On the idea of Secession (Part 1)

I've been promising to link up to the AFB post on this topic for several days now. I wanted to do a full post on the topic myself, but I just haven't been able to wrap my brain around the subject enough in this context to put together what I would consider a quality entry.

However, I went over to Vanishing American's last night and discovered that VA had done a post on the topic as well...

While I still can't seem to get my mind wrapped around the idea in this context (Southerners and Leftists uniting to disunite), I will say this about VA's questions concerning the "legality" of Secession under the Constitution:

To my mind (and I invite anyone to correct me here) the very idea of "voluntary union" implies a perpetual right to secession. Once it becomes perpetually impossible or illegal or "unconstitutional" to secede from the union, there's nothing "voluntary" about it. I hold that this federal union was originally formed through voluntary political association. I hold as well that no State in this union has any inherent right to voluntarily become a perpetual slave to this union; that to do so is to deprive one's progeny of their very freedom. This, in short, is the Biblical Christian view of God, man, and government.

One thing that distinguishes America in the history of nations, and of nation-making, is this very concept of voluntary political union. And one way in which the founding fathers secured this idea is through federalism, which, incidentally, is a perfectly untenable political organization without an acknowledgment of the basic right of secession, or, voluntary disassociation. In other words, where there exists no right to voluntarily secede from the union of these states, there is no longer any federalism to balance the excesses of nationalism. This is the very reason that we now wrongly refer to the central government as the "federal government," which it most certainly is not.

I personally do not think it wise for these political opposites to unite under the banner of secession. I get the impression from what I read of them that they're so blinded by their animus toward the central government that they can't, nor do they even wish to see their way to a better solution. And I personally think there is one.

It's easy to say "let's dissolve the union," particularly when you don't put much reflection to what that would mean at length. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the map and immediately determine that the United States appears as though it was ordered by Providence to be one united country. That the founders were wise enough to see this, and to make us "several as to ourselves, one as to all others," should give us pause when we start thinking in terms of breaking up the union of these states into so many sovereignties under no united government.

Are Americans, which have historically been an "enlightened" people, destined to commit the same political errors that stain the annals of human history? Are we to revert to our base natures and to break ourselves up into three, four, or more warring factions on a single continent with no centralizing and uniting influence exerted over us; an influence which we can cheerfully submit ourselves to for the common good of this nation and this people?

I think Americans have historically been better than this. Yes; we had a secessionist movement once before which resulted in the war between the states, the fourteenth amendment, and incorporation, and so on and so forth. But it seems to me that the age-old question "can men be governed by reflection and choice, or must we rely on conquest and force for our political constitutions?," should be an ever-present reminder that a wrong election on our parts might finally settle the question firmly in favor of the latter.