The New York Times publishes a remarkably balanced article on the topic of Texas secession:
In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the
center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state
Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on
a variety of issues, including health care and environmental
regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves
simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas
nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups
that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the
1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter.The official in East Texas, Peter Morrison, the treasurer of the Hardin
County Republican Party, said in a statement that he had received
overwhelming support from conservative Texans and overwhelming
opposition from liberals outside the state in response to his comments
in his newsletter. He said that it may take time for “people to
appreciate that the fundamental cultural differences between Texas and
other parts of the United States may be best addressed by an amicable
divorce, a peaceful separation.”
For the record, I am in favor of self-determination. That is the key, I think, for secession supporters to win liberal/progressive support. American liberals, for all their ability to double-think, simply cannot permit themselves to oppose self-determination, since it is one of the foundations of their perspective on foreign policy. While some of them will be able to concoct a convoluted conceptual structure that allows them to vehemently support foreign self-determination while denying it to Americans, most of them will not. It is too integral to their view of the world.
And for the record, I am entirely in favor of self-determination for Texans as well as the other American states. Liberals like to point out that the “Democratic” states subsidize the “Republican” states; a fact which omits one extremely relevant point which I shall point out and walk through the math in a future post. Secession advocates should use this fact and the self-determination argument relentlessly, as encouraging the left to declare “good riddance” will be key to winning their support for the eventual, and inevitable, secession of several American States.