Secession: still a popular idea?
On The Volokh Conspiracy, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin writes about a topic that gets very little attention these days: Secession. That’s right. By states. From the United States of America.
Somin notes a recent Zogby poll that showed a surprising 22 percent of Americans believe that any state has the right to “peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic.”18 percent would support a secessionist movement in their own state.
Support for a secession movement in one’s own state was actually consistent among all regions of the U.S., though slightly higher in the South (24 percent).
Hispanics and African-Americans were also more willing to believe in the right to secession (43 and 40 percent, respectively) than whites (17 percent).
32 percent of liberals believed in the right to secede, compared to just 17 percent of conservatives.
Note: this is actually not as un-timely a topic as it seems; if you’ll remember, following John Kerry’s defeat in 2004, there was considerable discussion of secession by bitter Democrats and blue-state voters (shown above, a proposed map here) — not all of it on the fringe, either.
The idea isn’t just a joke; one top Democrat says, “The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don’t pay for the federal government.”
“Some would say, ‘Oh, poor Alabama. It’s cut off from the wealth infusion that it gets from New York and California,’” said Lawrence O’Donnell, a veteran Democratic insider and now senior political analyst at MSNBC. “But the more this political condition goes on at the presidential level of the red and blue states, the more you’re testing the inclination of the blue states to say, ‘So what?’”
Slate even devoted an article — “Could the Blue States Secede?” — to examining the legal possibilities of secession.
Constitutional law professor Ann Althouse reacted with incredulity at the Zogby poll findings, saying that “all these people [who believe in a right to secession] have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War,” and called them “fascinatingly stupid.”
But, Ilya Somin points out, that’s not necessarily true. His arguments:
1) The Constitution does not prohibit secession.
“I don’t think that belief in a right of secession by itself demonstrates ignorance about either law or American history. The Constitution is famously silent on the issue of secession. It doesn’t explicitly guarantee states a right to secede, but also doesn’t explicitly forbid secession.”
He adds that while the Articles of Confederation contained language describing the Union as “perpetual,” the Constitution “does not include any such language.” Therefore, “This silence has led to ongoing debate over the constitutional status of secession. Prior to the Civil War, many respected scholars and political leaders claimed that secession was permitted by the Constitution.”
2) The Civil War did not necessarily conclude that secession is prohibited:
There is no question that the federal government defeated the south’s attempt to secede. However, superior military might doesn’t prove superior constitutional right. There are many instances in American history where federal and state governments managed to get away with violating the Constitution by applying superior force. The imposition of Jim Crow segregation on blacks in the South is the most notorious example.
..I should emphasize that I think that the federal government was right to suppress the Confederates’ efforts to secede. But not because secession is always illegal and impermissible. Rather, the Union was right in that instance because the southern states sought to secede for the indefensible purpose of protecting and extending the evil institution of slavery. Moreover, none of the southerners’ constitutional rights had been infringed by the federal government. Things would look very different if a state sought to secede for the purpose of defending fundamental human or constitutional rights rather than continuing to violate them; if, for example, the feds were trying to force slavery on unwilling free states.
Interestingly, Somin notes that even Abraham Lincoln himself, in his First Inaugural Address, while saying he believed the Union was “perpetual,” left open the possibility that states had the right to secede: “If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one.” Lincoln, of course, correctly denied that the South met this standard in 1861.
Somin concludes:
In sum, the text of the Constitution is ambiguous about secession, and nothing in our later history definitively forecloses the possibility that secession might be permissible in some situations. The Zogby poll respondents might be ignorant in so far as they may believe that the federal government will allow states to secede at will. But they are not necessarily ignorant or stupid to believe that states have a right do so - irrespective of whether the federal government is likely to honor that right.
What do you think? Do states have the right to secede? Under what circumstances should they be allowed to do so?
Mr. Mayer, your post is ignorant. First, your graphic is highly offensive and insulting. You simply could have called your red area the plain old USA.
Your one top Democrat (who you won’t name) better be careful. The wealthy pay for most of the federal government. The wealthy are generally the best and brightest in this country, and not suprisingly are Republican.
Regarding your little map, go for it. Leave. We don’t want you. Take your socialist toys up to Canada. We’ll take our military with us. The US would be much stronger with so much of the burden lifted from the Federal Government’s shoulders. Illegal immigration would no longer be a problem since California can be the magnet for them.
I agree with the statement, the segment of the country that pays for the fed. govt. is now being governed by the segment who DOESN’T PAY. I’m fed up with all the deadbeats. We should also stop all foreign aid until our budget is balanced. “No taxation without representation.” I think we should have, “NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION.”
