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Politics : Is Secession Doable? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (36)	11/4/2004 7:22:48 AM
From: JeffA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1968

Rather than secede, why don't you just leave. I think when you say there are millions with you, you are incorrect. I think there is you and about 5 others on SI that are as certifiable as you. So, the 6 of you move to one of the islands used for Survivor or whatever it is you types watch and then you can start your perfect Society.

To: SilentZ who wrote (36)	11/4/2004 7:28:40 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1968

Z, re: If I wanted to, and tens of millions of others wanted to, what's our recourse? Maybe a first step would be ballot initiatives in the selected states. But to do that, you would first have to build an organization to collect signatures and get some publicity, and of course money. This may sound silly, but from a legal perspective you might want to look into what the Florida Keys did when they were threatening to secede. If nothing else, it might tell you what not to do. You might also try to benchmark any other successful historical secessions. Are there any? Actually, the effort, even if it failed miserably (probable) might make a serious political statement that could moderate our current 'government gone neo'. Depending on how many folks you could get to go along. Right now the left is in the denial phase of mourning, but they are going to work through that and eventually are going to wake up one morning REALLY pissed off. John

To: SilentZ who wrote (36)	11/4/2004 8:14:23 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1968

Z, a quick drive by... in answer to your specific question, according a quick google search: "is seceding legal" google.com It could be: "States had a legal right to secede, affirmed by the idea of states'rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Doctrine of Nullification." But a President may choose not to recognize it: "Less than a month later, on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he refused to recognize the secession" An election has stimulated past secessions: "Several states seceded right after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860." en.wikipedia.org What started the Civil War wasn't a secession, but rather South Carolina's violent action of attacking which is most certainly poor behavior. However, Canada is an example where a secession initiative was handled peacefully and diplomatically without violence. They simply placed the question on the ballot. In their case, they decided not to secede and the process created a positive affect because the government learned how they were completely ignoring Quebec's issues. So some good came out of their attempt. At the end of the day, you don't want a secession, but you do have a right to be heard, not completely ignored. It's not clear to me Bush intends to do this even though the election was a narrow victory (48% of the voters disagree), so that's certainly not a "broad mandate" to ignore 48% of the population, but Bush tends to have Black and White thinking, so it'll be awfully difficult for him to incorporate any different perspective from the 48% population, other than his own. But to ignore 48% of the population, has some small level of risk to our stability because why would the govt want to nurture a home grown bin Laden type by ignoring 48% of the population? Our government should look to other countries that handle diversity of voter issues much better. Hypothetically, if the Blue States seceded, according to Paul Kruegman the Blue States would have the advantage of $90 billion dollars per year since the Blue States economically are more productive than the Red States, according to his article. For fun, why doesn't someone place an advertisement on Ebay to sell the Blue States? Maybe Canada would win the bid. : ) They probably would be thrilled to win the financially productive Blue States. Canada has more oil than Saudi Arabia. There's a fellow on the Bush thread that said he has contacts to the top Canadian govt leaders - he would be a good person to ask by PM. : ) There was a nice article on Yahoo about how Canada would welcome USA citizens, though they warned there's a waiting list about 8 months long. They apparently understand the disappointment over the election results. It's interesting to note that Canada had a female Prime Minister more than a decade ago. Regards, Amy J