Robert: Much. Perhaps, you could start with THE COUSINS WAR.
Kevin: Which Confederacy? I’ll defend each of them.

Paul, it sounds like you’re trying to take the position of defending the Confederacy. Good luck with that one. That battle was settled 150 years ago. If you’d like to reopen the matter, it’s a fairly strange position to take. And if you’re trying to reopen the discussion of whether the US should have declared independence from England in the 18th century, that’s just getting further out into the weeds.

As we’ve discussed, the current situation has to do with a small number of people in Texas, certainly nowhere near a number that could speak for a signifcant part of the state, who are unhappy with the GOP losses in the 2012 election and are acting out. The fit will only last for a little while, and then they’ll go back to their regular activities, as do most tantrum throwers after they’ve exhausted themselves. This is certainly not a case of a group really fighting for independence or defending anything other than their own misunderstanding of the current political situation and their own anger at their inability to unseat the current President.

Hey Paul! What HAVE you been reading, as the Civil War had Squat to do with the British Empire. It started in 1861, almost a decade after the British Empire had lost control of the colonies.

Historians disagree with me? My goodness, what have I been reading?
CIVIL WAR? Where would that have been?
I am not interested in what a majority thinks on any subject. Majority rule is mob rule. Fewer than a third of the colonists supported the American secession from the British Empire.
By the way, I have no more interest in either of the Bushes than I have in Bill Clinton or Obama. They are all political animals in my view. I don’t care what they do as long as they leave me alone.

Paul, that’s a nice try. Historians disagree with you, and there’s no need to re-argue the Civil War.

The facts we have discussed here are that the people promoting secession in Texas are a small group that is unhappy with how the election turned out. Their recourse has been to lash out in public, even though they know their attempt has no hope of succeeding. It’s the same level of irrationality as celebrities announcing they would move to Canada if Bush was elected in the last decade.

You’re free to disagree with the facts, and to speak your opinions about them. But readers can decide for themselves, and it’s clear that the majority of Americans, including in the state of Texas, are not in agreement with the group petitioning for secession.

A. The South peacefully (and properly) seceded.
B. The North agressively invaded the CSA at Fort
Sumter (a CSA port and fort)
Ergo: The canard is a Yankee one.

Try that again, guys. The point of the secession movement for this small group of people is that they do wish to be independent. Their position is that they don’t want to be part of a country that they say doesn’t represent their views – by reelecting a President they clearly dislike and by maintaining policies they clearly despise.

So their solution is to pick up their bat and ball and go home. They don’t address the serious problems Texas would face in the event that their idea succeeded, because they know their group has no chance of doing so. They just want to have the tantrum in public, where outlets like Fox News and right wing radio can give them publicity.

I agree that we’re looking at a polarized country, and it’s been one for many years now. Fox News has exacerbated this situation in a big way, starting with their drumbeat against the Clinton presidency, followed by their about-face reversal to support the George W. Bush presidency and now their second about-face reversal to drumbeat against President Obama. Years of Fox News and right wing radio constantly trying to ridicule and oppose anything and everything President Obama has done shows a clear pattern.

And if you’re actually trying to advocate that the Confederate States of America during the Civil War were really just fighting “The War Against Northern Aggression”, that canard can only hurt a reasonable argument.

I am saying that it is a movement that supports independence. Secession is not revolution; it is a defense against the overreached of nationalism. From Runnymeade through the Glorious Revolution; the American Revolution(secession); the CSA.

Patrick Henry refused to attend the Constitutional Convention: “I smell a rat,” he said. He smelled nationalism not federalism.

Kevin,
The previous election has polarized the American people more than any other election.
The Texas Nationalist Movement isn’t about a temper tantrum, it’s about promoting a government that has faith in its people. So much so, in fact, that it doesn’t continue to assume more and more responsibility and power.
-TB

Not sure what you’re getting at, Paul. This is not an independence movement. It’s a small group of people who don’t like how the election turned out. It would be the same as a left-leaning group from another state announcing secession after George W. Bush got into office. I haven’t heard anything from them to indicate that there is anything more serious in their thought than that.

It’s one thing to announce the holding of higher ideals, or to strive for something better. These guys just don’t like how the elections went so they want to take their bat and ball and go home. They also have not thought about what the actual consequences for their state would be – in terms of a crippling loss of funding and a sudden loss of benefits and conditions that Texans, like all Americans, reasonably expect.

The Declaration of Independence is hardly the only declaration of independence.

Not sure that this small group of Texans is following anything like the Declaration of Independence. This is more like a temper tantrum following an election that the hard right wing thought they were going to win in a landslide.

But even if we were to follow this logic, what would these Texans be trying to do? Do they believe they could set up an independent nation within their borders? Seriously?

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.
ANTI-AMERICAN? REALLY!

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.
ANTI-AMERICAN? REALLY!

This is not so much hypocrasy as it is good theatre either way. Bashng Al Jezeera is good to get the frotheres rabid, and glad handing a wannabe traitor allows the afore Rubion to be table talk by the armchair (videogame) generals in the audiance. It’s good for the show. Makes money.

Ironicly niether this man or the pundits from Fox will ever go on Al Jezeera because they will ask them tough questions and make them cry.

From doors17’s comment:

“All we’re witnessing is a bunch of poor pouting losers needing a pacifier. Try holding your breath that usually works.”

Yes doors17 — it certainly worked for Baby Finster in that classic Bugs Bunny short “Baby Buggy Bunny” which is still on YouTube.

:^)

At least we won’t have those idiotic Texas politicians like Dumbya and Gov Helmethair running for President anymore.

If FOX ever wans to know what fair and balacned news is all about they should tune in Al Jazeera! They do an excellent job of telling BOTH sides of an issue and letting YOU decide which one makes most sense to you. As for FOX claiming they have an Arab bias I guess FOX forgets their OBVIOUS BIAS for conservatives even to the point of making up lies to paint them as the good guys and liberals as scum of the Earth!

On the plus side, we’d have some serious redistricting going on in the other 49 states, getting to split up Texas’s 36 districts*. (I’d imagine at least a dozen of them would go to the current 1-seat and 2-seat states with the remaining 2 dozen splitting up among the “big” gain states and some of the mid-range states that have had population growth but not enough to merit an extra Congressional district.) I’m not sure how this would affect the Electoral College since DC is only guaranteed the “minimum” number of votes, but I imagine a Texasless Electoral College would only have 536 votes.**

*Federal law set the House of Representatives membership at 435 back in the early 1960s.

**From the 435 HR component, the 98 Senate-seat component plus DC’s 3.

As a person living in TX, let me tell you that the only idiots talking secession are the teabaggers in the remote parts of the state…the small towns with only about a 2,000 teabagger population. These anti-American teabagger trash make up about 8% of the population of TX. So,even though they squeal loud, they aren’t taken seriously by anyone (except anti-American FoxGOPTV). Hell, even batshit crazy Goodhair Parry has told these anti-American teabaggers to shut up. Goodhair knows that TX would become part of Mexico within hours of the U.S. tossing TX out.