Is Secession ‘Anti-American’?

In response to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s defense of states’ rights, State Rep. Jim Dunnam (D-Waco) says secession is anti-American. He even threw in a gratuitous race card to try to vilify the governor.

It should go without saying that the United States of America began with a series of thirteen secessions. The founding document of the American union is itself a collective “declaration of independence” that affirms unilateral secession to be part of our inalienable right of liberty. The U.S. Constitution (to which Rep. Dunnam has pledged an oath) affirms that the federal government’s authority is both “enumerated” and “delegated,” while the powers of the states are “reserved.”

In other words, according to the Constitution, the states are the boss of the union, not the other way around. This is why leaders of the Texas state legislature, backed eloquently by Gov. Rick Perry, are reminding the bloated federal apparatus of its proper place as servant of the states. And Texas is not alone.

Furthermore, the United States has supported many secessions around the world.

One would hope that a politician from Texas would have a clue as to how his state, a former province of Mexico, unilaterally became an independent republic that in turn joined the American union. And concerning more recent times, it should be noted that the United States never castigated the Baltics for seceding from the USSR. Nor did the United States argue that the Soviet Union was “indivisible” or that it would be “anti-American” to support the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The United States recognized the 1993 unilateral secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia (there goes Rep. Dunnam’s race card…).

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Is Secession 'Anti-American'?
lewrockwell.com