--- On Thu, 2/5/09, Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
> Classically speaking, one could cite Jefferson's
> "every generation needs a new revolution," but
> "legally"? States are artificial constructs owned
> and run by those with the power to do so. Statists naturally
> pass laws to prevent their overthrow or dissolution,
> marginalizing their domestic opponents, but nothing is
> "legally" fixed, 'else there'd be no
> rebellions or revolutions. Personally, I think the
> Confederacy was full of shit, but they took their shot to
> jettison from the US and failed. Their right to do so was
> every bit as valid as the north's right to crush them. I
> don't think the Confederacy would've survived had it
> succeeded, as their economy would've stagnated, and
> there would've been a war or wars with the north at some
> point. In short, the Confederacy had no chance. But their
> descendants remain among us, sometimes at the highest
> levels, so in a sense, they never went away.
>
> Dennis
^^^^^^^
CB: Until the State whithers away, I like the US Constitution's theory of
the source of all power: "We,the People", popular soveriegnty. That's We the People as a whole, all of us, the whole United States. So, a minority of the People has to get permission from all the People to leave the union. I'd say
sovereignty of the whole should be superior to sovereignty of a part, unless a part of the People can make a case that the Whole is harming them very aggregiously, some sort of tyranny of the Majority. For example, the slaves should have had the right to secede from the Sourthern states during slavery.
This last fact is a derermining factor that undermined totally the slave owning states' righteousness and rights to secede from the Union, the main purpose of which was to violate the fundamental human rights of the slaves (!). This logic applied to undermine the States rights
arguments of the Confederacy-lite in the Jim Crow era, too. They wanted to be left alone to exercise their "rights" to discriminate against Black people (!) The nerve of those motherfuckers. Anyway, they weren't allowing all the _people_ in their states participate in the decision whether or not to secede, nor allowing them to leave ( and take their reparations for slavery
with them, which would have been most of the wealth in those states) if they wanted to. One might say, in the legal metaphor, that the slaveowning and Jim Crow states did not have clean hands in raising whatever rights to sovereignty they might have had.
Anyway, All Power to and
from the People as a Whole !
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