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Go Home Go Ahead and Secede, Texas. I Dare You.

POLITICS NOVEMBER 14, 2012

Go Ahead and Secede, Texas. I Dare You.

BY CHUCK THOMPSON

In the wake of news that more than 80,000 people have signed an online White House petition asking permission for Texas to leave the Union, a single grave concern has united the minds of Americans of all political colors: If the state secedes, where are we going to get our NFL-caliber wide receivers?

As a recent student not just of secession, but the traditionally Southern mindset that drives it in this country (similar petitions for Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina have all topped 20,000 signatures), let me be the first to say to the aggrieved liberal community: relax. No one is talking about building a Berlin Wall around the upside-down pistol grip part of Texas.

Texans may be stubborn, but they ain’t stupid. In the event of secession, mutually beneficial treaties would be drawn up between the United States and newly formed Texas Republic, ensuring both sides get what they need. 

The U.S.A. would be guaranteed access to Texas’s critical military bases, and to necessities such as refined oil, natural gas, cattle, cotton and cheerleaders. (By the way, anytime someone mentions jazz as America’s singular gift to world culture, I hasten to remind them of the cheerleader outfit.) In return, Texas would receive from the rest of the nation such life-sustaining provisions as …

Come to think of it, what does Texas actually need from the rest of us?

It’s not just that the state leads the nation in production of most of those aforementioned resources. With a rock-solid infrastructure (Texas is the only state in the continental U.S. with its own independent power grid) and stable political tradition, it’s also a self-sustaining player in agriculture, aeronautics, computers, energy, high-tech research and manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation and just about any other economic category to which you care to attach a dollar value. It’s home to six of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips and AT&T, not to mention Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Dr Pepper. According to a 2011 Economist ranking, Texas’s $1.224 trillion GDP makes it the economic equivalent of Russia—and the fourteenth-largest economy in the world, second among U.S. states only to California.

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Even during the recent economic downturn, commerce in Texas has remained robust. Employment is growing at 3.1 percent annually; its manufacturing and export figures are trending up; its unemployment rate currently stands at 6.8 percent, a full point below the national average; and housing starts are up 17.2 percent over the past year.

Texan Bob Smiley, author of the witty Texas secession novel Don’t Mess With Travis (Travis being the surname of a fictional Texas governor who calls for secession), is even more emphatic on the point. “In the last decade of the Great Recession, Texas has expanded by more than one million jobs, more than all other states combined,” Smiley told me in an email. “And fully 95 percent of the country receives its oil and gas courtesy of pipelines that originate within Texas. That is what one might call leverage.”

Texas isn’t entirely without need—consider the recent drought there, and accompanying federal aid—but then again, no major player in the global economy is entirely self-sufficient. Point being, instead of freaking out about angry Texans and other Southerners wanting to control their own destiny, we'd do better to consider their position and complaints, and ask ourselves: Shouldn’t shared values, cultural norms and manageable geography—not the chance tentacles of history and insatiable federal bureaucracy—ultimately be the things that unite a given population?

For two years, I traveled throughout Texas and the South researching these very questions for a book. I concluded that while on its surface secession is an admittedly absurd proposition, there’s a certain logic, even a sense of humanity, in its essence. Sure, splitting the country apart feels unnatural—a crime against manifest destiny, at the very least. Americans have become so accustomed to their hard divisions—conservative-liberal, black-white, Roe-Wade, red-blue, Tea Party-sane—that the chasm separating us feels almost ordained, an organic and even integral part of the national tradition. But just because spiritual, political, racial and commercial divides have always been with us doesn’t mean they must continue to define us.

So let’s back away from the secession ledge for a moment, see if we can’t find a compromise. Maybe the solution for dissatisfied Texans and other wannabe secessionist states that can’t tolerate the oppressive yoke of the federal government is to grant them some measure of quasi-autonomy. There’s plenty of international precedent. Maybe deal with Texas the way that the Philippines deals with its restive state in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or the way China manages economically independent Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region, even issuing its citizens their own passports. Hell, Scotland already has a semiautonomous parliament and in 2014 it’s going to vote on an independence referendum that could abolish its 300-year tie to the UK. Turn Texas into Puerto Rico or Guam; give them some form of political and social expression in exchange for diminished power in federal government.