Wow, this post is soooooo four years ago. Here’s what the new map would look like: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7079
If the blue states taxed corporations and the wealthy at 70% as Senator Obama would like, how long do you think it would take for them to leave The People’s Republic of Canada? As long as we could exile all socialists up North I would be fine with the proposed secession.
This brings up the interesting point of local government. The state of Missouri has about the 1.5 times the population of the entire United States at the time of the first census. The question should not be about why states are not allowed the authority to govern themselves, but why local governments, often larger than entire states and certainly larger than any state at the time the Constitution was written, are not allowed to govern themselves.
St Louis City is larger than the state of Wyoming. Are the people of Wyoming more able to make decisions regarding schools, police, health care, etc. than the people of St Louis. If we want to have government by the people, we ought to let the people decide in their local governments what they want.
The legal analysis is accurate. Moreover, the United States probably has the right to peacefully cede sovereignty over a given state (give it up voluntarily) if that state WANTS to go and provision is made for those that don’t . . . Read “Ecotopia” and “Ecotopia Emerging” for two variations on one scenario . . . A significant majority in California are sick of the treatment we get at the hands of the feds . . . usually slowing us down from doing the right thing . . . like on oil and air pollution . . . or refusing to intervene in the rape of electricity consumers during the phony Enron-made energy crises . . .
I can’t believe the ignorance that reigns here. This isn’t a left-right thing at all.
This whole question of secession has to do with whether or not people feel the federal government is serving the people at large, or the interests of corporations, the wealthy elite, and empire.
It can be easily argued that the federal government is more concerned with the latter.
A look at history of the past 300-400 years reveals that the US is making all the same mistakes that several other empires have made– including the British, Dutch, Spanish, etc. These mistakes include financialization of the economy, heavy indebtedness, wrong-headed overseas military ambitions, etc.
Hello everyone: the dollar is tanking and the Federal Reserve is printing money like crazy, is forcing taxpayers to bail out Wall Street’s deliberate excesses, and stopped reporting the amount of US dollars in circulation (M3) in attempt to hide the debasing of our currency; and the federal government is lying to us about inflation, unemployment, and GDP growth. I could go on…
Those who support secession, tend to believe that the federal government and the two-party system that runs it is unfixable. I’m not sure I support secession because part of me wants to hang onto the belief that we can still fix this somehow.
The current secession movements generally involve individual states (California, Vermont, Texas, Hawaii, etc) or specific regions (e.g. cascadia, southern states, New England, etc), and NOT anything like the red-blue map posted by Mr. Mayer.
Those who have posted comments thus far seem trapped in the same old media -manufactured left-right divides and haven’t taken the time to find out what’s really going on right now with this idea of peaceable secession.
Again, I don’t know if I support the idea or not, but I do see that the US is careening toward insolvency, and that Congress and the Whitehouse– regardless of party– are more interested in serving the interests of the elite who fund their campaigns than they are with serving the country and its people at large. So, it’s pretty clear to me what’s driving people to think about secession.
Only a very short view of history would lead the cartographer to place Illinois in the blue. In fact, Illinois voted Republican in every presidential election between LBJ and Clinton. And while state government is solidly in Democratic hands now, Republicans controlled it until corruption and a few very stupid political missteps brought them down. Blagojevich seems eager to return the favor. So while Illinois is certain to go for Obama this year, it remains very much a swing state.
I’m Ilya Somin. This article fairly summarizes what I said. However, I’m a man, not a woman.
It is interesting that both sides, Democrats and Republicans see the federal government as a tool to impose their ideals on the rest of the country.
Even at the state level here in Missouri, with six million people, individuals have no real say in their government. Oh sure, one vote matters, but no one listens.
When our country began, the federal government had very little power and rightly so, why in the world should people in a small town in Georgia decide what happens to people in Rhode Island.
Alderman in the City of St. Louis represent nearly the same number of people as the first members of Congress. The folks in Dogtown should not be forced to subsidize a stadium downtown, schools on the North Side or special street lamps in the Central West End.
The larger the government both in raw size and the number of people it attempts to govern, the less government there is by the people.
If Democrats are really the party of the people, why do they not allow for more local government by the people?
> If Democrats are really the party of the people, why do they
> not allow for more local government by the people?
Surely you jest, Mr. Deal. Even Republicans, the party of individual freedom and limited government, don’t do that. It is totally unreasonable to expect such a thing from Democrats, the party of income redistribution, affirmative action, and liberty without responsibility. And it’s a good thing, too. When the Democrats do secure control of a local government, look what they do with it - from Detroit’s mayor to “the elected school board” here in St. Louis, incompetence and corruption are the hallmarks of Democratic rule. You think the Republicans in Jeff City are heavy handed? Remember Bob Griffin? You think Matt Blunt serves unspoken interests over the public interest? He pales in comparison to Blagojevich. (To be fair, Ryan was no better.)