This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Secession Cometh to America?
There is much talk about the fragmentation of the international order. The failure of the Doha Round at the WTO, the efforts to make national firewalls are digital information, the decline cross-border movement of capital since 2008, the decline trade, the rise of anti-immigration sentiment all are part of the pessimistic picture painted by some observers.
The Scottish referendum also underscored how vulnerable the nation-state itself is to the centrifugal forces that have been unleashed. Parts of Spain want to leave. Parts of Italy and Germany have made secessionist noises. Sometimes it appears if it weren't for Brussels, Belgium might have ceased to be a country.
It turns out the US also may be subject to secessionist sentiment. This Great Graphic is the result of a survey Reuters conducted and Jim Gaines wrote about here. It was an internet-based survey that included about 9000 people. It asked a straightforward question: "Do you support or oppose the idea of your state peacefully withdrawing from the United States of America and the federal government?"
The results Gaines showed are on a regional basis. If you click here, you will be able to filter the data by state and numerous demographic categories. Gaines reports that Republicans favor their state leaving more than Democrats, the right more than the left-leaning independents, younger rather than older, lower income more than higher income and high school educated more than college educated.
In aggregate the results showed about a quarter (23.9%) of the respondents answered in the affirmative. This is greater than the support for most of the anti-EU parties in Europe, like the UKIP and AfD. Does this mean that next year, the 150th anniversary of the end of the war for Southern independence (Civil War), investors should be concerned about a new secessionist movement?
Gaines reports that follow-up conversations with some of the respondents found that the secessionist vote was more a protest vote than a genuine desire to secede. The sense of aggrievement, Gaines found, was comprehensive, bipartisan, and deeply felt, even if somewhat incoherent. It is an expression of disapproval of the direction that the country has moved, or is moving in, rather than a call for independence.
Some surveys in Europe has found, in a similar vein, that many voters of the anti-EU parties were also expressing disapproval and frustration. In Germany, most recently the AfD won representation in two German state governments on a conservative social agenda, not its anti-EU stance, which it played down, for example.
The political elites in the US and Europe have their work cut out for them. There may be an economic solution for part of the problem, but it is not just about the pace of growth and historically high level of unemployment in many countries. The issue of disparity of income and wealth means that aggregate measures of economic activity are no longer sufficient proof that more citizens have access to a better life. In many high income countries, the crisis is over the social contract, which has fallen into disrepair, and respected primarily in its breach.
»
- advertisements -
I agree, the collapse is imminent. hell, it's eminent, too.
This was already tried back in 1861 and it didn’t work.
Today, we are held hostage by the aged, disabled, EBT crowd, etc. who all vote.
"State's rights? What's that?" sincerely, Abe Lincoln
"The Civil War repealed the Tenth Amendment," said Justice Scalia.
That sociopathic asshole. We are the straw men, we are the hollow men.... we are the morally bankrupt men...the center is not holding, and we are the spinning men...
Texas and the southeast United States is still occupied territory. We have learned to love, pledge, and salute our masters.
Anyone on the dole should not be allowed to vote. It is an obvious conflict of interest. Would be nice if some politician would make this argument.
Today we have "representaion without taxation", a slight change from what the Colonists complained about. IMO, if you pay no net FEDERAL INCOME TAX (not countinng FICA, fees, etc), you should not be allowed to vote in federal elections. Everyone, in one form or another, pays local and state taxes -- so vote away on the local level.
Not your dime? You don't vote!
No, what we have is representation by way of donation. Money speaks louder than mere votes.
It used to be only land owners could vote. And, well, that turned into an oligarchy. Really no different than a king and his rich buddies taking all the spoils.
The right to vote by all was a step in the right direction. It helped to hinder the collection of power into the hands of a few. Of course, the SCOTUS ruled that unions, businesses, and groups are all people, and contributing to politicians is a freedom of speech. So, in the end it's back to the rich having all the influence to buy power and control. Votes don't matter anymore, only money.
You may be right, but it seems to me that the FSA made a deal with devil. You can keep yoour fractional reserve banking, debt based money, and federal Reserve, and your military and police and prisons, long as we get our free shit.
the PTB are happy to oblige, seeing as they are getting almost all the stuff.
madcows: "The right to vote by all was a step in the right direction."
And then a disastrous step in the wrong one: "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic." — Ben Franklin
Please show some historical examples of that happening. There plenty of instances of the the local PTB giving themselves a handout. Just look at TARP. That sure wasn't the people voting themselves free money.
So please, put up or shut the fuck up.
Look around you. This system maximizes dependency because that gives it dual control - over the dependent, and over the slaves that work 60% of their lives so that the dependent can do fuck all, all day every day, then die a slow and lingering death whereupon we get to work even harder so that heroic efforts by incredibly talented people can restore the dependent to the couch in their living room, where the permanently impoverished will watch their cable tv on big screen TVs.