Or maybe the solution is simply to give Texas and other secessionist-conservatives what they really want: free passage to the land of all their conservative fantasies. Send them all off with gratis one-way tickets (I’m happy to earmark some of my socialist tax dollars for the effort) to a country with: a small federal government with limited power and meager influence over the private lives of its citizens; extremely weak trade unions routinely sabotaged by the federal government (i.e., a “pro-business environment”); negligible income tax; few immigrants, legal or otherwise; a dominant Christian population, accounting for some 70 percent of the people; no mandatory health insurance or concept of universal health care; a strong social taboo surrounding homosexuality and a constitution that already states, “All individuals have the right to marry a person of their choice of the opposite sex”; and a gun culture so ubiquitous that you can find automatic weaponry displayed openly on the streets of its capital city and in many households.

Sound like a Texan secessionist’s dream? Well, it’s no dream. This country already exists. It’s called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Don’t mess with us, Texas. You just might get what you want.

Chuck Thompson is the author of Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession (Simon & Schuster).

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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57 comments

Since Gov. Rick Perry first raised the possibility, I am all for it. In fact, I have been talking up what I call the TSM, Texas Secession Movement, whenever possible. Texas has below average GDP per capita, 24th in the country. We don't need it. Almost surely one of those moocher states. Plus, the opportunity to rid this country of so many Republicans in one fell swoop is too delicious to pass up. Just think about the electoral math if the Electoral Collage votes of Texas were off the table and its congressional delegation disappeared. We might never have Republican control over anything again. In general, I think the Civil War was a mistake. We would be better off without the Confederate States. If they want to go, good riddance. They have a nice name for their country all ready for them, Confederate States of America. Has a certain ring to it. Only thing is, once they go, there is no coming back.

- roidubouloi

November 13, 2012 at 7:02pm

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If they can only muster 24th place with their oil wealth, one can only imagine what the place will sink to when the oil runs out. Better to take the opportunity to be rid of Texas now. I find the place so distasteful, with its barbaric criminal justice system, that I resent having to change planes in Houston and never set foot in Texas other than on those occasions when I have to pass through that airport. I would just as soon go to Somalia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I do, however, feel sorry for Austin if Texas secedes.

- roidubouloi

November 13, 2012 at 7:08pm

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By the way, the GDP of metropolitan New York City is about that of the entire State of Texas. Without oil, cotton, cattle, mineral extraction or agriculture to speak of. Brains. That's how we do it.

- roidubouloi

November 13, 2012 at 7:13pm

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Texas is #9 in net revenue to the Federal government. New York is #5. Seems New York has a post-2012 election petition to secede. I expect most of those signatures are landowners on the NY side of the Marcellus Shale + the annual secession cohort from Staten Island. Reminds me of when Manhattan toyed with secession to join the Confederacy, what with all that cotton being so critical to Manhattan's economy. Vermont keeps trying to secede. Explain that. Vermont is a "moocher state", ranked between Louisiana and Maryland.

- K2K

November 14, 2012 at 12:30am

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Wonder how the Democratic Republic of the Congo will feel about all those immigrants.

- Sophia

November 14, 2012 at 1:27am

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never mind in re: Austin.

- cdmcl3

November 14, 2012 at 1:29am

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Citizens petitions have no legal consequences, if not journalistic or blogger consequences. However, no matter how high an opinion anyone else may have of their state or borough, Texas is the only state that entered the US as a separate country with a treaty giving a legal right to secede triggered by a request to divide into 2-5 states each with its own two senators. [The Senatorial balalce of power between slave vs free states was part of the basis of our Civil War.] That request by Texas came within a vote or two of being excercised in the 1920's. The entry conditions of Texas into the US was re-affirmed by a SCOTUS decision in the 1950's over an issue of off-shore oil rights by states [Texas entered with a 12 mile limit-- not the 2-3 mile limit otherwise then customary.] In this world of hypothetical blogs, it is not clear what might happen if Austin/Travis county were then to vote to secede from Texas...or to NOT secede from the US. Could Travis get as much or more support than Taiwan or Tibet now do-- or California once did?

