On December 8, 2020 a previously unknown member of the Texas State Legislature, Kyle Biedermann, sent shockwaves through the liberty movement. He announced that he would file legislation that would allow a public vote on TEXIT, a move towards Texas seceding from the United States.
When the lower court of Pennsylvania ruled that certification of the vote count be stopped due to the possible unconstitutionality of mail-in voting Trump supporters were ecstatic. This was it. Their claims of fraud and malfeasance were verified. The next day the case was dismissed. The judge declared:
Petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim. Equally clear is the substantial prejudice arising from Petitioners’ failure to institute promptly a facial challenge to the mail-in voting statutory scheme, as such inaction would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters.
Trump supporters went into a frenzy. They claimed the courts were in on the steal, or that this was all part of a plan to get the case to the Supreme Court. Though this case was not filed by Trump it was a major loss for his challenges to the 2020 election. Before the votes were tallied he’d started bleating unprovable assertions of fraud by the vote counters in swing-states. Accusations of foreign interference were indistinguishable from those sure Democrats had tampered with voting machines in order to flip the vote. Shortly after the conspiracies hit critical-mass politicians found themselves fighting for relevancy and support—forced to take one of two sides of the election fraud argument.
Wittingly or not, Kyle Biedermann’s introducing secession legislation has been cast in this partisan light. For many, his filing of the referendum to be taken up by the state legislature is nothing more than a temper tantrum of a sore loser angry his preferred candidate didn’t win. But others, those that have followed the secessionist movement in Texas, it’s about time.
A few days after Biedermann announced his intent to introduce a TEXIT referendum Ret. Col. Allen West, chairman of the Texas GOP, rebuked the Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the arguments of the state of Texas and 18 other states in the controversial lawsuit surrounding the 2020 presidential election, Texas v Pennsylvania. Col. West, clearly the sore loser Biedermann is accused of being, claimed that it was time for states that strictly interpreted and enforced the constitution to “form a union.” After being accused of secessionist talk he backed into his current position that the states that break the constitution have effectively seceded and that constitutionally mindful states should band together to challenge they’re subversion of the constitution.
The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), an organization formed in 2005 to advocate the independence and nationhood of Texas, quickly jumped into the mix. Daniel Miller, the president of TNM, recorded a video arguing that Texas has the right to, and should seceded.
Article 1 Section 1 of the Texas Constitution says that the “perpetuity of the union depends on the right of local self-government unimpaired to all the states.” At the moment that the federal government imposed the first policy on the people of Texas that we did not want or the first time that the will of the people of Texas was overturned by an unaccountable federal court, Texas had the absolute right to reassert its status as an independent self-governing nation.
Yet, we did not. Texans have patiently borne the encroachment of our rights, believing that there was some small glimmer of hope that the union could be fixed.
The relationship between Texas and the federal union has become untenable, unsustainable, and unfixable.
Glenn Beck interviewed both Col. West and Kyle Biedermann two weeks ago. Both men backed away from the more radical interpretations of what they said, and relabeled a referendum on TEXIT as another card to play to gain leverage in subduing the leviathan that is the United States federal government. While Beck says he’s not for secession he supports a vote on TEXIT in November of 2021 as a tactic to get the attention of DC. He made the argument that when the colonies seceded from Britain they had a list of grievances, but the grievances of today do not measure up to those that led to the American Revolution.
Beck, long considered a fringe kook by his opponents, isn’t the only mainstream voice flirting with the ideas of secession. Rush Limbaugh recently broached the topic: “I actually think that we’re trending toward secession.”
The next day, he too, backed away claiming he wasn’t advocating secession; that he was observing that many people are. He is correct in that. Texas erupted in support for Rick Perry when, in 2009, he threatened Obama with secession due to federal overreach while the gathered crowd chanted “secede.”
Texas is a unique place. When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.
Secession is not uniquely American, but there is a long history of secessionist movements in these United States. During the drafting of the Constitution the Anti-Federalists were so disturbed by the centralization of power that they were ready to secede from the confederacy that had been maintained under the Articles of Confederation. Patrick Henry, one of the loudest voices protesting the formation of a large national government, argued that the government formed by the Constitution was destined to grow tyrannical. Even after adopting a mild version of the Bill of Rights presented by the Anti-Federalist Henry was unhappy with the document and the authorities it guaranteed the federal government. He would later argue against the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions written by Jefferson and Madison as counter to the Constitution and the authorities of the federal government. In his opinion, if a state wished to throw off the tyranny of the federal government by challenging constitutionality of laws it would have to happen through secession and, possibly, revolution. He interpreted the Constitution as giving the sole authority of determining and interpreting constitutionality to the centralized authority formed by the ratification of the Constitution.
Many people oppose this view of the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has ruled in much the same manner. In Texas v White in 1869 Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase wrote that, “The union between Texas and the other states was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original states. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.”
Other opponents to secession look to the Constitution itself. Article I Section 10 states, “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation…”
If a people of a state have grown to disregard and disdain the federal government and its laws how do these arguments stand up? Like any other laws, the federal government is threatening armed enforcement against a dissident citizenry. As Lincoln saw it, seceding states are seditious rebels that must be put down with extreme prejudice for undermining the authority of the federal authority. Thinly veiled threats of Supreme Court Justices dressed in legalese are the only justifications politicians need to continue their reign of blood-soaked terror on the world. The consent of the governed, the will of the people, and the illusion of freedom be damned. As Justice Chase stated, there’s no revocation of the union “except through revolution or consent of the states.”
The Declaration of Independence begins:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Yet, the federal government expects you to believe in the absence of armed revolution or the consent of the other states you are imprisoned in the matrimony of the 19th century. Under what authority does the other states and federal government retain the right to enslave a populace to the continuation of a union? The U.S. has no more right to occupy Cuba or Mexico than it does to usurp the will of Texans or any other state’s population and force the abused party to remain subservient to laws and legislation that extracts resources and wealth from the citizenry.
The Texas Constitution Bill of Rights, Article I Sec 1 is clear:
FREEDOM AND SOVEREIGNTY OF STATE. Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States.
In other words, the moment that the federal government instituted unconstitutional laws onto the states the contract between Texas and the federal government had been rendered null-and-void. By implementing federal background checks on firearm sales, persecuting the Davidians and setting their children on fire for practicing their religion, collecting the data of millions of Americans, illegally searching and seizing property, assassinating American citizens without due process, engaging in medical and psychological experiments on the citizens of these United States, and waging war on journalists and whistleblowers exposing their crimes (the list of grievances is encyclopedic in its scope) the federal government gave up any legitimate contractual obligations that the state of Texas had to them.
At this moment there is a petition in support of Biedermann’s referendum circulating. At last glance just over 3,000 Texans had signed the petition to bring the referendum to the floor of the legislation for a vote. Despite any voices in opposition to the referendum Texans will not be deterred by threats of violence. As it stands, Texas secession is on the table, and the people of Texas have been longing to be heard.
