You folks remember El Borak? Well, I'm quite sure this is his sophisticated side / site. Let's see if it posts in it's entirety.
Settled by Mr. Lincoln, not Mr. Law
Posted: 08 Jun 2016 12:01 PM PDT
 | | Not gonna happen legally. |
William Irvin proposes a Bernie presidency while ignoring the elephant in the White House:
Bernie Sanders will not become president of the United States. But he could still become president of Vermont if the Green Mountain State secedes.
It’s not such a far-fetched notion. Vermont was an independent republic from 1777 to 1791, and despite signing the Constitution, Vermont reserved its right to leave the union. New York, Rhode Island and Virginia explicitly did so.
In researching “Free Dakota,” my novel about secession, I discovered that in the early 1800s, talk of secession was more common among the New England states than among the southern states. Few people questioned a state’s right to secede. Well, he's correct as far as he goes, which means that he's wholly incorrect. A state may have every legal right to secede, but unless it has the power to secede, it may and will not secede. America was created via secession, but it will never allow secession.
The price of secession is the blood of the people, and win or lose the butcher's bill gets paid. You will note Virginia on that short list of states that retained a legal right to leave the union. Their elected government exercised it in 1861. But Mr. Lincoln had an army, and what is a legal right when compared to a few hundred thousand men with guns? The legal question of secession was settled by force then, and always will be. Governments do not follow the law*. They use law to force the result they want.
Even reading non-secession into the 14th Amendment (as do "most constitutional scholars" per the article) is a non-starter. Regardless of whether each citizen’s allegiance is first and foremost to the federal government, and a state may not interfere with that allegiance by seceding**, the 14th Amendment was passed after the states that attempted to secede legally were stopped militarily.
Secession is not going to happen via political organization, though political organization will surely prove indispensable when the time comes to secede. It's not going to happen by Constitutional convention or amendment - the Grand Druid Council of Nine would simply declare the result unconstitutional. Secession will take place the moment that the federal government proves unable to stop secession by force***. And whether they are unable to prevent secession will be determined only after the bloodletting commences.
* The 'legalities' of secession are aptly illustrated by the absurdity of 1860s Republicans arguing that Southern states never really seceded, then trying to justify the requirement those states ratify the 14th Amendment to re-admit them to a Union they never left. Others argued that because the Confederate states left, they returned to the status of territories. How states that had never been territories managed to pull this off was never clearly explained.
** That a state secedes does not strip anyone of American citizenship - many American citizens live abroad. The assertion doesn't even make sense - I mean, who ever heard of a nation stripping someone of a different nation's citizenship?
*** this could be either because Washington cannot field an army/navy, or because the state in question could fight it off. If Vermont gets nukes, it may secede. If Vermont does not have nukes, its leaders will be hanged for treason by the United States. 
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