- drofnats1

November 14, 2012 at 6:36am

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"Come to think of it, what does Texas actually need from the rest of us?" People. The governor says a 1,000 people per day move to Texas; the IRS says it's more like 1,300. It's America's version of "drain the swamp"; it benefits Texas with more cheap labor and benefits the rest of us with less cheap labor. But why make Texas secede? Let's give Texas back to Mexico since Mexico is the rightful owner. As for the rest of us, let's do what the founders should have done at the end of the revolutionary war and annex Canada. Heck, Canada has a much more refined population and has oil to boot!

- rayward

November 14, 2012 at 6:38am

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roi. Brains is also how Austin does it. And many more residents of Texas have been elected President than NYers in the LAST 50 years... you're sure this is not POTUS envy?

- drofnats1

November 14, 2012 at 6:42am

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Ray .. good points.But you need complete your logical implications before arguing to annex Canada.... NYC back to the Dutch, most of the east coast back to England, Florida to Spain, most of the midwest and west back the France, California to Mexico (who has better claim to it than Texas) and Alaska to Russia.. It's rare to see a US citizen like yourself arguing that the world would be better without the US... or are you perhaps Canadian or Mexican?

- drofnats1

November 14, 2012 at 6:57am

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Well, drof, I did express my regret about Austin perhaps ending up in an independent Texas, an island of civilization in a sea of . . . I would also be happy to be given back to the Dutch, along with the western end of Long Island and the Hudson River Valley. Is it a coincidence or the beginning of a trend that, in the last 6 months I have taken to referring to New York as New Amsterdam, its REAL name?

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2012 at 8:15am

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Annexation of New England to Canada, along with anyone else who wants to come, would also be welcome.

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2012 at 8:15am

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With the two Roosevelts as sons of New York, drof, it will take Texas 200 years to catch up even if every other president is from Texas between now and then.

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2012 at 8:22am

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A free city state of Austin, a destination for runaway slaves! Hear! Hear!

- amidut

November 14, 2012 at 9:52am

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"If the state secedes, where are we going to get our NFL-caliber wide receivers?" South Florida, silly.

- cspencef

November 14, 2012 at 10:07am

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roi. And a thousand for both to catch up with Virginia.

- drofnats1

November 14, 2012 at 10:17am

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For the record, 41% of us Texans voted for Obama and I am caucasian and live in Dallas. We are significantly outnumbered, but some of us do have fully functioning brains with knuckles comfortably positioned a few inches above ground. The "secessionists" are Tea Party stupid and full of ignorant rage and paranoia. The good news is their children know better and it gives us progressives hope that eventually the pendulum will swing back towards the center to where the likes of LBJ and Ralph Yarborough will some day return. Yee-hah!

- margabtnr

November 14, 2012 at 10:51am

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"If the state secedes, where are we going to get our NFL-caliber wide receivers?" We've been getting MLB-caliber shortstops, third-basemen and right-fielders from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela these past 45 years and more, so I don't see a big problem with the NFL handing out visas to all that foreign talent from Texas. Although having West Virginia's football team always having to clear customs to play its opponents in the Big 12 would be a drag.

