Texas Eagle Forum and the Denton County Republican Party are promoting a conference this month that will ask attendees whether Texas should secede from the United States. The Blackstone Blitz Workshop on the Constitution is set for Jan. 15 at a Baptist church in Lewisville just outside Dallas. Among the topics:
* How can we employ the worldview approach to understanding and reviving the Constitution?
* Who is the Constitution’s worst enemy?
* How can we effectively fight this enemy?
* What are the primary Judeo-Christian principles we must define and defend?
* Is there any validity to Humanists’ call for “relativism,” separation,” pluralism/diversity,” “tolerance,” etc.?
* Can Americans do anything to curb the courts – replace judicial supremacy with constitutional supremacy?
* Can Texas secede? If so, should we?
The conference is a project of the Abilene (Texas)-based Blackstone Institute, an openly militant promoter of the “culture wars” whose mission “is to declare and defend the Judeo-Christian worldview of the Constitution, law, philosophy, and theology with programs that inform and inspire.” “America is engulfed in the all-consuming flames of a Culture War from which no one and no area of American life can escape,” the website declares. It goes on to insist: “The Constitution’s principles and purposes are defined and prioritized by the Judeo-Christian value system.”
Oddly (or not) this supposed defender of the Constitution sees little conflict between its militant religious rhetoric and all that “no establishment” and “no religious test” stuff in the actual Constitution.
Blackstone’s focus apparently isn’t entirely on the Constitution. Its website also includes videos from Eagle Forum’s Court Watch (which is headed by Blackstone’s founder and current president) that ask: “Teaching Evolutionism in Texas: Bad for Texas and Bad for the Nation?” “Supporting the rights of creationism in the battle with evolutionism,” the group’s website declares as one of its goals. It also seeks to protect “persecuted orthodox believers,” supports “the sanctity of human life,” wants to protect “the Biblical family unit” and opposes “homosexual activism.”
A variety of Tea Party and far-right groups in North Texas apparently are helping promote the Blackstone event as well.
Can Texas secede? If so, should we?
Abraham Lincoln, the first RINO president, emphatically said no in a speech to Congress on the Fourth of July, 1861.
He also singled out Texas over its share of the federal debt: “A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave, and pay no part of this herself?” I’d like to know the crackpot Tea Party answer to that question.
The modern GOP is very much at odds with the historic roots of the party that opposed secession, and (as I noted above) Abraham Lincoln would be decried as a Republican In Name Only today because he vigorously opposed the radical view of states rights promoted the now-dominant faction (Religious Right) of the GOP. The modern GOP has a lot more in common with the old Southern Jim Crow Democrats with their South-Will-Rise-Again states rights rhetoric. No surprise because their political (and in many cases biological) ancestors were Jim Crow Democrats. The only thing about them that’s changed over the last 50 years is party affiliation. And now they have the audacity to claim the work of moderate Republicans as if the Religious Right were on the right side of history all along while out of the other sides of their mouths they excoriate moderates as RINOs. See Jerry Falwell’s “Ministers and Marchers” sermon, or another sermon called “Segregation or Integration: Which?” following the Brown versus Board decision. Falwell was on the side of segregation and that was his entry into politics. To be fair, he later tried to moderate his position — just as he did on so many things after putting his big foot in his even bigger mouth.
Whenever these wacko’s refer to Judeo-Christian values I can only help but read
(((((“judeo”)))))-C H R I S T I A N W H I T E P E O P L E J U S T L I K E U S ™
In the 70’s the term was “wasp,” White Anglo Saxon Protestant. How tame they seem in light of today’s Christian extremists! I only have three data points, but I have asked conservative Christians I know if they are familiar with the phrase “judeo-christian” and they all nod vigorously. But when I ask them what the “judeo” part refers to they draw a complete blank. No clue. It’s just a buzz word. I think the term is used to pose as sophisticated and worldly. Perhaps they feel less bigoted using “judeo,” but I confess I just don’t get it.
These people are just plain nuts. Which brings me to:
Great Lost American Freedom No. 3
This is the basic American right to suicide. The argument goes something like this:
“My life is my own. It does not belong to anyone else but me. I should be able to do whatever I please with that which is mine. If I want to kill myself, it is no one else’s business. If anyone else takes action to stop me, then they are taking away one of my most basic rights as an American.”
