National Divorce, Texit and Separatist Movements

Because I am a person of basic philosophic principles, rather than the finer details spawned from political partisan bickering, I’m going to start this article with a brief explanation of games theory. Ultimately that’s what politics is, on any level; the playing of, and effort to win, a game.

What I mean by games is that life works according to the same principles as a game. You have things you are able to or allowed to do. These are called freedoms. You have things that block you from doing things you want to. These are called barriers. You have goals that you would like to reach or be able to do. When the goals are achieved you win the game. If the goals are not achieved you lose the game.

Let’s use football, because of its popularity in the United States, as an example. In football you have a place to play, which is of course, the field. The players can move about the field, forward, backward and sideways, within the limits of the rules of the game. The movement is freedom. The rules and the opposing team are the barriers. The goal of the game is to move the ball down the field and get it into the end zone or through the goal posts more times than the other team. Part of the goal is to also prevent the other team from moving the ball down the field or through the goal posts.

If there is not a place to play, no rules at all, or people in the game who do not follow the rules, no way to move on the field, nobody to play on the other side, no goals or end zone to try to get into, then you don’t have a game at all. You also don’t have a game where the people playing the game disagree with or don’t understand the rules.

Now, suppose you were required to play a game of football where you had to follow the rules but the other side didn’t. No matter what you did the other side would always achieve their goals and win. You would never achieve your goals or win. Would you be willing to engage in such an activity? Of course you wouldn’t.

Reverse that. Suppose you were to be completely unrestrained by the petty concerns of following the rules, while your opponents were required to follow them. Every time you play, you win. Every. Single. Time. Over. And. Over. How long would you remain interested in that game? You’d get bored I’d bet. Then you wouldn’t play. Then other people also wouldn’t be willing to play against you. Then you wouldn’t have a game.

There is a lot more to the games theory of life than this but for the sake of this article the take away is that you wouldn’t normally play a game with people who won’t follow the established rules. It doesn’t matter if it’s football, baseball, race cars, poker, Scrabble, Dominoes, Risk, Monopoly, the United States of America, or any other game.

If you are in a game and your opponent won’t follow the rules the sensible thing to do, assuming you can’t get them to change their mind and become more ethical, is to leave the game. In fact, no matter what the game is, when it reaches the point where it is no longer playable, the right thing to do is to take your chips and leave. You have every right to do so.

The United States has this thing we like to toss about called “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Suppose that you are playing a game of poker and your goal is to live your life through the pursuit of happiness by the playing of this game. However your opponent decided he is not going to follow the rules and there is nothing you can do to convince him to follow them. You keep losing more and more of your chips and it is very obvious that it’s because of his refusal to follow the rules. So you announce that you have the right to leave and are going to do so because he’s not following the rules. As you slide your chair back from the table and move to stand up, your opponent pulls a big gun and points it in your face telling you to sit back down and keep playing. Certainly that would be a loss of the pursuit of happiness. Possibly it would be a loss of life. Wouldn’t that also be a loss of liberty?

If you are in any relationship with anybody doing anything how could it be said that you have freedom if you don’t have the right to leave? And isn’t the proper technical term for someone who refuses to let you leave the game on your own determinism, “asshole”?

There’s an interesting side note here which comes to mind. People who read my articles or talk to me about politics very much at all would sooner or later have to know that I very strongly disapprove of the actions of Abraham Lincoln. I think he’s the worst president in the entire history of the country. Certainly more Americans have died under his commands than almost all other presidents combined. I could and have written several articles about it but that is not the point of this one. The thing that comes to mind here that I wish to comment on is something I call “Lincoln’s Paradox.” If it is considered immoral for one person to hold another person, by use of force and against their will, how is it then moral for a group of States to hold entire other States of people by the use of force and against their will?

Either we are free or we are not. If we are free, we as States and People, have the right to unilaterally leave the game, especially when the other side refuses to follow the rules adopted within the Constitution. Otherwise we, as Americans, might as well have joined the Soviet Union.

Speaking of the Constitution, when people talk about it, sooner or later there will be in the conversation this principle called the “Separation of Powers.” There will also be in conjunction with that a thing called the “Balance of Power” or a system of “Checks and Balances.”

