By Lee Smith | March 30, 2023
Would a secession lead to another civil war?
Do You Speak American? Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties | PBS
How many foreign dialects are in the united states – Search (bing.com)
North American Regional Dialects & Accents – Vivid Maps
It hardly comes as a surprise that so many are asking whether we should part ways
before the divide gets even worse. With the Civil War, America was split by region,
north and south. Today it’s worse—the country is divided not just politically but by
class, race, and sex, too.
Left and right, blue and red, have different values and thus dream differently for themselves and their families and hold competing ideals for the country they share.
It hardly comes as a surprise then that so many are asking whether we should part
ways before the divide gets even worse.
“We are very much a divided country,” says F.H. Buckley,
author of “American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup.”
“We don’t agree about basic things. In the past, I think we all agreed about ends,
about what we wanted of America, and we disagreed about how to get there.
But now we disagree about ends; we disagree about the basic nobility of the American Revolution, about the founders of a country, about a lot of basic beliefs that formerly all were held in common, the idea that marriage is a good thing, and so on.
And so, unsurprisingly, that’s led to people saying,
‘Do we really belong together in one country?’
Buckley is a foundation professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of law, and
I spoke with him in a recent episode of “Over the Target.” He says he doesn’t necessarily support secession, though he believes that “there is nothing per se wrong or objectionable about the idea of secession. If you think secession is always and everywhere a bad thing, then I guess what you’re saying is that the American Revolution was a bad thing.”
Typically, however, the secession debate leads back not to America’s declaration of independence from the British crown, but rather to the southern states’ departure from the union a little less than a century later. The crisis came to a head under the presidency of James Buchanan, “usually reckoned for some reasons as the worst American president, or one of the worst,” says Buckley.
He says his book is partly an effort to rehabilitate Buchanan.
Faced with South Carolina’s decision to secede from the union, Buchanan believed
it was a mistake and illegal, but that finally there wasn’t much he could do about it.
As Buckley characterizes the thinking of the 15th U.S. president:
“What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to call up the troops and invade you?
I don’t think I should do that. I’m not even sure if Congress has the right to do that.”
But Abraham Lincoln didn’t have those kinds of misgivings.
What Lincoln objected to, says Buckley, “was not slavery, but disunion.
Slavery as a cause came along later, after Antietam. But it wasn’t there in the
spring of 1861. … Lincoln himself said, ‘I also have no desire to interfere with
slavery.’ And moreover, he said, ‘I would approve a constitutional amendment
which guarantees the right of slavery in the states forever.’”
Lincoln’s decision to invade the south was based on a “very wrongheaded” “view of the Constitution,” says Buckley. “But I also think his decision was retroactively ratified by events, by the way in which the war turned out to be the cause for the abolition of slavery.” According to Buckley, one big question today is whether secession would lead to another civil war. “Would the president be more like Lincoln or more like Buchanan?”
Buckley believes that if secession were on the table,
“it would be done not by the assertion of unilateral right of independence, but as a prelude to a set of negotiations over the division of things, like the assets of the federal government or the division of the national debt. Then I think that what we’d end up with would be something like an Article V convention of the states, which is perfectly constitutional.”
Buckley, who holds Canadian as well as U.S. citizenship, says his understanding of secession is drawn from the recent history of our northern neighbors. “I lived through
a secession crisis in Quebec, where the separatists came within one percentage point of winning,” says Buckley. “It didn’t win, but the result was a series of discussions between the feds and the provinces about the allocation of powers.
And in the end, the provinces ended up with more responsibility.
One example would be the power of immigration. So right now, Canada admits immigrants, it’s a federal government, but Quebec has the right to veto immigrants who say they want to settle in Quebec.” Immigration is one of the crucial issues driving Red State voters into the national divorce camp.
By throwing open the borders, the federal government has exposed communities to felons and trafficking cartels. Between staying in a potentially deadly relationship and divorce, the latter is the rational choice. And with issues like election integrity, Second Amendment rights, school choice, and radical race and gender ideology taught in public schools, conservatives want to be liberated from the whims and self-serving dictates of Washington bureaucrats.
