What rules have changed? States don't have to take federal money if they don't want it. The federal government doesn't tax states directly. And do you honestly think that the states would not have to jack up their tax rates to maintain themselves as a national entity?
And the states have been SO benevolent with their powers. They were certainly not the ones who have committed some of the biggest atrocities to the Constitution. I find it laughable that people still stand by state's rights when states have so thoroughly abused their power that it has been increasingly taken away from them as the country has gone on.
Not to mention the Confederacy was a miserable failure as a working model of government. Its not like the states who seceded even had a good alternative. Imagine trying to coordinate something like a comprehensive counter-terrorism program between a bunch of states who can't agree on anything? Not to mention even Mexico or Canda could probably take on just about any state that seceded.
I can't even believe we are having a serious talk about secession THREE MONTHS into Obama's presidency considering how any liberals who criticized the government were lambasted as traitors. At least they never suggested secession.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