- wildboy

November 14, 2012 at 11:00am

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"Rick Perry: The Candidate Who Might Have Been" By Matthew Yglesias http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/11/13/rick_perry_could_have_won_in_2012.html Posted Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, at 1:46 PM ET "Texas Gov. Rick Perry's strong stand against Texas secession is a reminder that not-so-long ago it looked like he was going to be the next president of the United States. Jon Chait thinks that had Perry been the nominee, GOP moderates would have a fighting chance today since the party would have just gone down to defeat with a rock-ribbed conservative standard-bearer. I think that if we accept the theory that it was back pain rather than innate stupidity that made Perry's debate performances so poor that a healthy Perry really would have been a stronger nominee. Part of that is the Latino vote. Not only did Perry have a somewhat more moderate stance on immigration than Mitt Romney, he had it for the politically savvy reason that Romney's view was heartless. In Perry's eyes, Latinos—even immigrant Latinos and even undocumented immigrant Latinos—are human beings whose welfare is worthy of consideration. Not coincidentally, the Texas GOP has a much healthier relationship with its state's Hispanic population than you see in the Arizona GOP. Romney went the Arizona route to his detriment. Related to this is that as a solid movement conservative, Perry would have had much more scope to pivot to the center. Romney spent much of the campaign essentially laying the groundwork for a pivot to the center. He put Paul Ryan on the ticket. He dedicated his entire convention to Randian fantasies. And then just when the party was starting to despair about Obama's enormous lead, he shook the Etch A Sketch and narrowed the gap. Conservatives cheered because nothing succeeds like success. Perry could have made the same kind of move, but faster with less need to indulge every whim of his core supporters. Last but by no means least, my recollection from when I was working at the Center for American Progress is that the liberal pushback against the basic "Texas Miracle" narrative was pretty unpersuasive. If you want to sell a conservative policy agenda, Texas really is a smart place to point to show it in action. Texas has exactly the problem you'd think a very conservative state would have—a stingy safety net, meaning low living standards for poor Texans. But in exchange it really does have very rapid employment and population growth. Texas' public school funding is very stingy, but its students results are somewhat above average—a great example of how efficiency matters to public service delivery. The basic infrastructure in Texas is solid. Texas even includes every liberal's favorite city, Austin. Agglomerate a bunch of liberals in Texas together in one town, but still subject to the same Texas public policies, and liberals like the results. Its a good message. Massachusetts, ironically, is also a great state and a great success story. But awkwardly for former Gov. Mitt Romney it's a great progressive success story, a state where taxes are annoyingly high but in exchange you really do get excellent public services and a very high standard of human development. Romney couldn't point to any credible linkages between his ideas and desirable policy outcomes. Perry could have promised to make America more like Texas—less friendly to the interests of the poor, but faster growing—and pointed to some very real facts on the ground."

- K2K

November 14, 2012 at 11:24am

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Secede Texas. And the other secession petition states. Then the blue states can stop their transfer payments into Texas and the other secessionist states. They can go it alone, without Federal funds. The remaining United States of America can begin to spend their Federal tax dollars on a better set of priorities. I live in a secessionist state. Although I'd hate to leave my house and community, I'd move north. My property value would probably sink to nothing as soon as the secession went through. Talk about being underwater.

- AB

November 14, 2012 at 11:56am

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Contrary to the thrust of drofnats1 argument that Texas retains a special constitutional status among the states because of the way in which it joined the Union as a separate sovereign republic in 1845: Texas rejoined the Union following its defeat in the Civil War along with the other slave-owning states on the same basis as all of the rest of them. Whatever Texas might have claimed on the basis of its pre-Civil War history, it retains no special constitutional status whatever within the federal union. It is an equal among equals, whatever myth occasionally energizes the perfervid imaginations of some of the louderTexans.

- orray2

November 14, 2012 at 12:00pm

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The happiest day of my life was the day I left Texas (during the oil crash of the mid 1980s, after two years of living in the wastelands of suburban Dallas). My first reaction to secession talk is to reply with a popular Texas phrase about not letting the door hit you in the ass. But that's not the real issue. As today's Slate posting correctly points out, a far more credible threat is that Texas could conceivably split itself into 5 mini-Texases. But even they miss the point when they assume that this would add 8 dependable republicans to the Senate. South Texas, at a minimum, would be heavily Hispanic, maybe even majority Hispanic in population. Even Tom Delay won't be able to gerrymander that (and which new state prison system will he end up in, anyway?). That's not going to be a natural GOP stronghold. Whatever mini-Texas gets Austin might be a rough place for the GOP as well. Austin has a lot of smart techie people in it, and smart people don't generally line up GOP either (at least not the Texas version of the GOP). So what we all should root for is for metro Dallas and maybe Houston to form their own miniTexases, and then have the rest of the US secede from them.

