Foot, Meet Gun

Soon after President Obama's reelection, I wrote in this post about the mistakes numerous conservatives and Republicans seem to be making -- from coming out for full amnesty, "moving to the center," or casting aside our principles completely.  

This falls into the latter category:

President Obama's reelection last week has prompted a slew of requests to secede from the United States. 

Using the Obama administration's own We the People website, nearly two dozen petitions have sprung up asking the Obama administration for permission to withdraw from the Union. 

The two most popular petitions, Texas and Louisiana, have both drawn more than 10,000 signatures each as of Monday morning. The Texas petition needs only 7,000 more signatures to trigger an official White House response. 

None of the petitions explicitly cite Obama's reelection as a reason for independence, but all were created after last week's elections.

"The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the [National Defense Authorization Act], the [Transportation Security Administration], etc," the Texas petition charges. "Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government." 

Others are more vague for in their reasons for wanting to leave the country. 

"just like in 1860 the south secede from the union. 2012 the state of georgia would like to withdraw from the USA," one of the Georgia petitions states. 

Most of the petitions simply quote the Declaration of Independence in their request to depart the country.

This is too bad.  Here is how Abraham Lincoln responded to these types of arguments in his First Inaugural Address:

I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a Provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever--it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade, by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? 

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was "to form a more perfect union."