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.
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| 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.
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| Rep. Kyle Biedermann from his Texas Legislature page |
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.
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| 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
· 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.
· “Parting Company” by Walter E. Williams, Nov. 28, 2012.
