Kossacks, just a followup to my previous diaries on secession that have been largely ignored. I'm new to Kos, so I can understand why my entries are ignored, given thousands up thousands of entries, most of them excellent.
On to business: The Pledge of Allegiance employs the simple phrase "ONE NATION ... INDIVISIBLE." If you say the pledge, you CANNOT then say that a state has a right to secede. The pledge was written thus precisely to say "thou shall not claim the right to secede."
The 527s, or some lone wolf with video capability, should do a YouTube bit exploring the discrepancy between the Pledge and the AIP/Palin philosophy that a state has the right to secede. If Palin says the Pledge while believing in the right of secession--a thing that seems almost certain--she is either lying, indifferent to truth, or simply too shallow to understand the meaning of the Pledge.
More comments below, mostly in reference to comments made on my previous diaries about secession.
For the rest of this diary, I simply want to respond to some of the comments on my previous diary, titled "Secession is Treason." Several people who are either trolls or perhaps just misinformed liberals think that states had and have (?) the right to secede. Not so fast.
Yes, James Madison said on Federalist 39 that the people of the states, not the people, would ratify the Constitution. But keep in mind:
(a) the Federalist papers were mere opinion, dicta, not law, and Madison was only one of many framers;
(b) Madison in 1830 VEHEMENTLY DENIED the right of a state to nullify federal law if it deemed that law unconstitutional. If you're going to read much into Madison's earlier words on states' rights, you had better wrestle with his later opinions, too, especially those during the nullification crisis. MADISON WAS UNCONDITIONALLY OPPOSED TO NULLIFICATION, a doctrine that John C. Calhoun and others took from the Virginia and Kentucky resolves of 1798. Madison said that in no way were those resolves intended to imply that a state could, of its own accord, deny federal law.
(b) the framers came to no agreement one way or the other about the right of secession. If they discussed it at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, they kept no record of it, likely because they were afraid that any decision on that matter one way or the other would create dissension in the states. Dissension, they feared, would cause the states to refuse to ratify.
(c) as I said in my earlier diaries, Federalists like Madison and Hamilton suggested, as they lobbied voters to ratify, that a state could get out of the union later, maybe. BUT Anti-Federalists said the opposite. In opposing the Constitution, they told their listeners that no state could get out of the new union once the Const. was ratified. Once again, no agreement.
(d) There were solid arguments both in favor of the right of secession and against it prior to the Civil War, as I have said.
(e) The 14th Amendment decided the question permanently: thou shall not attempt secession. A state cannot secede without abridging the "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States," which the 14th Amendment forbids states to do. THERE IS NO RIGHT OF SECESSION. IT IS TREASON.
(f) clearly any Constitutional provision can be changed through amendment. Short of that, however, there is no right of secession. The AIP is not talking about amending the Constitution. It thinks that the only thing necessary is a vote within the state of Alaska.
(g) there is a distinction between the right of secession and the right of revolution. When the Southern states seceded, they cited the former right, not the latter. The latter is a right universal to all humanity. Anyone has a right to revolt when their natural rights are systematically denied. A revolution is not the same as an act of secession, which is a constitutional measure. The South proposed to secede, not revolt, for two reasons: (1) it had no claim that the federal government denied its people any natural right, including the right to "property" in the form of slavery; and (2) it hoped to shore up support within the South by asserting a legal basis for leaving the Union; (3) it hoped that secession, as opposed to revolution, would prevent war.
So, those of you who celebrated the revolutionary past of our nation, including your Southern ancestors who seceded, don't confuse the issue. Secession and revolution are different things. Texas independence was a revolution, not an act of secession (as I understand it). The American Revolution was a revolution, not an act of secession.
Finally, hey, I am just as proud of my Southern ancestors as any of you are of yours. My people came from Missouri and Arkansas, all of them. Before that, they came from Virginia and Alabama (and a few from Germany, thus my name). I have ancestors up the wazoo who fought for the Confederacy. If I see them as a part of an interesting history, I'm proud of them, but I am NOT proud of secession, nor slavery.
Don't buy into this League of the South, neo-secessionist shit. Those people want to take us back a century-and-a-half. The Confederacy was killed in 1865, and good riddance.