Texas secessionists win GOP backing for independence vote: 'Major step'

Wasn't the whole point in brexit to do a nice generous cautionary tale? If people learn nothing what was it all for smh

Ok are republicans getting stupider every year, or is everything just rage bait now? I remember a time when I would agree with some things from both parties. Since Obama was president I can’t remember any republican position that isn’t just completely ridiculous or self-harming.

As some one not in texas I'm all for them seceding. Take their stupidity with them. It sucks for the non stupid texans though :(.

the rest of the US isn't likely to agree.

The agreement of the rest of the country can't meaningfully stop secession. If anything, that's liable to raise tensions higher, fueling the opposition

You see, there's your problem in understanding. You're thinking past the surface level. Clearly, you shouldn't be doing that. (my bit of dark humor)

At the risk of sounding slightly conspiracy-theorist (though current events have substantiation for at least parts of the following):

My personal view / theory is that Russian information ops have been efforting towards steering the GOP (and other politics in other nations) in directions that are divisive and nationally harmful, in ways hoped to have favorable or useful outcomes for Russia's view of the geopolitical landscape around the world. On a simplified level, a more divided US dealing with a larger number of damaging and intractable issues of national politics is one that is (in theory) less able to act freely to counter Russian goals. Example: partisan divide delaying the latest Ukraine aid package for as long as it did, with very harmful impacts on Ukraine's strategic situation.

Interestingly, I was just reading about the (first?) US Civil War ... and this is literally what started the actual shooting war ... the South seceded, but thought they also get to keep all of the military forts and resources the North had built and supplied. Lincoln was, apparently, walking some kind of middle ground of pretending the South wasn't allowed to secede, but practically allowing them to, even allowing them to keep a lot of resources that, rightly, belonged to the North ... but he drew the line at military bases.

Texas is the proud home to 15 active duty military installations with an economic impact of over $100 billion.

If TX seceded, the US military would abandon the military installations, probably destroying them in the process, assuming there isn't some mass defection of soldiers (which would be treason). The sites would essentially be military bases in a foreign country. TX my get the land, but they won't get the facilities, equipment, and personnel. I think this is where a lot of Texans are mistaken. They think they can simply make "mini US" and everything gets divided all nicely. Also, they get to be on the other side of a border wall.

Also, they probably still want FEMA assistance...

The only real counter to your argument that I'd have is that letting the Confederacy go would've been abandoning every single black American to chattel slavery. I know that's not why the Union fought, but the result was still the abolition of slavery in both north and south. The South did not have the right to abuse it's African population, and it would've sucked if the US allowed it.

Second, the primary reason the US is such a (pardon the expression) shit-hole country these days can be traced directly back to the decision to force the South (literally, at gunpoint) to stay in the Union and like it, or else.

It goes back a little further than that. When the British withdrew from the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the early 1800s without actually abolishing slavery, they had essentially codified the idea of a generational slavery dependent upon existing slaves giving birth to children who were understood to have been immediately born into legal bondage (in this case chattel slavery). There was an immediate need for slaves to reproduce at a rate that would replenish existing persons while keeping up with plantation growth. If generational slavery was not an entirely new concept, it was a highly desirable one that allowed slave-holding territories throughout the Americas to continue their way of life. It also further radicalized slave holders who felt that their primary source of income was at risk and that their way of life was being attacked. Slave holders needed a continual source of slave labor in order for their economy to function and for their classist system to work.

This dependency upon other people's labor became so culturally and politically ingrained that it became a point of contention in the US Congress to the extent that the Missouri Compromise was not just about bringing in one slave state for every free state that joined the union in order for the Senate to be "balanced," but for that policy to continue until such time that slavery-supporting politicians and states could find some new way to get what they wanted. Because above all, that was what it was about. This also allowed the idea of a "bloodless war" and other myths to be sown into the social fabric of high society in the southern states.

However there was another dependency, and that was trade. The southern states needed to be able to export their cotton, tobacco, and other wares, which meant that any Congress or Executive branch that they deemed hostile to their points of views, threatened their economy. They refused to substantially industrialize, or even accept substantial railroad infrastructure, which gave northern states an opportunity to exploit both a national trade imbalance and a dependency on international trade. While there are myths that the northern states forced the southern states into a disadvantageous position, the southern states were seeing a startling trend of population growth in the north outpacing the south. By the time of the 1860 election, the one where southern states said they wouldn't accept the results if Lincoln one, the north outnumbered the south (and thus imbalanced the House of Representatives) by more than 6:4. It's my understanding that that was counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person. So white southerners were substantially outnumbered. It also doesn't take into account the hundreds of thousands of French Canadian, Irish, British, and German immigrants who would arrive each year, with many of them being staunchly against slavery.

Whether the slave-holding states had remained in the US or not, it seems unlikely that their social development and economic security would have been sustainable for very long, even if the British interceded with highly supportive trade agreements.

