It's been a while since I've posted on political goings-on. My guy won, I've been pretty contented for the last couple of months. But Governor Rick Perry's threat that Texas may one day secede from the Union is a comment I have to take a swing at.
Secession? Seriously? Seriously? It's an absurd notion - though I have to admit my first thought was in line with Lincoln Mitchell, who wrote an excellent piece on HuffPo - Couldn't Texas have left before 2000 and saved us all a lot of misery?
But, since they didn't leave and take our ill-fated former President with them before he could muck up the entire country, we are left with what is nothing more than an absurdity. (One need look no further than Chuck Norris's aspirations of being the first President of Texas to see just how idiotic the idea is.) Texas isn't going to secede from the Union. I didn't need to major in history to know we've been around this block before. States have tried this stunt and it didn't end well for them or for the rest of the nation. And, as Mitchell pointed out, the issues at stake during the Civil War were far more incendiary and grave than those at stake today.
I get it, the political right doesn't like taxes. But nobody with any sense would honestly suggest seceding from the Union over a couple of precentage points of a tax increase for the wealthiest 1% of Americans! And in the end that increased federal money is being proposed to cover better funding our schools, improving our nation's infrastructure and exploring ways to insure that Americans don't die of mundane diseases needlessly or that children don't go to school hungry. Really, Governor Perry? You want to leave America behind because President Obama wants your kids to be able to read and to discover the technologies of the future and to learn to do all that while they are healthy and nurished? Seriously? Seriously?
Conservatives have every right to oppose President Obama's policies. It's one of the beautiful freedoms we all enjoy but stop throwing out idiotic threats of secession. It's insulting and all it does is prove how much control the fringe has gained in right wing politics.
One final observation - not only are the issues at stake not Civil War II worthy, but the idea that in today's world a United State of Texas could survive is ludicrous. Texas may be our second largest state but its still the size of a European nation. And, oh yeah, Europe's nations figured out several years ago that to compete globally they needed to band together, hence the EU. Left to compete on its own, Texas would become another second or third world country like its southern neighbors.
So, W, don't start revving that campaign machinery up just yet. You'll never be President of any country again. (And for that the world is very thankful.)
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