- gwcross

November 14, 2012 at 12:08pm

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The article's angle is entirely wrong. The goal is not to accommodate Texas in a break-up, but to make it a clean break-up. We close the military bases and move them elsewhere. We terminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits for all "Texas citizens." We let Texas see just how interdependent their assertively "independent' electrical system really is. We erect tariff barriers for products coming into the United States from Texas and we invite the U.S. companies that have their headquarters in Texas to either move those headquarters to the U.S. or be treated like foreign countries without Most Favored Nation status. And by the way, Texas can take Oklahoma with it, along with all the Old Confederacy, except for those Confederate States that petition to stay in the U.S. and pledge to stop bitching about the U.S. government!

- CABChi

November 14, 2012 at 12:20pm

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Also, I strongly recommend that security be beefed up for the U.S. embassy and the consulates that are opened in Texas after independence. We don't want any incidents.

- ironyroad

November 14, 2012 at 1:10pm

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Nah. Texas is beautiful. Let's keep the land and invite the secessionists to move.

- Sophia

November 14, 2012 at 1:21pm

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Secessionist Texans aren't really concerned with the oppressive yoke of the federal government. They want to split off from the Yankees because they simply feel superior to the rest of us. I was stationed in 2 different Texas cities in the late Fifties when I was in the Air Force, and I noticed this even then. Many Texas townies hate outsiders, even U.S. military personnel. I imagine police in small Texas towns still stop people with out-of-state license plates for no reason, other than to harass them as inferiors who have the nerve to trespass into the Great State of Texas. Is Texas the only place where some of its residents refer to their state as a Republic? I imagine so. Yes, Austin is a cultured city, but only to a point. Remember, that's where the University of Texas is and where football numbs the brains of the majority of the residents, as it does in the rest of the football-crazy state. I like football, but I don't let it define my existence, like a frightening amount of Texans do. But, as margabtnr notes, there is a large minority of Texans who can think, and the state appears to be trending back toward the Democrats. Like they say, the only thing that never changes is change. Three or four election cycles from now a Democratic presidential candidate may take the state. And the secessionists will withdraw into their caves--for a while.

- magboy47.

November 14, 2012 at 1:29pm

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Well, I would be concerned about having the Texas secessionists infiltrate the United States, perhaps even creating a Fifth Column. I wouldn't be opposed, however, to allowing free cities in Texas to petition for continued U.S. status. perhaps Austin, San Antonio, even Dallas and Houston. After all, we protected Berlin deep inside East Germany for forty years!

- CABChi

November 14, 2012 at 1:30pm

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Unless the secessionist States form their own currency union, they would be subject to the forces of the U.S. fiscal and monetary policies -- they would not be independent actors. MS and AL would be similar to Greece. I don't think the U.S. could legally halt Social Security, MEDICARE, and federal retirement benefits to residents of TX and the other secessionsit states. An option could be to figure out how much current residents of the secessionist states have paid into Social Security with a certain percentage added on to accountfor their employers' share of the tax plus some accrued interest, pay them off and bid them good luck. The big drawback for the U.S. is that these states would become defense "freeloaders." They would not tax their citizens to provide for their won defense, a la Europe, but rely on the U.S. defense knowing full well that we would not let their natural resource base be taken over by ? {The U.S. relies on these states to provide members of the armed forces. I suppose they could hire themselves outto be mercenaries.}

