The White House finally got around to responding to at least eight petitions regarding secession late Friday. While the administration was quick to respond to many gun control petitions within days, it didn’t seem to be as concerned with petitions that garnered nearly three times the signatures calling for secession. But Jon Carson did respond on behalf of the White House.
“In a nation of 300 million people,” Carson began, “each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that’s a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for the liberties we often take for granted.”
“But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don’t let that debate tear us apart,” writes Carson.
“Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States “in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government,” Carson continued. “They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”
Carson also wrote, “Although the founders established a perpetual union, they also provided for a government that is, as President Lincoln would later describe it, “of the people, by the people, and for the people” — all of the people. Participation in, and engagement with, government is the cornerstone of our democracy. And because every American who wants to participate deserves a government that is accessible and responsive, the Obama Administration has created a host of new tools and channels to connect concerned citizens with White House. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the We the People platform is a chance to engage directly with our most outspoken critics.”
He concluded by writing,
So let’s be clear: No one disputes that our country faces big challenges, and the recent election followed a vigorous debate about how they should be addressed. As President Obama said the night he won re-election, “We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future.”
Friends this is not patriotic, it’s patronizing. Obama had the audacity to say “we” love this country deeply and… care strongly about its future” is really ironic in light of his wife’s assertion back in 2008 when she declared, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” My fellow Americans, that is not love of country, nor is it caring deeply for it. It is arrogance.
It is also presumptuous to think that when the States joined the Union that they didn’t think they had the right to withdraw from it. Having just seceded from what they saw as a despotic, powerful central government that was too distant from its citizens, Americans were skeptical about giving much power to any government other than that of their own states, where they could exercise more direct control. To think they didn’t clearly hold to peacefully withdrawing is to divorce the Constitution from its historical context. Eventually, it was belief that the States did possess a right of secession that led to the War of Northern Aggression. Note the party that demonstrated aggression. It was not the Southern States, but Washington.
Obama didn’t even advise Mr. Carson to use the term ‘secession’ in his response. He appeals to emotions and not to the reality of what actually took place when the Constitution was written. Frankly, I think the anti-Federalists were right all along. What they warned about with a centralized Federal government has continuously come true. The states should have listened to them in the first place, but they didn’t. So now we are left to live under men who can’t even fulfill their duty to the Constitution and pass an annual budget, much less understand the Second Amendment or what constitutes a Union.
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