While state legislatures and governors are racking up wins on all these issues, it’s still
an uphill battle. “By virtue of the expansion of the federal government, particularly the spending power, many of the rules by which we live are really dictated by the feds,” says Buckley. Most of the Founding Fathers understood that, as Buckley’s book argues, bigger is worse and smaller is better. “The framers thought … that people are happier in small states, they’re better governed,” says Buckley.
“There’s a closer connection between the representatives and the representatives in small states, you can better reflect what people ordinarily want.” Nonetheless, he explains, one of the things that bothers even some proponents of national divorce “is the idea that we’d end up with walls” between states, says Buckley. “So if California seceded, there’d be this enormous wall between it and Nevada or Oregon. …
But that’s not what would happen,” he explains.
“We’d like to keep free trade between the states.
We’d like to keep free movement of goods and people. We wouldn’t want to have a passport to go to Oklahoma.” According to Buckley, we’d likely come up with something similar to what the Quebec government sought: sovereignty association. “What that would mean,” says Buckley, “is that Quebec would be sovereign with respect to some things and would share responsibility with the feds as to other things.”
In other words, it would be modeled after the U.S. Constitution,
or rather how Americans “thought about our constitution for at least 150 years.”
Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution
| Hillsdale College Online Courses And that’s where Buckley says the discussion
over secession ought to lead— “to a reconsideration of what federalism meant,
and a return to something close to what the Founders, in fact, wanted,
which is a kind of divided sovereignty.”
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
(2) Rhonda Dee Furin on Twitter states:
“It certainly seems to me that we are still a Nation At Risk.
#Education should be at the top of Our Nation’s Agenda and
I will Make it Mine, Leaving No One Behind. Please Join me in Making Education Great,
WINNING for the Kids, and Attaining that California Dream. #CA45 #MAGA https://t.co/VQlEqgS7Zu” / Twitter
I HAVE BEEN AN EDUCATOR ALL MY LIFE, BUT I AM SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW.
THAT I AM ALWAYS LEARNING AND I CAN’T POSSIBLY KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS. BUREAUCRATS IN WASHINGTON D.C. THINK THEY KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS BUT WE KNOW THAT THAT’S FAR FROM THE CASE.
COMMON CORE HAS BEEN A COMPLETE DISASTER FOR STUDENTS.
OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM SHOULD NOT BE ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL BUT LOCALIZED AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. SOME POSITIVE OPTIONS INCLUDE SCHOOL CHOICE PROGRAMS, MERIT-BASED TEACHER PAY, AND CHARTER SCHOOLS.
STOPPING SOCIALISM
Nancy Pelosi. Ihlan Omar. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders.
They’re all leading the charge to turn our country into a socialist dystopia.
When I am Governor,
I will swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Unlike AOC and Omar, I will bear true faith and allegiance to this. It is the free market principles that I believe in, that our Founding Fathers believed in that allowed this country to flourish, that has brought more people out of poverty than any other government program, and will continue to do so if we allow it to.
BRINGING BACK THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world’s fifth-largest economy. However many Californians are being left behind. Housing has become unaffordable. Regulations on business have gotten out of control. US News and Reports ranked California as the worst quality of life in America. We can bring back the prosperity that great people like then-Governor Ronald Reagan lead us to. A good start would be to cut the red tape to bring jobs to our state, cut taxes so families can keep more in their pocket, and fix our crumbling infrastructure.
Bobby Knight once said, “you show me a screwed-up kid and I will show you
screwed up parents that raised them.” I think there is no doubt we’re a nation at risk.
We have so many blind, brainwashed, and low information people in our population we will remain so for perpetuity. People don’t want to be educated. Only 10% of Americans
get onto the internet to gain knowledge.
They don’t want to know. There are free empty libraries everywhere!
All most people want is to satisfy their desires and everyone else can fu€k off as far as they’re concerned. It’s the sad truth. How do you think we got here in the first place?
For some PR reason this is being blocked on my Campaign website. We may have to ask Hlpusd & their 5 PR they hired on Taxpayer money if they have any idea. I’m a retired teacher wanting to improve education by allowing for school choice. Make Education Great!
Rhonda before any of that can happen we need a culture change( shock)!
We have students who totally disrespect teachers’ authority. In fact teachers are held accountable when they discipline their unruly students! School Choice is a viable solution. Let’s see what we can get accomplished working with the right team, a winning team.
