Anti-secessionists: come at me, bros!

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

I do apologize if it came off as "Southerners are worse than Hamas." My whole point is that secession must serve the cause of progress, and if it does not, then it is not a good idea. The South in the Civil War was anti-progress. Southern secessionists of the modern day would also be anti-progress. A democratically elected government would likely have a bit more respect for their own human rights than the Israelis do, so forward movement. Even though a free Texas would still be a better place to live than a free Palestine, free Texas represents past ideas, free Palestine, the future.

And its not about liberty or tyranny so much as its about what works. A good amount of liberty works, and if a little judiciously applied authority also works, then its not a bad thing either. It's not about us all belonging to each other, its about having more opportunities by being part of a bigger and more important country than a smaller, less important one

Who decides what is progress, and why would any secession movement in the South necessarily have to be out of a desire to recreate antebellum conditions? What if Texas wants to secede for reasons other than reinstituting slavery? Like, I dunno... the general purposes of self-determination? Or maybe the desire to not send its money to Washington, D.C., and then have to scrape and bow to try to get some of it back? If you think that an independent Texas could only represent past ideas, then it sounds like you're as stuck in the past as anyone.

A country that is like the mob - you can get in, but you can never get out - is not really a country worth belonging to. And that mindset is especially shameful for a country that prides itself on its revolutionary history. "When in the course of human events..." for me, but not for thee?

I did not say antebellum, either. Really, the conditions i'm thinking of are early 20th century, mostly because i've been reading "Fall of Giants" in large chunks lately; Jim Crow, laws hindering reproductive rights, further enshrinement of Christian traditions at the expense of others, criminalization of homosexual activity, a total ban on teaching evolution in public schools, could you honestly say some or all of these things are good, and that they would not happen if some states got their way?

Progress can be objectively measured as the optimization of human happiness.

Also, a lot of the would-be secessionist states are net takers of Federal money. America's balance-sheet would likely be better off with them gone, not the other way around.