of Appeals, 16 for the District Courts and 1 for the Court of International Trade. There is currently 1 vacancy on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 72 vacancies on the U.S. District Courts, 2 vacancies on the U.S. Court of International Trade, and 7 announced federal judicial vacancies that will occur before the end of Trump's first term (1 for the Courts of Appeals and 6 for District Courts). Trump has not made any recess appointments to the federal courts.

President Trump appoints Justice Neil Gorsuch
image from Wikipedia

That is significant for years to come. Whatever else he may have as a legacy, he will have this improvement in the judiciary for which we can be grateful.

There may someday come a time when an administration is supported by Congress, and not checked by a judiciary, in ruling by dictate and ignoring the Constitution. In such a circumstance, individual states could feel fully justified to “dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another.” But if that ever comes, let it be without bloodshed, as Brexit has been.

While it’s a scary thing to have an entire political party threatening us with a socialist takeover, we’re still, so far, guaranteed our freedoms by the rule of law—the Constitution. If, as Benjamin Franklin said, we can keep it.

Brexit, Texit, and Exits

It was a rather historic moment for Great Britain last Thursday, with the vote of the people favoring leaving the European Union about 52-48.

One of dozens of photos I took of Big Ben
during my trip to London in May

It’s interesting, because they are our longtime friends; we share language and a fair amount of culture. And I think we can learn from what they’re going through.

The European Union was originally called the European Economic Community. It was meant to unite separate sovereign nations economically, for purposes of money and trade. And it was meant to make it easier for Europeans to travel from state (nation) to state.

In the US, that sounds familiar. We were sovereign states (nations) that united to increase our economic power as well. And also to increase our strength against invasion and takeover. So our union was actually intended to have the central government do more than the European Union was intended to do. But we had our Constitution to strictly limit the federal powers, which is probably why the experiment has extended beyond two centuries, rather than just four decades.

When the European countries signed on to this agreement, it was not supposed to give a central government power over day-to-day decisions of people in these sovereign nations. It wasn’t supposed to set rules on their immigration, or limit them in trade—or take wealth from the successful countries to bail out the profligate ones.

Maybe it’s too much central planning when your economic union decides what your imported bananas must look like, or how much power your vacuum is allowed to have, or how to label your jams, or that you can no longer use incandescent lightbulbs, or that bottled water is not allowed to claim that it helps avoid dehydration. Maybe those kinds of decisions are NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.

Some of those might seem like trivial annoyances compared to the bailout requirements that drain resources, and the forced immigration-without-assimilation that has been going on.

And, of course, the argument against leaving has been the expected, “Only bigots and xenophobes are in favor of Brexit.” So now, 52% of the UK—one of the most cosmopolitan places on earth, where immigrants have long been welcome and fit into the culture fairly seamlessly until the recent mostly Muslim influxes—can’t possibly have a reason than hatred and fear of foreigners? That seems unlikely.

I don’t know what the economic fallout will be. Since Great Britain kept its own money—the euro was accepted, but the pound remained the usual currency—that will require less transition than some other countries might face. Still, it may take some time, especially in a world economy struggling with debt and recession.

But here’s what we know, based on the Spherical Model: when the government is as local as possible, that always works better than government from a higher level than necessary. Because the European Union was leftist, socialist, and generally anti-freedom, the British people at least have a better chance for freedom without that layer of tyranny hanging over them.

And because the EU was economically controlling, the British people have a better chance at prosperity without the EU’s interference and misuse of earned wealth. There may be some rocky times while things readjust, but the closer you get to earners deciding how their own money is spent, the more prosperity you get.

Various people have been commenting on the outcome. Nile Gardiner at the Daily Signal said,

Britain will no longer be subject to European legislation, with Britain’s Parliament retaking control. British judges will no longer be overruled by the European Court of Justice, and British businesses will be liberated from mountains of EU regulations, which have undermined economic liberty.

Bottom of Form

Indeed, Brexit will result in a bonfire of red tape, freeing the city of London and enterprises across the nation from European Union diktat. And at last, Britain is free again to negotiate its own free trade deals, a huge boost to the world’s fifth largest economy.

