This past week, Scots voted 55%-45% to remain a part of England . . . their 307-year alliance is still intact at least for now. At the same time, Reuters released a poll showing that nearly a quarter of the American public doesn't have much of a problem seeing their states secede from the Union. Does this mean that Rick Perry might become President of Texas? How's about Louie Gohmert as Secretary of State and Ted Cruz as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?
Are we morphing from E Pluribus Unum ("Out of many comes one") to E Unum Pluribus ("Out of one comes many")?
This past Thursday the people of Scotland voted on whether their country should break away from the United Kingdom. Voters from the Shetlands to the Borders and from Glasgow to the Scottish Glens came out by the millions -- an astounding 85% of them. In the end, a solid but not overwhelming 55% of the country decided to keep the now 307-year union between the two countries intact.
Just days before the historic vote, British P.M. David Cameron, facing a backlash among some of his Conservative Party colleagues, promised greater powers and autonomy if Scots would but reject dissolution of their historic union. At this early juncture, it is difficult to know precisely how much of an affect the P.M.'s concessionary promises had on the final vote. What is known, however, is that Scottish independence is likely dead for the next generation. And, just this morning (Monday Sept. 22), Reuters reported Cameron as saying that there were "no ifs, no buts" about Scotland being granted greater autonomy.
At virtually the same time Scots were debating the wisdom of independence, Reuters was asking Americans how they would feel about seceding today, not from the United Kingdom, but from the mother country they left England to create 238 years ago. The exact wording of the question was, “Do you support or oppose the idea of your state peacefully withdrawing from the United States of America and the federal government?”
Without question, what the poll numbers reveal is unsettling:
•Some 23.9% of Americans polled from Aug. 23 through Sept. 16 said they strongly supported or tended to support the idea of their state breaking away.
•53.3% of the 8,952 respondents strongly opposed or tended to oppose the notion.
While at first glance these figures don't seem too terribly alarming, a deeper look reveals a nation at odds with the notion of union. In analyzing the figures, Reuters' Jim Gaines reported that
"Secession got more support from Republicans than Democrats, more from right- than left-leaning independents, more from younger than older people, more from lower- than higher-income brackets, more from high school than college grads. But there was a surprising amount of support in every group and region, especially the Rocky Mountain states, the Southwest and the old Confederacy, but also in places like Illinois and Kansas. And of the people who said they identified with the Tea Party, supporters of secession were actually in the majority, with 53 percent."
When asked what was causing them to actively consider seceding from the Union, respondents cited a variety of issues:
•Anger with President Obama's handling of health care reform;
•The rise of Islamic State militants;
•Long-running Washington gridlock;
•A general feeling that states handle problems far better than Washington.
One respondent, Roy Gustafson of Camden, South Carolina, who lives on disability payments, told the Reuters' pollster, "The state would be better off handling things on its own." (One wonders if Mr. Gustafson has considered that were South Carolina to actually secede, his disability payments would likely suffer a dramatic cut. In the Palmetto State, federal aid as a percentage of state general revenue is 38.1%.) In Texas -- which has long had an activist group calling for the state legislature to put the secession question on a statewide ballot -- one respondent said he was confident his state could get by without the rest of the country. "Texas has everything we need. We have manufacturing, we have the oil, and we don't need them," said Mark Denny, a 59-year old retiree living outside Dallas on disability payments. (In Texas, it should be noted federal aid as a percentage of state revenue is a whopping 40% -- the 11th highest figure in the country.)
OK. So people are angry . . . and confused and dissatisfied and, in many cases totally unrealistic. Let's look at Texas a bit further; they seem to be at the forefront of the secession movement. Assuming that they could separate from the United States of America and become an independent nation, who would their likely leaders be? When one considers who some of the leading, best-known political figures in the Lone Star State are, one shudders:
•Representative Louie Gohmert: Gohmert, who represents the 1st District, is convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that there are terrorist organizations -- somewhere, somehow -- concocting schemes to send their pregnant Black Widows to our American shores, spawning natural-born terrorists, and then using them and their US Citizenship Cards, decades on, to decimate the land we call home: "[The children] could be raised and coddled as future terrorists [and] twenty, thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life." Perhaps he could become Secretary of State.
•Rep. Steve Stockman: Until he lost the Republican primary for United States Senate to incumbent John Cornyn (who during the campaign he repeatedly referred to as a "liberal,") Stockman was well-known as perhaps the nation's leading champion of what conservative Christians call "the pre-born." Among Stockman's many unique points of view, he recently opined that "if babies had guns, they wouldn't be aborted." Perhaps Stockman could be the new nation's secretary of Health and Human Services.
•Governor Rick Perry: Despite hanging around the edges of the 2016 presidential pack, Perry has frequently spoken in support of letting Texas voters decide on whether the state should or should not secede. Perry's understanding of American history is . . . well, it's unique: "The reason why we fought the American Revolution in the 16th century [sic] was to get away from that kind of onerous crown, if you will." Then too, Perry recently informed us that "Juarez is reported to be the most dangerous place in America." (Last time I looked, Juarez was in Mexico.) Perry might make an ideal President of the new nation of Texas.
•Attorney General Greg Abbott: The man who is seeking to replace Rick Perry as Governor, named shock-rocker Ted "The Motor City Mad Man" Nugent one of his campaign surrogates. Nugent is the man who publicly referred to President Obama as ". . . a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel." Without question, Abbott should be named Texas' Ambassador to the United Nations.
•Senator Ted Cruz: Without question, Cruz should become the new Attorney General and be on the short list for the new country's Supreme Court. After all, he is the man who, speaking of the Obama administration, claimed, “This is an administration that seems bound and determine to violate every single one of our Bill of Rights. I don’t know that they have yet violated the Third Amendment, but I expect them to start quartering soldiers in peoples’ homes soon.”
I wonder if all those who support breaking up the Union have any understanding of American history; of how more than 620,000 soldiers (one in five) died in that horrific conflict; that it cost more than $7 billion (nearly $90 billion in current dollars); that the vast majority of loss and suffering was sustained by those who seceded. This was no picnic; it was a long, terribly bloody monstrosity. And although the most obvious issue -- the enslavement of human beings -- was successfully addressed, the underlying one -- state's rights versus federal power -- has remained with us ever since.
From 1776 to 1956, America's de facto motto was E pluribus unum, namely "Out of many [comes] one." More and more, it seems like a growing segment of the American public seeks to turn that motto on its head and declare E unum pluribus . . . namely "Out of one [comes] many.
The Scots, faced with the very real possibility of separating themselves from the United Kingdom, decided to remain unified -- despite more than three centuries of dissension and distrust. The Brits and the Scots are two different peoples with different histories, different economies and different languages. And yet, they are still one.
May we, who are supposed to be one people, one nation, learn from them.
Copyright ©2014 Kurt F. Stone