- ejdubin

November 14, 2012 at 1:30pm

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K2K writes: "public school funding is very stingy, but its students results are somewhat above average—a great example of how efficiency matters to public service delivery." Well, maybe. Maybe not. Look at how Texas students perform on Texas' "home-made" tests in math & reading proficiency, vs. how they perform on the nationally-standardized measure (NAEP). On the Texas tests, they really shine. But then notice the gap between the number achieving proficiency on that measure, vs. the NAEP - and compare with, say, California. It is pretty clear that Texas dumbed-down the Texas test - whereas California's test was designed to be a more rigorous measure. And on the NAEP, students in a state like Massachusetts, where they spend more money on public education, clearly did better than students in Texas, and other low-spending states in general. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemapping/2009_naep_state_table.asp

- Haole45

November 14, 2012 at 2:13pm

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Instead of allowing Texas to secede, can't we just encourage self-deportation? That way we keep the oil and cheerleaders and illegal Texans get the libertarian ideal of the Mexican border states.

- polcereal

November 14, 2012 at 2:28pm

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orray. You may not like it, but the Warren- Court SCOTUS ruling was that Texas at least (and presumably the other Confederate States) did NOT successfully secede. Therefore the original treaty between Texas and the Union of 1845 still holds...Texas did not rejoin-- it never successfully left (THAT in fact WAS Lincoln's position on the "rebellion" that made it more difficult for England to openly support the Confederacy.] .... and Texas still has a 12 mile limit for State oil rights, whereas others have a measly 2-3 miles, if that.

- drofnats1

November 14, 2012 at 3:15pm

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Of course, we could legally deny Social Security, Medicare and other benefits to the citizens of the New Independent State of Texas. Just pass a law in our new free-at-last Congress, and it is done. We would owe absolutely nothing to the New Texas State or its citizens. Social Security benefits are not a constitutional contract. What are they going to do, invade the U.S. and march on the Treasury, forcing checks to be sent to Texas banks? There was another suggestion elsewhere on the web that would-be secessionists just renounce their U.S. citizenship; perhaps that ought to be the WH answer to the petitioners. I'm sure that INS could put a form on the web for these folks to fill out and return. Wouldn't even cost them the price of a stamp!

- CABChi

November 14, 2012 at 3:27pm

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Unfortunately, the notion that Texas retained the right to secede is a myth. Which is why it didn't successfully secede in the Civil War. The accession provision to permit its break up into five states is probably unenforceable against the United States, meaning Congressional consent would be required. However, even if it were at first enforceable, it is so explicitly tied to slavery and the Missouri Compromise that it was more than likely rendered moot by the Civil War and Reconstruction. However, Texas does have a deeper state maritime boundary than other states, for what its worth. Of course, if we can just persuade Texas to secede, it will enjoy a 12 mile boundary and a 200 mile economic zone. Well worth it to be rid of Texas. Within a generation or so it would be absorbed into Mexico which would probably do Mexico some good and get rid of Texas permanently.

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2012 at 3:52pm

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Haole: every word in my comment 11/14/2012 - 12:24pm EDT | K2K was written by Matthew Yglesias in his post at Slate titled: "Rick Perry: The Candidate Who Might Have Been" Tnr. commenters really do have reading comprehension problems. MY words now: Just thought it was a more mature, professional analysis of the same topic than the talking points posted here by Chuck Thompson. Texas pays far more revenue to the Federal government than it receives, even more if you deduct all the Federal salaries paid to people living in Texas, thanks to the legacy of Sam Rayburn and LBJ. And, fwiw, there are at least twenty other nations where you can retire and collect your Social Security check.

- K2K

November 14, 2012 at 3:56pm

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It would be nice to comment here but I can't see past the enveloping smug.

- Sancho

November 14, 2012 at 4:10pm

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"It would be nice to comment here but I can't see past the enveloping smug." This implies that you didn't make a comment. But then what did I just read? Thanks a lot -- now I'll be up all night pondering this existential paradox.

- Fishpeddler

November 14, 2012 at 4:49pm

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One major problem with Perry's Texas Miracle is that it is the result of winning an on-going competition with other states: "Get your cheap land here! Low taxes, we got 'em!" As was often pointed out back when Perry was a viable candidate for the Republican nomination, this model for economic success doesn't work at the national level. Well, we do compete with other nations in many respects, but attracting businesses and workers from, say, Oklahoma is not anything like attracting them from Germany, Japan, etc.

