Michael Peck criticises Ron Paul on secession

[RPfan1992]

Ron Paul's Secession Blackmail of America Perhaps Ron Paul meant to sound noble when he spoke last week of secession “as a deeply American principle.” Perhaps in his own mind, he pictured himself as one of the Founding Fathers, affixing his signature in florid hand to the Declaration of Independence. And never mind that as George Washington proved when he led a military expedition against Pennsylvanian farmers in the Whiskey Rebellion, the last thing that ex-revolutionaries turned national leaders were prepared to tolerate was secession.

Because the Founding Fathers knew that a nation that permitted secession, without the consent of the entire nation, cannot endure. If secession is a fundamental right that some Texans can petition the White House for secession, then why not honor Atlanta’s petition to secede from the state of Georgia? And if your state can secede at will, then why can’t your county, your town, or even your street declare independence? Where does it stop?

Is there a fundamental right to secede? Sure there is, in the same way that robbing your neighbor’s house can be justified as a fundamental right if you are starving. It’s not the abstract right in question, but when it should be applied. The Founding Fathers revolted because they did not want to be ruled by a king and country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The American Civil War was fought over states’ rights; even if that was the right to enslave other human beings, it could be at least be said that the issue behind secession was significant.

And what does Ron Paul cite as justification for secession? Obamacare. Medical marijuana laws. All important issues, to be sure, and ones that raise questions about federal versus state powers. But they are not reasons to threaten to dissolve the United States. If they are, then what’s next? Texas seceding over civil rights laws, or evolution being taught in schools, or maybe Obama’s tie is the wrong color?

This isn’t liberty. This is petulance, a political temper tantrum for Americans who didn’t get their way and can’t understand that the price of maintaining a great nation like the United States is that none of us gets what we wish for all the time. Change the laws, yes. Elect politicians who support your views, yes. But don’t destroy the nation because you can’t smoke pot.

htxp://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2012/11/26/ron-pauls-secession-blackmail-of-america/

 

[Matt Collins]

I don't have the energy to go through this guy's statement and refute it.... he is exceptionally uneducated (or just a propogandist).

 

[Anti Federalist]

I don't have the energy to go through this guy's statement and refute it.... he is exceptionally uneducated (or just a propogandist).

Of course he's a mouthpiece.

The government/media complex has been ratcheted up to full damage control mode.

 

[Anti Federalist]

And what does Ron Paul cite as justification for secession? Obamacare. Medical marijuana laws. All important issues, to be sure, and ones that raise questions about federal versus state powers. But they are not reasons to threaten to dissolve the United States. If they are, then what’s next? Texas seceding over civil rights laws, or evolution being taught in schools, or maybe Obama’s tie is the wrong color?

Um, asshole, how about the executive's now well established power to kill anybody he feels like, including American citizens?

And I felt this exact same way under Bush.

Jackass.

 

[AuH20]

Secession should have been on the table after the interstate commerce travesty. Peck is a fool trying to dilute Ron's Paul's serious concerns as petty grievances.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Parting Company

by Walter E. Williams

http://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams147.html

For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company?

In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

Since Barack Obama's re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitions for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there's absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861.

Let's look at the secession issue.

At the 1787 constitutional convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, "No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States."

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here's my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?

On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."

The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede.

New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861."

Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil – evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content."

The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."

There's more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.

The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense."

Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth."

Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."

 

[Occam's Banana]

Who is Michael Peck ... and why the hell should I care what he thinks about anything?

 

[Shane Harris]

ugh. So Peck gets to decide what is and isn't a justifiable reason to secede and self-govern. No principles or parameters are set to define what constitutes the line between justifiable and non-justifiable secession, just his very own value judgments. Real intelligent.

 

[ClydeCoulter]

Who is Michael Peck ... and why the hell should I care what he thinks about anything?

I don't know, don't think I care, either.

 

[ZakB]

In fairness to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address it could be said that he was referring to an individuals right to self-determination not that of the state; ie the Union soldiers were fighting to free slaves, who were in no way allowed to govern themselves. In other words Lincoln likely viewed a government that allowed slavery to NOT be "of the people, by the people, for the people" since slaves would not be allowed to participate.

Of course Lincoln hadn't issued the Emancipation Proclamation yet nor outlawed slavery in the Union (Though most Union States had), so technically the US wasn't a gov't of and by the people either by this definition, but I believe it was understood at the time that this was the direction the Union was heading and why the South wanted to secede.

 

[Occam's Banana]

In fairness to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address it could be said that he was referring to an individuals right to self-determination not that of the state; ie the Union soldiers were fighting to free slaves, who were in no way allowed to govern themselves. In other words Lincoln likely viewed a government that allowed slavery to NOT be "of the people, by the people, for the people" since slaves would not be allowed to participate.

Slavery had nothing to do with it. In an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley (editor of the New York Tribune), Lincoln famously said, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." (And if I recall correctly, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he specifically & explicitly declared that he was opposed to allowing black people to vote.)