All of those things look appealing.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been thinking about it as well. He said on Facebook,

What were the issues in the election? The people of the U.K. feel they are losing their country. They are being swamped by illegal and legal immigrants and refugees. Wages are flat, immigrants are not assimilating to their new nation, taxes are high and the cost of living has increased. Seniors can't earn a reasonable rate on their savings, and they see a world where terrorism is the new normal. On top of that, they were buried in regulations, put in place not by their elected representatives, but E.U. officials who are elected by no one and accountable to no one. The people are angry and afraid for themselves and their children and grandchildren.

Those were the issues. And it’s not much of a stretch to say we face similar issues here. Patrick added,

As victory was announced in the U.K., media and opponents pronounced the leaders of the Brexit charge divisive, hateful, and dangerous. Sound familiar? Democrats here in the U.S. and their allies in the media, and sadly some establishment Republicans, frequently call those of us who simply want secure borders, lower taxes, increased wages through economic growth, a military that is given the freedom to crush terrorists and protection of our traditional values, liberties and the Constitution, divisive, mean spirited and dangerous.

In our last post, we talked about that as the secular progressive religion—and it isn’t a religion of invitation or peace, but one of coercion and hate.

We can continue to show them the good outcomes of living the rules of freedom, prosperity, and civilization. And they will ignore evidence and obvious facts, and then demagogue.

But the Brexit example may be starting something. There comes a time when it is appropriate to stop submitting to the tyranny and take back the rights God has given us.

On Friday, while I was talking over the Brexit vote with son Political Sphere, we both almost simultaneously came up with the idea of Texit—for a Texas exit. Not that we want a split to happen; we want our US Constitution to be the law of the land—and have government abide by it. But the name is a natural. And apparently it’s so natural, I learned later that day it was a top trending hashtag on Twitter—so plenty of others thought of it as well.

There are already murmurs of possible other exits from the EU. For those of us that remember the dissolution of the USSR, we’re not so surprised at that kind of thing.

We’re a week away from the celebration of the US Declaration of Independence. Some of the words feel so current:

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

That’s a beautiful way of saying, sometimes there needs to be a dis-union, and since that is such a weighty thing, honor requires giving a full explanation. The Declaration of Independence goes on to enumerate many of the despotic usurpations, “all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” which had been committed by the king.

We, the people of the United States, have been infinitely better off than we would have been under tyranny.

And we became strong and loyal friends to the British people—which we could not have been if kept in submission for any longer, let alone an additional couple of centuries.

But when the US government becomes the tyranny we fought independence from, how long can that continue?

Just this morning we got another ruling from the Supreme Court, overruling a just, duly legislated law in Texas: Justice Kennedy leaned to the pro-abortion side (the coercive religion side) and refused to allow Texas to require abortion clinics to meet the health standards of other similar medical facilities. No woman would have been prevented from getting an abortion through the law, but women seeking abortions will now have no health protections against clinics with grisly, unsafe Gosnell-type practices. No abortion clinic was forced to close, but they were simply required to meet the same standard other types of clinics meet.

But unelected members of the Supreme Court threw out the Fifth Circuit ruling, and came up with their own law, not based on the Constitution, but based on their preference for abortions to continue unhindered in as many places as possible. The ruling is so broad as to make it difficult for any state to have any law related to women’s health and safety concerning abortion clinics.

Is this a line too far? Combine it with forcing the state to accept unvetted Muslim refugees in large numbers. Combine it with forcing states to adopt policies for bathrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms that give advantage to sexual predators while taking away the right to bodily safety for women and children. Combine it with high taxes, high debt, Obamacare, Common Core, failure of care for veterans—the list of grievances begins to look as substantial as the founders’ list in the Declaration of Independence. And it looks every bit as substantial as the reasons Britain voted to exit the EU.

The Declaration also points out,

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury….We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice…

Here in America—and particularly here in Texas—we are at the “petitioning for redress” stage. Texas won one battle last week, proclaiming that the president did not have authority to change immigration law by edict. Other battles continue.

We are currently John Adams, in the 1770s, situated in Great Britain, petitioning for justice again and again. We are not yet Thomas Jefferson penning the Declaration of Independence. But, as Britain has just shown us, in the course of human events, there may come a time.

It is not “crazy right-wingers” or "bigots and xenophobes" that bring an exit closer. Despotic usurpations bring it closer. Big-government oppressors around the world should take heed.