- Fishpeddler

November 14, 2012 at 4:58pm

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When a US Citizen willingly gives up their passport to become a citizen of another country loses any claim to prior "entitlements" like Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid due to them, so to would all of the citizens and the States lose their "entitlements" upon successfully seceding. I suspect that once these rogue nations, as they would now be considered by the US since many harbor far-right militia groups with strong anti-US Federal government positions, the US could then put crippling sanctions on them. Of course they'll all turn into little Somalias and Yemens. Then after a few border incursions by these "Confederales" the US can implement drone strikes and then full on land invasions. We can partition off Texass and turn it into the world's largest Gitmo where we can waterboard the likes of Donald Trump on reality TV shows and Honey Boo Boo will be made to frog-walk across a bridge covered in shards of glass to earn her daily rations across. This will all be broadcast for our entertainment. It'll be like the Hunger Games only for real.

- singlspeed

November 14, 2012 at 6:39pm

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Too smug or not too smug, to comment smugly upon the smug is....well smug?

- singlspeed

November 14, 2012 at 6:42pm

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@K2K: Sorry, but I was confused by the fact that your quotation marks did not continue past the first paragraph of the passage you quoted from Yglesias - so I assumed you had made the statement in question.

- Haole45

November 14, 2012 at 6:52pm

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Cool, an entire state's population is written off as worthless scum. Latino Democrat who has worked hard in this state. Apparently, I'm not welcome here.

- Sancho

November 14, 2012 at 7:13pm

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"Texans may be stubborn, but they ain’t stupid." Sorry, I'm not taking that one on faith. I'll need to see some evidence.

- DC Spence

November 14, 2012 at 7:15pm

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@Haole45: understandable - Yglesias quoted a lot of people - and I dare not try to use tnr formatting options - lest the comments all turn into bold-faced red type :) @Sancho: my empathy. Texas is a big red thorn in tnr's view of America.

- K2K

November 14, 2012 at 8:50pm

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Hey, they are the ones talking about seceding, not the rest of us. If they want to go, why are we obliged to plead otherwise, or allow them to extort us on public policy in exchange for graciously agreeing to remain in the Union? If Texas and a bunch of other Confederate states want out, let them go. Its time enough that we stopped fighting the Civil War. Their unreconstructed racism is wrecking the country, a toxic brew that has a large segment of the working class voting against its own interests out of racial fear. Enough already.

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2012 at 11:08pm

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My guess is that Texas turns purple in 2020 and blue in 2024. Why don't you guys just let us be for another decade or so, our crazies won't be able to cause much harm after that.

- austinous

November 14, 2012 at 11:10pm

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It is less that Texas is a red thorn in the side of an increasingly blue America than that Texas cannot accept being in the minority in an increasingly blue America. Sore losers. No surprise. Better to say goodbye than have them constantly undermining the country with their bitterness. We do not need Texas. We do not need the rest of the secessionist states. They need us, but there is no reason to indulge their bitching and moaning for the privilege of sharing our country with them.

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2012 at 11:11pm

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Something to think about ... in all the assessments of how much each states gives and takes in federal dollars, I don't think defense spending is included. So even is TX is at a 0.94 ratio (net giver to the Federal government), once they seceded, they (we? I live in Austin) would have to setup their own military because you can bet the United States would withdraw all forces from Texas. What happens to their economy then? Could any state sustain itself if it also had to setup its own defense? Of course, once they became a sovereign nation, they could also issue their own debt, but that would be impossible given the founding philosophy of the nation - no debt.

- austinous

November 14, 2012 at 11:17pm

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"They" now means everyone in Texas. This is "roidubouloi" at his/her dumbest.

