On the idea of Secession (Part 2)

(Update: I've added a few initial thoughts on the comments I've received so far.)

This is an important, as well as a very interesting topic. I'm going to post the excellent comments that I got to the original entry under the read more section of this entry in hopes that this will prevent their being missed (Please post additional comments pertinent to this question here)...

VA writes:

Terry, you've written a very well-thought out entry on this topic.
I appreciate your point of view.
I think many of those who are involved in the secessionist movement are not necessarily driven by pure animus towards DC, but an alarm at what is being done in and to our country. For many reasons it looks as though our elected officials have cut themselves off from the will of the people, which as you know, is supposed to be the basis for our government. I think many people, seeing a government which is utterly unresponsive to our will, think that such a government is no longer legitimate.

"[Bear] always in mind that a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the majority ceases to be the law." - Thomas Jefferson: Reply to the Citizens of Adams County, Pa., 1808

"The mother principle [is] that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.'" - Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

The fact that our government seems to be attempting to overturn the people by repopulating our country with a new majority is extremely serious. I can't imagine that our forefathers would accept such a thing; their grievances against King George were not as serious as today's grievances.
Having Confederate ancestors, I don't see secession as a great evil per se, though it's not something to be taken lightly by any means. Still I think there has to be the option of peacefully leaving the Union if it no longer is what it was designed to be, and if it no longer embodies the will of the people.
Peaceful separations have happened in history.

Fellow AFBer, Mike Tams writes:

Good post. I'd say that my thoughts on the matter aren't far different from yours. A voluntary union should imply a perpetual right to dissolve it - for legitimate reasons, and then it's not a matter to be taken lightly. Dissolving the Union would hold, in my opinion, grave consequences both here and abroad.

And lest Mark Alexander think we're on the same page here, I must reiterate that dissolving that bond would only be just for just reasons; and then, I would imagine that such a dissolution would be followed by another, different, union. History may have been written much differently had our union been less effective.

Populist writes:

While I'm not familiar with the calls for secession (who or why), I find the very notion a farse. In addition to representatives that will govern with the will of the people, I believe that the states need to rely less on the "central government" (to borrow a term from Mr. Morris)to govern. To me, because of party politics, the state governments have become to intertwined with the "central government." These so called representatives are more interested in who controls the house/senate and White House (not to mention re-election), than what is best for these United States. We, the governed, need to wake up from our seemingly endless slumber and take back our government! We have allowed a minority of power brokers, from both parties, to determine the direction of our country and it doesn't take a genious to see that they are running it right in to the ground.

(I will add any further comments on this idea under this title, as well as my own replies to the comments later on.)

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Here are my initial thoughts on what my commenters have said so far:

First, I didn't mean to imply that these secessionist groups are necessarily driven by pure animus toward the central government, only that this is the impression I get from what I've read of them so far. My impression could be totally wrong, to be sure, and VA is right to point this out.

Also, I don't necessarily believe that these secessionist movements are bad, or that they'll ultimately result in dire consequences for the United States, though this does concern me, as it does all of my commenters.

Indeed, I think a good argument can be made that the mere threat of secession might alarm folks enough to say to themselves "hey!, we've got a serious threat here of breaking up the union of these States, which could potentially result in putting the disparate parts, and therefore the whole North American Continent, in a very precarious and vulnerable situation. We better try to devise a better plan here; a plan to strengthen, not to dissolve the union."

And this is one reason that I think it is dangerous for us to ever look on secession as illegal, unconstitutional, or whatever. If we consider it to be so, then we deprive ourselves, this nation, of one method of detecting a problem and correcting itself. I.e., the threat of the break up of the union.

I've written many times in the past, but for the benefit of Populist let me reiterate, that the American Civil War resulted in some very problematic alterations to our form of government. Essentially we went from a Federal Representative Republic where there was a built-in balance between the national and the federal aspects, to a centralized form of government where the moderating influence of federalism was essentially removed via incorporation which the fourteenth amendment provided an avenue for the federal courts to assert and enforce, though this was not the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment. Things have steadily degenerated ever since.

Nonetheless, this is what has happened, and I think it's perfectly understandable that many Americans do not (yet) realize how far we've strayed from the original legitimate, self-correcting design of this government. I mean, this is all we've known for how many decades? We cannot allow it to continue though. And if it takes the threat of the breakup of the union to get people to realize there's a huge problem here that needs to be resolved, then I'm all for it. We just need to be able to help them understand the true nature of the problem, and the proper way of going about fixing it. If this can be done without breaking up the union (and I'm persuaded that it can and must), but rather in actually strengthening it, then I can hardly see how dissolving the union of these States to be the preferable alternative. Though an alternative it must remain.