And if the process doesn't fulfill the desires of the control freak leftists who run the operation, they just set up death camps and exterminate tens of millions. Crack a history book, then ram something sharp and jagged straight home.
The fact that most developed countries have an average IQ in the high 90s is why universal suffrage is a disaster.
It was not a step in the right direction.
How does average IQ play into this? Half the population of developed countries, including the US, have an IQ lower than the high 90s.
Think about it. Let it sink in.
With the information that half the nation has an IQ lower than 95-98, do you really want half the country making decisions as important as voting?
Being a landowner took some work, some achievement, some thought. Maybe it's not the best way to set the bar, but considering the intellectual ability of the other half of the nation, I do think we need some kind of bar.
You blaspheme Raymond. For that, you must be repeatedly dipped in the vat of shame. Your head held under until you locks reek of it. Even the cattle, pigs, and sheeple will shun you. I do like the "bar" idea though, I've been known to belly up on occasion.
Really the FSA* by my definition accounts for approximately half of the registered voters. That leaves about half the population that actually has some investment in this country to make the decisions. I think that is a perfectly acceptible level for the bar to be set.
* By my definition, the FSA includes everybody that is not working and is getting public money. Screw the public pensioners! Why should they get to vote after raping the citizens for their entire lives.
Average IQ is 100 by definition...
According to which scale?
Which scale? Well, there's the rub. The IQ scale of course.
So the real question is, how much has the mean needed to be adjusted to make it 100? Graph that against time. It'll give an idea of how things are changing. Think about evolutionary theory briefly, then take a wild guess. Clue: if there is no selection pressure for a particular trait, that trait will disappear over time. It's called genetic drift. Traits take energy to maintain; if there is no benefit (selection pressure) to maintaining them then the energy stops being wasted.
Everyone breeds; we get dumber.
The idiocracy is accelerating at an exponential rate. We have to cull the herd. Oh, right, that's what the oligarchs are in the process of doing. Anyone with an IQ less than 120 needs to be sterilized. Then we can have some very smart voters....
Bathroom.
I took a dump and lost 5 IQ points..
just call me shit for brains...
The difference between 1861 and now is that the south and other flyover states now have all the advantages that the northern states had during the last unpleasentness.
Yes, we have the oil and the food.
Yesss, butt the Crapitol has the media, and the police, and the TLAs. They will try to take stuff by force.
I think the manufacturing played a bigger part. The north made cannon balls. The south made food, cotton, tobacco and cannon fodder.
A lot of the heavy manufacturing left the rust belt and northeast years ago and what didn't off-shore moved south and west.
Yes, but you have to keep in mind that a lot of food was much more localized back in those days. People weren't nearly as dependant on mega-farms as they are today, and most probably had an idea of how their food was produced and where it came from. It would be much more possible to shut the East Coast's food supply down totally.
Besides, Texas has a lot of the MIC stuff, and if you shut down the oil to other regions, you shut down their industry.
The south also has Altanta-Harts Field-Jackson Memorial International Airport. They can shut that puppy down and no one flies anywhere. The North would capitualte immediately.
TBTB would never allow the slaves, er, citizens to leave without massive amounts of blood on the streets. It won't be peaceful, that's for sure.
i'm sure some of that blood would be theirs, too.
damned sure.
I sure as hell want out.
You all should click on the source and go through all of the demographics. Pay special attention to the people who served in the military between 2001 and 2011. It appears that quite a few of them are waking up to the fact that they were used.
I know. I do believe it will happen when the economy implodes, who says that countries don't change over a course of time.
But aren't all secessionist movements a vote demonstrating dissatisfaction of the larger nation?
It's as if to say, people don't like drinking. They drink just to show they want to be buzzed. So, people don't really want to drink.
Kinda of misses the whole point about secession, no?
The founding fathers would most likely prefer to suffer their own slow deaths from ebola rather than to witness the death of their constitution through a million cuts.
I love the idea of succession, but I would argue that it is a practical impossibility today - usurpers of the constitution have made the federal government's entanglement and infection of every aspect of society so pervasive that removal means unnecessary suffering and a painful death.
It's not like having a kidney removed or having a leg amputated. It's more like the technical challenge of having all your arteries removed and replaced with new ones. It doesn't matter how bad you think you need a total artery replacement to save the rest of your body, it just isn't going to happen today.
The federal government needs to be refactored to serve the people.
The federal government doesnt con tribute anything to the states, it jsut redistributes the taxes paid to the them by the states tot he fed. Some states are net gainers from federall redistribution, some are net losers who pay more to the feds than they get back. For the losers it would be easy to substitute state funds for the federal ones. The ones who gain would lose out.
Well, you know what they say, "If at first you do not secede, then try, try again."
Things will have to get much worse, before they get worserer enough for this.
I'm in Texas. We get to go first.
It won't happen until there's no air conditioning.