- Sancho

November 14, 2012 at 11:36pm

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No, of course it doesn't mean everyone in Texas, Sancho. But then, it never does. Not everyone in the south was a slaveowner or secessionist either. That, however, doesn't change the reality of the weight that southern racism exerts on our political life, to this day. I think it was Nate Silver, of maybe it was Nate Cohn, who had a a column in the last couple of days on the extent to which the voting behavior of southern and Appalachian working class whites continues to deviate from the American norm for reasons of race. And these are the same reasons that Texans, although not all of them and maybe not most of them, want to secede, the inability to accept participation in a diverse nation in which white privilege is becoming a thing of the past. Surely you have heard of the "southern strategy" or the Republican party. What do you think if was and is about? Let me refresh your recollection, a quote just today: Political Wire, Trending: November 14, 2012 Lee Atwater on the Southern Strategy The Nation dug up an interview with the infamous GOP strategist Lee Atwater explaining how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves. Said Atwater: "You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.... 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"

- roidubouloi

November 15, 2012 at 12:00am

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Doesn't Grover Norquist want to get rid of Texas completely? I have a radio with a lot of static, but I thought that's the plan.

- ironyroad

November 15, 2012 at 12:39am

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Lot of good discussion on this. I especially like the concepts for reconfiguring North American unions (annexation is such a strong word). TNR should keep leading with this article for awhile. I think it and its comments are important.

- dcwood10

November 15, 2012 at 2:17am

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Fuck TNR. Maybe they'll make a navel-gazing article on what assholes they are.

- Sancho

November 15, 2012 at 2:51am

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It never occurs to limousine liberals that the residents of Appalachia, those who are descendants of the first Scots-Irish settlers who self-identify ethnicity as "American", have the right to want to vote for people who share their "identity". Having accidentally shared two elevator rides with Brooklyn's Charles Barron, I attest to the very real reverse racism that infects New York City. Actually, all you have to do is go house hunting in the New York metro area to see the racial discrimination in housing, and it works both ways. America is so doomed with a Democratic Party in DC who still think it is 1969. I admit I am not sure what year it is in the GOP, but that does not mean they are all hiding nooses behind their Glocks.

- K2K

November 15, 2012 at 9:44am

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The residents of Appalachia have the right to vote for whomever they want. And I have the right to observe that racism is a disease that continues to be epidemic in red states. The Republican electoral map consists of the Confederacy and territory claimed by the Confederacy, a handful of largely empty, libertarian Plains states, a couple of states noteworthy for their religious extremism, and Indiana as the last vestige of what used to be called Mid-west Republicanism. That's it. It does not behoove the rest of us to be stupid about what animates the blue-red divide because the ill-educated descendents of Scots-Irish settlers have the right to vote -- even to vote their racist beliefs. Sadly, they are easy prey for the plutocrats who use fear of racial, ethnic, sexual, and moral pollution to separate them from their own interests. We would be better of without Texas, which would reduce their numbers to a permanent minority so that those of us who live in the 21st century can get on with it.

- roidubouloi

November 15, 2012 at 10:11am

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No, it isn't 1969. The red states and the Republican party that feeds on them with one or another version of its southern strategy seems not to have caught up with that reality. Seemingly some of the TNR readership also has not.

- roidubouloi

November 15, 2012 at 10:12am

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This article is one of the most moronic I've ever read and I think TNR should be embarrassed to publish it. While I agree with it's general sentiment the sentence near the end which reads " Sound like a Texan secessionist’s dream? Well, it’s no dream. This country already exists. It’s called the Democratic Republic of the Congo". is not logical and it is beyond hyperbole. Comparing the two is like comparing an NFL receiver to a six year old flag football receiver. For starters the rule of law, the level of corruption, the amount of infrastructure, and the educations levels are like night and day(and always were). This is not to defend any problems associated with secession, only to point out how hollow the comparison to the Congo is. Publishing something like this takes credibility away from every other writer in your magazine.

- leather

November 15, 2012 at 10:39pm

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Can someone (I would, but don't know how) start a nationwide website petition to demand that Texas please, please, please secede? No state this obnoxious should remain part of the United States.

- RobertW

November 16, 2012 at 12:21pm

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