Sunday and Secession

My friend Donald Douglas is fighting with another of my friends, Mike Tuggle, over the question of secession. I usually agree with Donald over Mike, but this time I agree with Mike. Secession was and is legal and constitutional, and Lincoln's war of aggression hasn't changed that.

I will have to write an essay on the efficacy of secession or more importantly, the threat of secession in light of tyrannical policies designed to change our constitutional republic into something else. If a number of red states coordinated their efforts, they could threaten to secede as a block unless Obama ceases his march towards socialism: no nationalizing health care, no cap and trade, no restrictions on energy production, no nationalizing of the banking and auto industries, and no exorbitant taxes or pork project spending.

I don't want to live under tyranny, even with the American flag flying overhead. Secession may be considered by some to be an extreme solution, but no doubt they thought the same thing in 1776 and 1861. Those secessions, however, are safely ensconced in the dusty pages of history; it's easy to cheer the secessionists of 1776, since they are safely in the past and unlikely to draw British minie balls fired in our direction.

Our constitutional republic has been eroded over time by the constant undermining of the statists, our rights slowly sloughed away, almost imperceptibly. Barack Obama has only increased the pace. The complete control of Congress and the White House by the statists has effectively destroyed our system of checks and balances. The barbarians have breached the gate and are ransacking Reagan's "Shining City on a Hill."

The question is, when is enough enough? At what point do we, the heirs of freedom, say to the statists, "thus far but no farther" ? (Actually, I would say, "too far, you need to back up.") In your own mind, there must exist an imaginary line in the sand, beyond which the statists may not advance. Where is that line? What does it involve? We need to be asking ourselves this.

We also need to be asking ourselves this question: is it time for a new installment of the American Revolution? If not now, when? And if it is time, how do we go about it?