State sovereingty is a tricky subject to discuss given “supreme law” provision of the Constitution. It helps to remember that any amendment to the Constitution, including its abolition, is subject to ratification of the state legislature, three quarters concurring. In this sense, the states have the last say so.
For Texas to secede lacks military merit, Texas has no defensible borders, save the Rio Grande. The beaches on the Gulf are an open door to amphibious operation. The Gulf ports would require local air superiority to accept commerce from and to abroad. Control of the Gulf by hostile air and naval forces would wreak econmic chaos with Texas trade which is vital to the Texas economy. Houston is the fourth largest city and fifth largest port in the US. No crude in, no oil out.
The mountains in the Far West are too far to the west to provide protection.
The central triangle of Dallas-Ft Worth, Houston, and San Antonio control the transportation network ot the state, and once one of those three is taken, the viability of an interior defense is qustionable. Interior defense allows forces to be concentrated in one sector and shifted easily to another as needed. Operation on exterior lines is like attacking a circle from the outside, Success in exerior operations requires constant pressure from all directions to prevent an effective interior defense.
There isn’t much to base an interior defense in Texas. And it is hard to hide stuff in the open.
An effective defense of Texas would require the ability to move forces very fast, and to be able to mass fires from a long distance again air, ground, and sea targets. It most certainly would require well hidden anti-ship missiles.
In order for Texas to stay independent, it would have to have offensive forces capable of taking and holding New Orleans which would require alliances in Cajun territory.
Texas defended it’s shores in the Civil War, and so long as the main theaters of operation were on the other side of the Mississippi. Fredericksburg was pro-Union back then. Mexico was busy with Imperial French meddling and not interested in meddling in our affairs. That maight change, with at least an active underground covering the southern half of the state.
It’s not worth the bother. Seceding from the Union the last time took a century to recover from.
I am embarrassed as a native Texan that my state would even hold such a meeting. I live in the North Dallas suburbs and feel like an outcast as a liberal. I could well understand that the rest of the Union may want to kick us out…forget seccesion.
Texas makes the news because the state is changing quickly with more minority voters and the old guard do not want to leave power. This will be a blue state within 15 years and I for one can’t wait!
I’m curious, does protecting “the Biblical family unit” include concubines? Does that include all of a man’s wives, or just some of them?
Everything you all have posted is 100% correct.
Chuck, even Ronald Reagan would be considered a RINO to today’s Republicans; they having declared him a virtual saint notwithstanding.
Last month I listened to an interesting radio interview with David and Julie Nixon Eisenhower. They had interesting things to say about the GOP of the 1950’s. With the exception of a woman’s right to choose, the 1952 GOP Platform was more liberal than today’s Democratic Platform!!! The realization of that almost made me cry.
Deborah, I’m with you. I’m not a native Texan but a Texan import. Not only am I embarrassed by the conservative shenanigans in this state but in the entire country as a whole. Every day I feel more and more like an alien in my own country. I can’t wait to see Texas go blue again, like it once was. The problem is that we can’t count on those minority new voters all voting Democratic. A lot of them are conservatives. Consider Susana Martinez in NM, and there are many Texan examples.
Roy, you ask a good question. Would a “Biblical family” also include its slaves and its illegitimate children? Marriage as an institution was not created by religion; it was created by the need to identify legitimacy and inheritance. Nothing more.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when two closely held beliefs conflict to the point where the brain recognizes that these two can’t both be true. When both are highly charged with connotative meanings (buzz words), the brain feeds on the emotion rather than reasoon. The Nazi buss word structure held that since Jews were inferior to Germans AND held too many of the jobs that required brains and/or talen, they had to be barred from the work place, and eventually from life itself. Either the Jews were inferior, therefore could not take the good jobs, OR the Jews took the good jobs because they were superior. The Protocols of Zion were never taken as proof of superiority, but of danger to the Volk.
One cannot be an Uber-Secessionist AND be loyal to the USA, it’s government, or it’s people. I witnessed an occasion at a local GOP meeting during the election before last where a Secessionist refused pointedly to do the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag conducted at the beginning of the meeting. Also, the meeting also included a pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag.
There is a lot of money behind these dissonant and dissassociative beliefs, attitudes, etc. The question is whose agenda is served by turning Americans against each other and to raise serious questions outside the States as to the sanity of Americans overall. Particularly with a nuclear armed nuthouse.