#KAG2020 Promises Made Promises Kept.
God Bless Rhonda. More conservatives are needed in California and to help rebuild our country, bringing back American values and traditions. I left California in 96 because of taxes, homelessness and unconstitutional gun laws. I pray that conservatives can reclaim the state! – Search (bing.com)
We need to turn CALIFORNIA back RED!
Concentrate on voter registration!!! We don’t have so far to go!
Wouldn’t it be great to get conservative common-sense people like Rhonda in office, especially in CA where things are falling apart like never before because of decades of democratic misuse?
Our Motto: Fight, Fight, Fight!!!
Especially in Pelosi and Schiff districts, can’t take another term of those two. California definitely needs to turn red. What are you doing about the cheating 2 years ago that turned reliably red, Orange County blue? Also, cleaning up #SwampThingPelosi s district should be a priority as well. That AND getting rid of her. That’s LONG OVERDUE!!!
K-12 education in the U.S. is abysmal and I think it’s deliberate. It’s only when kids get to university (in most cases) that they learn anything accurate about the world. Education is where it all began. When we left it to the left, we lost education & gained indoctrination.
These idiots have fucked this great country up so badly.
Started with the #douchebag on the left!
1st & 2nd worst President in history!
While kids fear for their lives at school, education will never improve.
List of mass shootings in the United States Doubled in 2012- Wikipedia
Lefties think that the only way…. is by firmer gun control can this happen.
Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally disturbed. But it won’t happen.
Career politicians do not become multi-Millionaires on a government salary.
They become multi-millionaires by lying, cheating, stealing and with shady
dealings with other countries! Like the Bidens, Clintons. Pelosi…. Etc.
Where are the real investigations?
You can only vote if you are a registered Republican. http://sos.ca.gov
I strongly suggest checking your voter registration now and changing to Republican.
It’s more the Curriculum being taught than kids being left behind! These so-called highly qualified teachers are nothing more than highly qualified brainwashers! Not all teachers mind you; but a vast majority of them! Parents are spending $100000 for their children
to be indoctrinated in colleges.
Invest in their souls https://youtu.be/BLGfaGtkHkc
It ALL starts with EDUCATION-both at HOME and in public.
#CivilResponsibility
#CharterSchools
#ParochialSchools Jewish, Jesuit, etc.
#ResponsibleParents
Not until Tenure is abolished and teachers have to pass tests to continue teaching as well as having us go back to core classes that don’t include Political views in K-12 other than teaching what they are. No BLM, Antifa, no social movements. Balanced Education not indoctrination into Marxist philosophy. No more indoctrination
Leave no child behind and common core math was used to dumb down our kids to make less intelligent kids not FEEL bad. This was and still is an atrocity. We need to stop the emasculation and intentionally keep our kids ignorant.
This is done for power and control. #Schoolchoice
This is on http://opensecrets.org.
We are in agreement when it comes to our educational system.
I have noticed over the last 10 years, how the district’s started closing schools and converting them into apartments. Which then forces more children to attend the few schools still operating. Now the classes are overcrowded. If #EDUCATION is your priority, does “Leaving No One Behind” include children of migrants? Even if the children are migrants themselves?
Rhonda Furin https://rhondafurin.com
Web Rhonda Furin Education Is My Top Priority It certainly seems to me that we are still a Nation at Risk. Education should be at the top of Our Nation’s Agenda, and I will Make it Mine, …
The big idea of LCFF is that schools get money based on the needs of the students they are educating. Districts where there are many “higher need” students get more money to invest in those students. Here is how it works: 1. Base Funding: All districts receive a base grant for each student.
LCFF was implemented which allowed for more flexibility and less accountability. Sadly, most districts have a spending problem that doesn’t reach the needs of the students it’s intended or designed to support. Education needs complete reform. A great starting point is to Teach your kids the constitution while you have a chance.
No child left behind IS a nation thing… and it was the first step to destroying public education for my generation and the ones to follow! NCLB brought RTI and “passed the buck to the next person” leaving kids to fall through the cracks! It was also a Benghazi thing. Stevens, Doherty, Smith, and Woods were all from California. 13 minutes VS 13 Hours.