The cries of "Taxation Without Representation" means OUR GUY LOST, screw you guys, I'm going home. Well, Boo Fucking Hoo. Call me the fucking Waaaaammbbulance, Cartman. Because this secession shit is a bad as it gets, and I call bullshit on the whole batshit right.
Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It is the ultimate anti-American statement.
Serious discussion that we would even contemplate dividing our country, the greatest country in the world, shows lack of judgment -- and any words from the Texas Governor will be taken seriously. Finally, such statements -- particularly in a time when we are at war overseas, with over 4,000 American lives lost, and thousands in combat as we speak -- are both offensive, irresponsible and not the words of a patriot.
~snip~
You cannot lead a state that is part of a nation by trying to divide that state from that nation.
- Texas House Democratic Leader Jim Dunnam
You can not lead a nation if you view it as something to be abandoned at will.
more of this betrayal below the fold
I am surprised that Governor Perry would reinforce a sentiment that is so clearly anti-American. He should choose his words more carefully unless they are intentional, and if his words were intentional, they should be condemned.
continued from earlier quote.
Hat tip to Velvet Revolution, whose rec-list diary Texas State Senator Responds To Perry supplied the quote by Texas State Assemblyman Jim Dunnam posted above.
Going Galt individually, or seceeding as a state has got to be THE most Un-American thing you could propose. Country first, my ass.
By threatening to go Galt and secede you have dishonored every American soldier who serves today, as well as all the sacrifices made with American blood, blood spilled for you, yet you cast it aside out of greed and stupidity. It is like giving pearls to the swine.
Ever see a Democratic President prosecuted for war crimes before. Where were you when Bush gave America to the CEO's?
You call our Government oppresive? Let me borrow a page from your playbook Republicans, "If you don't like America, you can get out!"
What is worse is stomping your foot, screaming "I'll run away!" like a four year old in the front yard, when we all know your are going to wake up in your cozy bed with all your toys tomorrow morning. A bed supported and protected by the United States of America.
Apparently, the party of "NO!" is also incapable of taking No for an answer, whether at the ballot box, or in the reality around themselves.
Paul Krugman nails this.
We've had a style of policy. we tried it for eight years. We can't go on trying the same thing. We have to change direction.
Bi-partisanship is killing us, because there is no one to be bi-partisan with. When the GOP wants to go back to 1980 and the Democrats want to move on into the 21st Century, the middle ground is not a compromise, it is a total and abject failure.
Jobs are disappearing overseas. Homes are standing empty, while their former tenants move to the fringe of poverty. What is the GOP's answer. The same answer they have always used.
- Cut taxes. Go to 20
- Cut spending. Go to 30
- Smaller Government. Go to 40
- Get our way. If not 40, then 50
- Go Nuclear. Go to 60
- Go Galt.
In a dairy I posted yesterday titled "Wingnut, call me a traitor again and I will kick your ass" I clearly stated in the intro the diary was half snark, yet that didn't stop obamathemarxist@gmail.com from sending me rightwing hatemail calling me racist and worse than the KKK combined. If you can find a racist statement in my diary, please show it to me, I would like to see it for myself.
Yup, the undertone to all the isms, Marxism, Socialism, elitism and all the other big words the tea baggers and others clearly do not understand is racism. Wasn't racism the pretext to Confederate state's claims to protecting State's rights?
The state’s population stood at 604,000, most of which was concentrated in the cotton country of East and South Texas. Small farmers, often raising corn and pork on a subsistence level, spread out to the north and west from the cotton country. In the western Hill Country, German immigrants were trying to build a utopian community.
About 182,000 Texans were slaves. But even East Texas was far from the Gone With the Wind stereotype of the Old South. Only 21,000 whites in Texas were slaveholders, and about half of these owned three slaves or fewer. Only two men in the entire state had large plantations with more than 200 slaves. Yet these men and other large planters produced 90 percent of the cotton, the dominant crop in Texas. They had an influence on Texas politics far beyond their percentage of the population.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Texas life was its isolation. Travel was extremely difficult. In East Texas, the roads were little better than cowpaths; beyond the east, they were almost nonexistent. The traveler followed in the footsteps of those who had gone before, Indians or animals who had worn faint traces between watering holes.
tsl.state.tx.us
And did the wealthy who controlled the media throw fuel on the fire?
The fact that there was no evidence supporting the idea of an abolitionist conspiracy and that newspaper editors published outright lies that fed a white panic leads Reynolds to his hypothesis that the Texas Troubles were created purposefully in an effort to push Texans and other Southerners toward secession. That conclusion follows, however, only by inference. Unquestionably, the sole source of information on the alleged conspiracy was baseless and sometimes creative contemporary newspaper reporting. Reynolds also shows that fire-eating Southern politicians readily used Texas events for their purposes, particularly to promote voter turnout for George Breckenridge and possibly to encourage secession. In the end, however, there is no direct evidence concerning the intentions of the newspaper editors or of the reporters who publicized the plot and went so far as to manufacture false accounts of fires, weapons, and poison. Charles Pryor, editor of the Dallas Herald whose letters to newspapers across the state first warned of a slave threat, left no clues other than his published letters of his intentions. Neither did other lesser-known Texas newsmen. It is possible that their goal was secession, but the evidence will allow little more than speculation.
h-net.org
Where do State's right's tie into this?
State rights and strict construction were usually the arguments of the party out of power (and so they were to he throughout American history). As long as the Republicans were outsiders, they remained strict constructionists, but once they had become insiders, with Jefferson as president, they used the full powers of the Federal government to further the agrarian interests they represented. Indeed, they used much more than the rightful and constitutional powers, according to the Federalists, who now adopted the state rights point of view.
~snip~
Some advocates of secession justified it as a revolutionary right, but most of them based it on constitutional grounds. The 1860 South Carolina Declaration of the Causes of Secession quoted the states 1852 declaration, which said that "the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States," would justify the state in withdrawing from the Union. The South Carolina secession ordinance, following the procedure that Calhoun had prescribed, simply repealed the states ratification of the Constitution and subsequent amendments. The secession ordinances of other states did the same.
The Confederate Constitution proved to he somewhat inconsistent in regard to state rights. It contained no provision for secession, though its preamble averred that each Confederate state was "acting in its sovereign and independent character." One article (like the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) affirmed that the "powers not delegated" were "reserved to the States." The states, however, were limited in important ways. For example, they could not (just as the states of the Union could not) pass any law "impairing the obligation of contracts." They could not get rid of slavery, for the citizens of each state were to "have the right of transit and sojourn in any State . . . with their slaves."
civilwarhome.com
The same tools such as the Media and the Political interests that serve the wealth that were used in 1860 are being used today by the Faux News Media and the GOP to accomplish their goal.
That goal is the same today as it was in 1860. To protect the wealth and rights of the wealthy to oppress and enslave the labor of theiir fellow man. The fact that racsim floats on the surface is obvious to those with eyes. what is much more subtle and unnoticed is the fact that, beneath the surface, we are all slaves to the super rich. The tea bag parties and cries for tax relief are what the Oligarchy prefers. Let us fight these battles, and, in so doing, we will ignore EFCA, health care reform, Bush Prosecution and other important change.
This is how class warfare is fought, by dividing us, in order to better conquer us.
Meanwhile the selfish, ignorant and greedy claim their right to Go Galt or secede. My hope is that they will quietly, and NOW, and leave us the hell alone, in our states and our country.
And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!