It appears that the fruitcake revolution has already started with the shooting of Congresswoman in Arizona.
In my sourer moments, when the question, “Should Texas Secede?” arises, I’m wont to say, “Yes. And take Oklahoma with you.”
Ah, well.
How many more abuses must be endured until its time to separate?
Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.” When a “long train of abuses and usurpations” shows “a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
“Every man and every body of men on earth, possesses the right to self-government,” Jefferson wrote elsewhere, and in 1786, he even defended Shay’s tax revolt, which was suppressed by federal troops. To Jefferson, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
That same year, he wrote to James Madison advocating secession for what were then the western states, after Congress had proposed to make them fewer and larger. “This is reversing the natural order of things,” he wrote. “A tractable people may be governed in large bodies; but, in proportion as they depart from this character, the extent of their government must be less.”
Thirty years later, Jefferson wrote: “If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation” over “union,” “I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.'”
Yes. Patrick Marines Vietnam 1968. Sons of Confederate Veterans. Semper Fi DIXIE. !!
With the Texas National Guard (as with those of other states) have largely been either been radically reduced in size since fifty years ago, and any serious heavy weapons (fighter planes, tanks, and artillery) have been stripped out, the Mexican Army (or Drug Cartels) should have little difficulty in retaking south Texas. If the Yankees don’t.
In the short run, I assume the FBI and Homeland Security are taking notes, and likely have eyes and ears inside the vapid space betwixt secessionist ears. . The loop holes that allowed anti-American Pro-Soviet activists to bomb bathrooms and protest the roundess of the Earth back in the Sixties and Seventies, have been closed for some time.
The tools that perhaps would serve the best are those advocated by the Righteous Right:
1. Acting as agents of a foreign power (Israel)
2. Attempting to introduce foreign law into American courts (the Bible)
3. Establishing centers of subversion against the Constitution (Churches) which combine foreign Law with religion as Biblical Law is law as in the case of Shariah Law.
4. Practicing virtual cannibalism and worship of instruments of torture in the presence of minors.
5. Advocating the overthrow of the Constitution by establishing a Kingdom (of God) in violation of the Constitution’s provisions prohibiting titles of nobility.
6. Conspiracy to perform the above.
Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.
When Texas entered the union it was with the understanding we were to be governed by the us constition as conceved by the likes of Thomas Jefferson.In efect we entered into a contract. America stands in total breech of that contract.
Mark, there is no understanding that (Texas) was going to be governed by the US Constitution, there was a treaty and an admission process that admitted Texas to the Union, retaining some rights as a state and agreeing to surrender others to the Federal government.. That process was repeated after the Civil War in which Texas sought readmission to the Union which readmission was predicated on the approval of the Texas Legislature to ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.
The relevance of whatever the original “Founders” thought or believed is restricted by the successive amendments to the Constitution duly ratified in accordance with the Constitution. In short, there were multiple sets of “Founders” with each successive Amendment. The Constitution does not allow a state to pick and choose which Amendments it wants to follow nor does it sanction picking one set of founders over others.
There are 27 Amendments of which the first ten were added all about the same time to ensure ratification of the Constitution as a whole.
The 11th, ratified on February 7, 1795 prohibited suing the Federal Government by out of towners.
The 12th, ratified on June 15, 1804 changed the rule that made the runner up for President, the Vice President, which would have made John McClain the VP today, or Goldwater VP to JFK.
The 13th ratified on December 6, 1865 abolished slavery and involuntary servitude save a punishment under law.
The 14th ratified on July 9, 1868,
Mark, there was no “understanding we were to be governed by the US Constitution as conceived by the likes of Thomas Jefferson”, there was a treaty, an appeal to join the Union, which was ratified by the Senate, and by the State Legislature of Texas. The Constitution was not conceived by Thomas Jefferson, as he was United State Ambassador to France during the early stages of the Revolution. There is or was no one “like: Thomas Jefferson, he was one of a kind.
