Politics

Texas Secession: Brilliant Idea or Dumbest Thing Ever?

June 27, 2016

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Short answer: It’s the dumbest thing ever.

I honestly put the title as something more open ended on the conclusions to get more clicks and less hate in the comment section on Facebook. But I have absolutely no doubts when saying that the advocates for Texas secession are just childish kids in fantasy land. Ignoring the fact it’ll never happen. Ignoring the fact that it’s crackpot rejects Mises Institute/Lew Rockwell nonsense, it’s just a dumb idea to begin with. It’s so dumb, I’m barely going to entertain this with a serious article, but instead explain the three largest reasons that the thought of a Texas secession movement is a dumb idea.

Let’s make me writing this at 11 pm in a post-working out pre-sex rant happen.

Reason 1. Texas Isn’t A Libertarian State.

Libertarianism is social freedom, capitalism and a non-militarist stance on foreign policy. This is a far cry from Texas on all levels.

Social Issues: Texas would become the first country devoted to and named purely for modern American Christianity. They are as socially to the right as a state can get. Extremely anti-abortion, having had elected leaders seek to ban evolution in schools, having people call for elimination of co-ed schools, heavy use of the death penalty and heavy sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. Don’t mess with Texas is basically don’t mess with Sweet Baby Jesus. It’s a place people go when they want to bomb an abortion clinic and get state senators defending their actions. If Texas did secede, they’d become the most anti-LGBT country in the Americas, the only one to be adamantly pro-life and probably the most strict on drugs. It’s doomed on this front alone from ever being libertarian. It’d be Papa Ted Cruz reading books to his children on why it’s okay to stone the gays.

Economic Issues: Here’s a simple reality. Free markets do not exist without free trade and open borders. Texas has this right-wing motivation to be anti-trade and have closed borders which would essentially annihilate it from serious consideration as a capitalist country. Also, examining the actual regulatory status or state government spending to GDP rates of Texas, it’s clearly well off over other states, but nothing that redeemable. And let’s not forget that Greg Abbott, the Bushes, Rick Perry and John Cornyn are basically bought and paid for by big oil.

Foreign Policy: This is a state which George W. Bush from managed to hold over a 50% approval rating for his entire eight years in office. It votes neocon every single election and has adopted Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Kay Hutchinson and a sea of pro-Patriot Act and nation-building members of Congress. It’s a joke to say they’d not adopt similar policies overnight.

I’m saying again the goal here is spend very, very little time on this article and the goal is just a breakdown of Texas. I feel that analysis of why it won’t become libertarian does the job justice.

Reason 2. The Economics of Secession are Insane.

There’s this little fantasy land idea that in the liberty movement, gold is the dream currency and the Fed can be shut down overnight with no negative consequences. Just to knock a few basic things down…

Money: If Texas did go solo as a country, they’d have two options. The first being to set up their own fiat currency which would hold no value at all on a global market. The second and more likely option of the lunatics in the secession movement is the gold standard. I’ll just say it as an outspoken libertarian and capitalist, the gold standard is about as dumb of an idea as you can get. Not only would the impact on existing money supply cause a global depression (regional for the case of Texas secession), but there’s the simple fact of science. If gold’s value went up massively, it just creates economic incentive to simply make some more. Like chemical tricks which create fake gold from similar metals. Or pumping water to extra it better. Be it whatever, modern science will come up with a way to duplicate exact copies of gold and make it worthless. Commodity baskets are a more practical idea, but on the whole in a 30 year scale, it’s safe to say oil is going to die thanks to solar/nuclear and the impact that’ll hold on global commodities is likely higher over the pace of inflation with the dollar.

This isn’t an endorsement of fiat, but just exposing the reality that the Texas secession movement is simply not smart enough to figure a better option out and is likely run by a bunch of underemployed people who have a bag of gold under their mattress which they call retirement.

Basic Banking: To leave Texas, every Federal Reserve or federal government associated bank in the country would likely be told to stop lending or sell off existing debts. This would collapse all commerce or real estate values in Texas and just overnight put the state into a mass depression.

Social Security & Medicare: Aka, let’s have over a million people in the state of Texas go into riots when they lose entitlements overnight and just starve to death or not get that tumor treated.

And these are just the basic holes which have never had a second of thought go into them.

Reason 3. Texas Would Become an Apartheid State.

This is the simplest one. The Hispanic population in Texas is expected to reach over 60% by 2040. Go message any person on the ground in Texas calling for the secession movement and see what they think of it. Already they want the impossible idea of building a useless wall that won’t do anything, but some members of the Texas secessionist movement are saying they’d support the removal of legal immigrants or visa holders in Texas as part of leaving the United States. The aftermath of this would be so ugly and so ridiculous that it just proves this movement is a parody of itself.

That’s all folks…

Seriously, I have had two friends of mine come out strong in the last few days for secession. Justin Moldow of Liberty Hangout and Tho Bishop… I enjoy both of them, but they are honestly just smoking some sort of drug on this one. Call it being upset that Gary is the nominee and going out making libertarians relevant or just feeling the need to somehow advance failed Rothbardian ideas. It’s just nuts.

My favorite, though, comes from Tho. His claim is that the Libertarian Party needs to become the party of secession. Now, let’s just ignore how that’ll thankfully never happen and is a dumb idea, but it kind of already did. Michael Badnarik who was the 2004 nominee from the LP was the secessionist guy and still is. He currently lives in Texas with no stable career, no followers online and he teaches these bizarre classes where he says his goal in life is to become the President of Texas. He also had one of the worst showings the Libertarian Party ever had in a presidential race in its history.

To Justin and Tho, and all the other secessionists out there, I’ll just say this: America had a secessionist movement. It ended up with the first country in history to enact a constitution entitling people to hold slaves, it gutted many of the civil liberties the United States had and also would endorse sending bounty hunters into the United States for the purpose of collecting runaway slaves. It was a nation built on racism and something no rational person should endorse. Don’t let it happen again!

With that, muscles recovered from working out and time for some other fun exercises…