You will be, or have been, told that this means that we have the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch of the federal government. That’s your separation of powers. Right there. That, or so you are told, is the system of checks and balances.

The president has his powers. The Congress has theirs. The Supreme Court has theirs. One of them gets out of control and the other two are supposed to bring them back in line. That’s the check and balance.

I have a head. I have a right hand. I have a left hand. I too, by the above standard, have separation of powers and checks and balances. If I’m confronted by some ethical dilemma, let’s say I’m on a low carb diet but I’m confronted by an apple pie, because, you know, apple pie is irresistible manna from Heaven. My left hand says “you want the pie.” Could my head and right hand be counted on to stop me from eating the pie?

The obvious problem in this scenario is that my head and my right and left hands are all part of the same thing. Me.

Let’s think about this. Slowly. The federal government (one thing) is composed of three branches. It (one thing) has a left hand, Congress. It (one thing) has a right hand, the Supreme Court. It (one thing) has a head, the president.

Ummm…the question in the mind of any reasonable human being right now would have to be, “What keeps them from taking all of the pie?”

Those who understand the Constitution know the answer to this question. And there is an answer. It’s called Article One, Section Eight, which I write about frequently, and the Tenth Amendment, which I also write about frequently. Neither of those are the point of this article though, so why don’t I just stick to the point?

The thing not mentioned (intentionally in my most humble opinion) by most Political Science professors, and their liberally written textbooks, is that the States have a whole crap load of their own powers as well. In fact per the Constitution, Article One, Section Eight and the Tenth Amendment, the States have by far more power over their own decisions than the federal government.

So per the Constitution, the Separation of Powers is, as mentioned, the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches, plus the States. Also the system of Checks and Balances includes the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches, plus the States. So if any one or two or three of these go out of control the remaining ones can attempt to bring them back in line.

Sort of.

Remember from above where I pointed out that the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches are all part of the federal government and thus are the same thing?

Okay. So now what we really have in our Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances system is (currently) fifty States on one side and the federal government on the other.

So if the federal government gets out of hand we have fifty States to bring them back in line. Now think about this less obvious fact of the matter; if the abused player leaves the table the cheater also loses the game because he can no longer take all of the pie!

Well, what happens if a lot of the States, and the federal government, decide they aren’t going to follow the rules? No matter what is said or done they just refuse to play the game called “The United States” by the Constitution? Wouldn’t and shouldn’t a truly free people be allowed to protect themselves and leave?

Thomas Jefferson apparently thought so. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” And I find myself rather inclined to agree with him.

The next words from Jefferson, which I also agree with, are; “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Recently there has been a lot of talk about it being time for a national divorce. This is a polite and politically correct term for secession. It’s not new. In fact it as a subject can be traced by a moderately capable researcher all of the way back to the Revolutionary War itself. More recently Texas was talking about leaving when Obama was president. California was talking about leaving when Trump was president. Texas is again talking about leaving with Biden as president. I’ve seen recent poll results from Texas where as many as sixty-six percent of the people polled there say they would support it.

It is a fitting and natural thing for any person or group of people to decide on a day to day basis if it is or is not proper to maintain our relationships to those with whom we are associated. Couples, companies and countries do this all of the time. Sometimes peaceably and sometimes not.

It is completely in keeping with the Declaration of Independence for them to do so. There is nothing in the Constitution that forbids a State from leaving. If there is something in other federal law that does so, and I highly doubt that there is, it would be unconstitutional under Article One, Sections Eight and Ten as well as the Tenth Amendment. There is the legal principle, for those who like Latin technical phrases, “nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege.” In English this simply means that if there is no law against it, it is legal to do.

While I would fight and die to defend this country, and all who wish to be a part of it while following its rules, I agree whole heartedly that it is time, because of the refusal of the federal government, and a significant number of the States, to follow the Constitutional rules, for some States to take their remaining chips, or pie, and leave the table to go and play a different game.

After all, according to the legal doctrine "protectus pieus maximus" isn’t protecting our pie also a very important part of life?