The word secession is a noun. When a part of a country leaves that country and becomes a separate and independent country, that is a seccession.
A group of states in the United States tried to secede from the United States in the 1860s. This action caused a war to be fought, with rifles, cannons, and armed ships on both sides.
More Americans died during this war, called The Civil War, than during both of the world wars combined.
This paragraph is on the F.A.Q. page of the website Civil War Trust. All of the links were on their page.
These two paragraphs were on the same page. Both of the links in the first paragraph were on their page.
This graphic with statistics about the dead and wounded troops came from this web page.
This speech is called the Gettysburg Address. +Gettysburg 150th
These are the first two paragraphs of a July 15, 2014 Washington Post story. The graphic was included in the story. All of the links in these paragraphs were also included in the story. +Washington Post
These are the first four paragraphs of a November 21, 2016 story in the Sacramento Bee.
Link to a story dated the next day in the Los Angeles Daily News. This story is not balanced. It doesn't include any reference to previous attempts to secede, and it doesn't include any mention of the low probability of success.
These are the first five paragraphs of a January 26, 2017 Fox News story.
"If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters ...."
Link to a similar story on the website of the Los Angeles Times, dated the same day. This +Los Angeles Times story was linked at the end of a four-paragraph story on the website of Los Angeles television story KTLA. Link to the Google account for +KTLA 5
Link to a similar story on the website of National Public Radio dated the next day, January 27, 2017. Link to the Google account for +NPR and +NPR Politics
This is the complete text of an Associated Press story that was published in U.S. News and World Report onJuly 25, 2017.
"This is the second attempt to put a so-called Calexit measure on the 2018 ballot. An earlier attempt was withdrawn in April."
These are the first three paragraphs of this November 10, 2016 Associated Press story. The entire story is only five paragraphs. Link to the Google account for +The Associated Press
This January 24, 2017 page on the website of the British Broadcasting Corporation, explains what it means, in simple terms, for England to leave the European Union. The English people voted to do that on June 23, 2016.
Armed members of the Republic of Texas separatist group took hostages in 1997.
This September 17, 2014 story in the San Antonio Express-News is about a group that wants to have Texas secede from the rest of the country.
These are the first three paragraphs of a February 23, 2015 Houston Chronicle story.
This paragraph is on this undated web page of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The Texas Nationalist group failed to have a committee of the Texas Republican Party approve, by a vote, their wish to have Texas secede from the Union. Link to a May 13, 2016 Washington Post story.
What goes around, comes around.
Professor Farber mentioned a method that could allow the State of California to secede. He called it "the only legal avenue", and he mentioned a legal case that theU.S. Supreme Court decided in 1869, after the end of the Civil War. This is a link to that case.
The method would require an amendment to theU.S. Constitution. There are two methods of proposing amendments but only one way to ratify them. Both processes are explained in Article 5 of the Constitution. This page, on the website of the U..S. Government agency that preserves government documents, explains the process.
This June 27, 2016 Washington Post story shows a four-step process and the odds of anyone reaching those goals.
An article published in National Review, January 29, 2017 has a very different idea, judging by the title of the article, California Shouldn’t Secede from the U.S. subtitled "It should divide in two."
The article by the +National Review advocates for a handful of coastal counties to be one state, with the rest of California being a different state. The article includes this map of their concept.
This is the 21st century, so the new nation would have to use more modern weapons, including chemical and biological poisons. The video and photo below shows these weapons successfully being used in Iraq.
So what if a few children die. National sovereignty is more important, right, +Calexit - YesCalifornia?
The Yes California organization is studying these weapons so that they can decide how to use them effectively. The actual implementation would, of course, have to be done by trained soldiers of the California State Police, who would become the new national army of California.
The California State Legislature has already taken many actions that are different than the attitudes of the rest of the nation. For example, State legislation, formally calledProposition 60, was on the ballot in California on the same day when the nation voted to elect Donald Trump as President. This legislation would have forced male actors in adult films to wear a condom while they were doing their job (having sex with an actress in adult films. I wrote about this issue in this August 2014 blog essay, which was updated last November to show the result of the vote on Proposition 60.
Another example is a new state law that decriminalizes child prostitution. These are the first three paragraphs of a January 4, 2017 op-ed in the Washington Times.
Every group that wants to separate from its' home country is a threat to the safety and the security of that country, however some separations are justified by the oppression of the group by the political leaders of the home country.
The following words in the Declaration of Independence are a harsh accusation of the abuse of a group of British colonies by the British King. This accusation is an explicit one, with examples of the tyranny that they have suffered.
In the 1860s, a large number of the people in our southern states felt that the government in Washington was behaving tyrannically. One of them even assassinated President Lincoln and then immediately jumped from a theater balcony to the theater stage. He shouted the Latin phrase Sic semper tyrannis. The English-language translation is "Thus always to tyrants".
During the years that preceded the American Revolution, a few people published their reasons for wanting to have a separate country. These people included Benjamin Franklin. I named my Twitter account @BennyTheKite in his honor.
Another man who published and distributed reasons to leave Great Britain was Thomas Paine.
Their article was accurate. These are the first four paragraphs of an April 18, 2017 Fox News story.
Link to a similar story, dated the next day, and published by Breitbart.
A group of states in the United States tried to secede from the United States in the 1860s. This action caused a war to be fought, with rifles, cannons, and armed ships on both sides.
More Americans died during this war, called The Civil War, than during both of the world wars combined.
This paragraph is on the F.A.Q. page of the website Civil War Trust. All of the links were on their page.
Q. When was the Civil War fought?Link to the Google account for +Civil War Trust
The war began when the Confederates bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. The war ended in Spring, 1865. Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse onApril 9, 1865. The last battle was fought at Palmito Ranch, Texas, onMay 13, 1865.