The only thing Lincoln gave a damn about was being President of as large a Union as possible. He didn't give a damn about the slaves, one way or the other. There's certainly nothing in the GA to suggest otherwise - the speech was basically just a lot of eloquent fluff intended to justify the massive death & destruction necessary to preserve Lincoln's (and his cronies') control over as much territory as possible.

Of course Lincoln hadn't issued the Emancipation Proclamation yet nor outlawed slavery in the Union (Though most Union States had), so technically the US wasn't a gov't of and by the people either by this definition, but I believe it was understood at the time that this was the direction the Union was heading and why the South wanted to secede.

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves. Slavery in the Union states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware & West Virginia) was explicitly exempted from the EP (as were all Confederate territories occupied by the Union Army at the time the Proclamation was issued). In other words, the EP's alleged "liberation" of slaves only applied to places over which the Union had no actual control.

Furthermore, in his First Inaugural Address (1861), Lincoln declared his support for the so-called Corwin Amendment - a Constitutional amendment proposed by Congressman Thomas Corwin which would have permanently guaranteed Constitional protection for slavery in all the slave states. Had it passed before the war broke out, it would have become the 13th amendment.

The Union was not moving towards the abolition of slavery, and Lincoln had no particular desire to free the slaves. Slavery was a serious issue, but it is not why the Civil War was fought. It sure as hell wasn't why northerners supported the war (northerners were every bit as bigoted & hateful towards blacks as southerners were). And it should be noted that many, many northerners *opposed* the war. Lincoln had thousands of them (especially newspaper editors) tossed in prison without charge or trial. Many thousands more who opposed the war were terrorized into silence & submission. If you were an anti-war northerner, you learned very quickly to keep your mouth shut and your opinions to yourself.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Lincoln was butcher who didn't give a shit about slaves or anybody else for that matter.

His only concern, and he said it a million times, including in the Gettysburg Address, was that government survive.

If it took killing everybody, but one to boss around, by god, he was prepared to do it.

"Continuity of Government" was invented by him.

In fairness to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address it could be said that he was referring to an individuals right to self-determination not that of the state; ie the Union soldiers were fighting to free slaves, who were in no way allowed to govern themselves. In other words Lincoln likely viewed a government that allowed slavery to NOT be "of the people, by the people, for the people" since slaves would not be allowed to participate.

Of course Lincoln hadn't issued the Emancipation Proclamation yet nor outlawed slavery in the Union (Though most Union States had), so technically the US wasn't a gov't of and by the people either by this definition, but I believe it was understood at the time that this was the direction the Union was heading and why the South wanted to secede.

 

[TheTexan]

Prohibiting peaceful secession only guarantees violent revolution. Fucking Lincoln.

 

[robert68]

...
Slavery was a serious issue, but it is not why the Civil War was fought...

Agree on Lincoln's motives, but what about the Confederacy's motives? That war involved 2 parties.

 

[nobody's_hero]

He's kind of late, ain't he? He must have read everyone else's criticisms of Ron Paul and then copied and republished their arguments, and now he feels smart.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Agree on Lincoln's motives, but what about the Confederacy's motives? That war involved 2 parties.

Their motives for what? They simply wanted to leave the Union in peace. Lincoln wouldn't let them.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

Their motives for what? They simply wanted to leave the Union in peace. Lincoln wouldn't let them.

Well if they wanted to leave in peace then why did they attack Fort Sumter?

 

[Occam's Banana]

Well if they wanted to leave in peace then why did they attack Fort Sumter?

Because Lincoln successfully goaded them into doing so. It was the single stupidest thing that they could have done, and they went and put their foot right in it.

In the north, the idea of going to war over secession was *very* unpopular - until Ft. Sumter. Whoever was responsible for that decision is the man who doomed the CSA.

 

[A Son of Liberty]

Is there a fundamental right to secede? Sure there is, in the same way that robbing your neighbor’s house can be justified as a fundamental right if you are starving.

What the... Who the... How the...

This is the kind of logic and quality of thinking that a major American magazine publishes these days. THIS is what shapes the political discourse in this country today.

It's almost like I'm not speaking the same language as these people. When you can't even agree on the premises of a discussion, there is precious little chance of actually getting to the point of discussion... why would Mr. Peck want to take the chance that he might fall under the governance of me - someone with whom he couldn't even start a conversation, let alone come to a resolution?

 

[KingNothing]

"Is there a fundamental right to secede? Sure there is, in the same way that robbing your neighbor’s house can be justified as a fundamental right if you are starving."

Holy Moses! Seriously!?

Secession is a right because it hurts no one. It is nothing more than an individual or group of individuals deciding that they do not want to be bound to another. How on earth is that so evil? Sure, it might be impractical in some or all cases, and it might not result in the best utilitarian ends, but that is for the parties involved in the secession debate to decide.