The state secedes

Yes, yes, yes. I know. It's been "a while". I'm sure you've all missed me. I have excuses: research qualifiers, paper reviews and revisions, recruitment weekend, composition projects, and a well-connected Finnish engineer have all distracted me from serving up rhetorical goodness for my (four or so) devoted fans.

I started a few posts--one on the tragedy of fading memory as it relates to William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" and one on an unfortunate quote by the otherwise-brilliant Bertrand Russell--but I didn't finish them. Those were shaping up to be complicated posts, and it takes me a lot of effort to organize and articulate my thoughts correctly. So, in keeping with my Gaussian approach to this blog, I've scrapped them--at least for the time being.

But today's topic is perfect for the blogger in a hurry. It's stupid, it makes me angry, and it requires only a minimum of analytical horsepower: Texas secession and the anti-tax tea parties.

On Wednesday, while at a tea party rally in Austin, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that if the Federal government didn't start listening to the American people, secession was a real possibility: "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."

First, let's get one thing straight. Texas has no special "secession clause" built into its constitution or treaty of annexation. (Even crackpot secessionists admit this.) It's as mythological as the idea that Texas's state flag is uniquely allowed to be flown at the same height as the U. S. flag (in fact, ANY state flag can be flown at the same height. Perhaps Texas is the only state insecure enough to feel the need.) Texas is no more allowed to peaceably secede than any other state, and that question was settled about twenty years after Texas joined the union.

There's a lot to pick on here: the irresponsibility of a standing governor publicly (even if hypothetically) suggesting secession, the obvious hypocrisy of waving an American flag while calling out for secession, and the absurdity of invoking the Boston Tea Party when you have elected officials in Congress. But this article covers those issues, so I'll leave them alone.

Instead, I want to make a different point, which is one of timing. Why are people suddenly so outraged over governmental excess? We've been engaged in "unsustainable" government spending for several years now, and no one complained nearly this loudly. The primary difference is that now there's a good (although perhaps debatable, but still: most credible economists [sorry, Ron Paul, you don't count] agree that SOME sort of stimulus was necessary) reason for it.

So I'm forced to conclude that a "secondary" difference is the real reason for all the protesting: there's a Democrat in the White House instead of a Republican. In other words, this is mostly an exercise in mob-driven partisanship. Hard-core conservatives are hell-bent on complaining about the new administration, so they decide to rekindle their rage over something that didn't get them all that upset a year ago.

It's frustrating for me as a (nominal) conservative, because it's becoming increasingly difficult to take conservative leadership seriously unless you're a party loyalist (which I'm not). This sort of redneck populism has all the intellectual honesty of an NRA pamphlet, and it appeals to roughly the same audience. Unless their goal is to shore up political capital in the former confederacy, encouraging people to "tea bag" Obama isn't exactly a winning strategy.

Of course, if that is their goal, I guess it works out pretty well for them if the secession movement takes hold. It'll simplify the problem of choosing a presidential candidate.

Who knows what might come out of that?