As an aside, both the provisional constitution and the ratified constitution of the confederate states sure talked about slavery a lot. But it's the Cornerstone Speech that really drives home that certain people were Hell-bent on retaining institutionalized slavery as well as other racist ideals that were becoming less and less popular in 1800s Europe.

You don't have to universally support or oppose any and every secessionist (or "self-determination") movement. You absolutely can pick and choose which movements you support based on why those movements want to secede or how they plan to secede.

Some county in eastern Washington wants to join Idaho because Washington passed strict gun control legislation? They can go fuck themselves.

El Paso County wants to secede from Texas and join New Mexico so they can re-instate abortion rights? Very cool, let's get it done.

You don't have to support every secessionist movement equally. You can pick and choose. That does not make you a hypocrite, it makes you principled.

(Also these are just random examples that I have zero interest arguing about the specifics of, I'm just trying to make a general point here.)

Several thoughts -

First, this is an area where principles collide with reality. It's hard to argue that people shouldn't have the right to self-determination as a blanket principle, but the implementation is where things break down. As @hungariantoast wrote, you don't have to universally support (or oppose) every secessionist movement.

This was the case for Lincoln as well. Rather than make blanket arguments against secession, when he was making his case for preserving the union by force, Lincoln generally listed arguments in favor of secession and then argued that they didn't apply to the southern states.

He did make three blanket arguments, however, which you may find interesting. First, he argued that allowing secession encouraged the use of secession as the solution to political disagreements, which would naturally lead to successive subdivisions that left nobody connected to one another. (His example was that if the south seceded, what was to stop south Carolina from then seceding itself, and so on?)

Next, Lincoln questioned whether there were moral differences between secession and exclusion. Put simply, imagine that the south had constituded 51% of America by some measure. What would be the practical difference between the south choosing to leave the union and the south choosing to expel the north from the union (which Lincoln assumed was clearly impermissible?)

Finally, Lincoln argued that the other provisions for dissent in a republic (elections, amendments, and even revolution) were adequate without needing to resort to secession. (The above summary was adapted from Lindsay and Wellman. Their paper goes into the arguments specific to the confederacy as well, and is worth reading in order to understand the incisivieness of Lincoln's mind).

There are other collisions between principle and practice. Taking the example of the American civil war, for instance, there was no referendum on seceding. It was only a democratic choice inasmuch as the preciously-elected representatives decided to do it. (Lincoln called this out quite explicitly - he argued that only in south Carolina was it even conceivable that a majority of citizens supported secession, and questioned the legitimacy of the elected representatives in at least two southern states based on the coercion observed.)

But even if we accept that the decision to secede was democratic, the argument that in a democracy, if a group democratically decides to do something it must be allowed, is not on particularly strong foundations. There are all kinds of things that subgroups want to do that they are not allowed to do. That's sort of the definition of democracy, in fact - the will of the minority bowing to the will of the majority.

And drawing lines is not so easy. Let's say a majority of Texans want to leave the union. Well, if we look at level of the nation, the majority doesn't want Texas to leave. I'd be willing to concede that the national level is maybe a bit too broad, but is the state level not too broad as well? What if we examine things more closely in Texas itself -what if the Dallas-fort worth metro area doesn't want to secede? Why should they be dragged along into an independent Texasistan if they'd rather stay with the union? What about even smaller groups - should the hasidic Jews in NYC be allowed to take their neighborhoods and secede from the Union?

On a totally separate note, I strongly disagree with the characterization of the US as a shithole country - because honestly, man, have you ever been to somewhere that really sucks? - but that's sort of irrelevant because I'd also disagree with the argument that the primary reason for the US's woes is that the south lost the civil war and was forced to remain in the union. (Especially since in a separate comment you projected that the north and south likely would've gone to war within years anyway.)

Second, the primary reason the US is such a (pardon the expression) shit-hole country these days can be traced directly back to the decision to force the South (literally, at gunpoint) to stay in the Union and like it, or else.

Letting the Confederacy secede, or the United States losing the Civil War, in what ways, for either of those scenarios, do you think the United States would be better off today?

I often hear secessionsts longing for the great Republic of Texas to return so I looked through the cliff notes. It reads like a group of libertarians getting played by larger powers.

They grabbed Mexican land, refused to pay taxes, insisted on keeping slaves, took US troops when the army came after them, enforced their own special brand of disenfranchising non-whites/women, and immediately folded when their slave crops crashed.

It'd be a tragically funny event if it does somehow happen again. Like brexit, they spend all effort campaigning for clout, focusing on culture war issues. But in the end they don't an actual plan for when they win. Worst case, Day 1 ICE and border patrol gets pulled and we get all the shocked Pikachu faces.

With regards to the closing & relocating of military bases, there's a reason Space Command is going to be in Colorado instead of in the south. With the disruptions to reproductive care available to service members and their families, the relocation is already happening.

They can make their own state and rejoin the US, obviously.