That which might be considered a “contract” was the repeated efforts of Texas to join the United States, the first two proposals being rejected first by the President, and the second by the Senate: So sayeth Wiki:
“Annexation by joint resolution
James K. Polk, a Democrat and a strong supporter of territorial expansion, was elected president in November 1844 with a mandate to acquire both the Republic of Texas and Oregon Country.[7] After the election, the Tyler administration realized that public opinion was in favor of annexation, consulted with President-elect Polk, and set out to accomplish annexation by means of a joint resolution.[8] The resolution declared that Texas would be admitted as a state as long as it approved annexation by January 1 1846, that it could split itself up into four additional states, and that possession of the Republic’s public land would shift to the state of Texas upon its admission.[8] On 26 February 1845, six days before Polk took office, Congress passed the joint resolution.[8] Not long afterward, Andrew Jackson Donelson, the American chargé d’affaires in Texas and the nephew of former president Andrew Jackson, presented the American resolution to President Anson Jones of Texas.[9] In July 1845, the Texan Congress endorsed the American annexation offer with only one dissenting vote and began writing a state constitution.[10] The citizens of Texas approved the new constitution and the annexation ordinance in October 1845 and Polk signed the documents formally integrating Texas into the United States on December 29 1845.[11]”
The concept of a single set of beliefs crafted into the Constitution by “Framers” or “Founders” is overly simplistic since the Constitution has been amended twenty seven times, twenty five if you delete the 18th and 21st over establishing Prohibition and then abolishing Prohibition. The first ten were added as part of a package deal to make the original constitution a little more palatable on December 15, 1791.
The 11th Amendment ratified on February 7, 1795 made it harder for out of towners to sue the US.
The 12th Amendment ratified on June 15, 1804 eliminated the requirement that the runner up for President became the Vice President. Image a Goldwater-JFK administration, or an Obama-McCain Administration.
The 13th Amendment ratified on December 6, 1865 abolished slavery
The 14th Amendment ratified on July 9, 1868 established equal protection of the laws, and the guarantee of due process.
The 15th Amendment ratified on February 3, 1870 prohibits the denial of suffrage based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (this took another hundred years to enforce and is the primary objection of the Tea Party against further loyalty to the Union)
The 16th Amendment ratified on February 3, 1913 allows income tax.
The 17th Amendment ratified on April 8, 1913, established the direct election of United States Senators by popular vote instead of selection by the state legislatures.
The 18th Amendment ratified January 16, 1919 established Prohibition
The 19th Amendment ratified August 18, 1920 establishe women’s right to vote.
The 20th Amendment ratified January 23, 1933 shortened the time to assume office after election from March 4 to January 20th following a Federal election for President.
The 21st Amendment ratified December 5, 1933 abolished Prohibition
The 22nd Amendment ratified February 27, 1951 established a two term limit for President
The 23rd Amendment ratified March 29, 1961 provided an electoral vote for DC
The 24th Amendment ratified January 23, 1964 prohibited poll taxes
The 25th Amendment ratified February 10, 1967 clarified the rules for succession to President
The 26th Amendment ratified Jul 1, 1971 established the age 18 as eligible for voting.
The 27 th Amendment ratified prohibet Congress from voting its own payraise while in office
That makes twenty sets of founders.
I am a 17 year old from TN i hope texas does secede just like Virginia did and lay the way for the rest what really needs to happen is everyone needs to get off here grab a gun and march to washington demand whats right limit the federal government disband the fbi and cia and take the damn nation back and kick all those fat rich wall street and federal bank PIGS out and a good GOD fearing man in if the masses decide to march i will be there with a rifle long live the C.S.A. long live FREEDOM long live STATESRIGHTS DEOVINDICE! send them back our fierce defiance stomp apo the cursed alliance for a tyrants life a bowie knife GOD bless the children of the free world
Tennessee tried to secede and joined the Confederacy, but it didn’t work out so well. Tennessee troops in the Confederate Army didn’t have a state to support them, and took left overs, battle pickups, and whatever they could scrounge for weapons and equipment.
Texas isn’t seceding any time soon, the threats to do so are part of a propaganda package to add a feeble force to restoring the Constitution to the Pre-Appomatox status ante bellum. in particular those “Reconstruction Amendments” that were forced down the South’s nose at the point of Yankee guns. That’s what “taking things back” means, to go back to a Constitution that had twelve amendments.
In principle, I support the right of Texas to secede if a clear majority of Texans support it. Namely because I think it’d be swell if the people running this state made fools of themselves on an international scale. Can you imagine Rick Perry giving a speech at the UN General Assembly? Sign me up.