These two paragraphs were on the same page. Both of the links in the first paragraph were on their page.
Q. How many soldiers died in the Civil War?
Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War. This number comes from an 1889 study of the war performed by William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. Both men fought for the Union. Their estimate is derived from an exhaustive study of the combat and casualty records generated by the armies over five years of fighting. A recent study puts the number of dead as high as 850,000.
Q. How many soldiers died in the Civil War as compared to other American wars?
Roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers have died in the nation's wars--620,000 in the Civil War and 644,000 in all other conflicts. It was only as recently as the Vietnam War that the amount of American deaths in foreign wars eclipsed the number who died in the Civil War.
This graphic with statistics about the dead and wounded troops came from this web page.
| Near the end of this war, President Abraham Lincoln, a faithful Christian, tried to heal the wounds of the war by burying Northern and Southern soldiers who had fought and died in the same battle in a new cemetery. The President was personally present to dedicate this cemetery, and he spoke the words that are carved into the stone of his memorial, located in Washington, D.C. |
This speech is called the Gettysburg Address. +Gettysburg 150th
News stories about the proposed California secession
These stories are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.These are the first two paragraphs of a July 15, 2014 Washington Post story. The graphic was included in the story. All of the links in these paragraphs were also included in the story. +Washington Post
Proponents of a ballot initiative aimed at splitting California into six states (or, more simply, one proponent: venture capitalist Tim Draper) may have collected enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. This is the beauty and the annoyance of California's initiative and referenda system. If you have enough cash, getting something on the ballot is relatively trivial, meaning that relatively trivial ideas -- like splitting California into six different states -- can be put up for a vote. (Happily, in this instance the federal government would have to sign off on the idea, which it will never do, because, come on.)
Draper's proposal is that California become six different states, each with its own capital and senators and so on. That's really one of the main selling points: Why should the millions of people in California have the same number of senators as the hundreds of thousands of people in Wyoming? And the answer is: Because you get to live by the coast and the redwoods and the beautiful people of Los Angeles and that is the price you pay. Everyone knows that.
These are the first four paragraphs of a November 21, 2016 story in the Sacramento Bee.
“Should California become a free, sovereign, and independent country?”The preceeding story from +The Sacramento Bee is a balanced story. It includes a contrary opinion from a professor of law at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. I copied and pasted his quoted remarks onto a later portion of this page.
The question could appear on a statewide ballot in 2018 if a group of secessionists has its way.
Yes California has been pushing for the state to break away from the United States and become its own country for several years.
Marcus Evans, the vice president of Yes California, filed a proposed ballot measure with the Attorney General’s Office on Monday that would appear on the November 2018 gubernatorial ballot.
Link to a story dated the next day in the Los Angeles Daily News. This story is not balanced. It doesn't include any reference to previous attempts to secede, and it doesn't include any mention of the low probability of success.
These are the first five paragraphs of a January 26, 2017 Fox News story.
A proposal for California to secede from the United States was submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office Thursday.This is how the fourth paragraph of the +Fox News story begins.
The proposed “Calexit” initiative - its name borrowed from the UK's "Brexit" departure from the EU - would ask voters to repeal part of the state constitution that declares California an inseparable part of the U.S.
A recent poll found that one in three California residents would support a possible secession from the U.S. due to their opposition to President Trump. No mention has been made of the president in the proposal.
If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters, it could be a step to a future vote on whether the state would break away from the rest of the nation.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the group behind the proposal, Yes California Independence Campaign, was cleared to begin attempting to collect nearly 600,000 voter signatures needed to place the plan on the ballot.
"If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters ...."
Link to a similar story on the website of the Los Angeles Times, dated the same day. This +Los Angeles Times story was linked at the end of a four-paragraph story on the website of Los Angeles television story KTLA. Link to the Google account for +KTLA 5
Link to a similar story on the website of National Public Radio dated the next day, January 27, 2017. Link to the Google account for +NPR and +NPR Politics
This is the complete text of an Associated Press story that was published in U.S. News and World Report on
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A group that wants California to secede from the United States can start collecting signatures for its ballot initiative.This is the last paragraph.
The state attorney general issued an official ballot measure title and summary Tuesday. The campaign can now start gathering the more than 585,000 signatures it will need to qualify for the 2018 ballot.
The initiative would form a commission to recommend avenues for California to pursue its independence and delete part of the state constitution that says it is an inseparable part of the U.S. The measure would also instruct the governor and California congressional delegation to negotiate more autonomy for the state.
This is the second attempt to put a so-called Calexit measure on the 2018 ballot. An earlier attempt was withdrawn in April.
"This is the second attempt to put a so-called Calexit measure on the 2018 ballot. An earlier attempt was withdrawn in April."
Stories about international secessionist movements
Link to a June 27, 2016 story in The Guardian about the vote by people in England to leave the European Union. This page tells, in detail, how people in different parts of England voted. Link to the Google account for +The GuardianThese are the first three paragraphs of this November 10, 2016 Associated Press story. The entire story is only five paragraphs. Link to the Google account for +The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Portuguese rule in Angola ended in 1975, but separatists in one Angolan province want the former colonizers to return.
The Portuguese news agency Lusa reported Thursday that a separatist group in Angola's oil-rich Cabinda province wants Portugal to oversee a referendum there on the region's political future.
Militants of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda have carried out kidnappings and other attacks over the years. They say the Cabinda enclave was never part of Angolan territory.
This January 24, 2017 page on the website of the British Broadcasting Corporation, explains what it means, in simple terms, for England to leave the European Union. The English people voted to do that on June 23, 2016.
Other efforts to secede from the United States
These articles are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.Armed members of the Republic of Texas separatist group took hostages in 1997.
- Link to an April 27, 1997 CNN story about the standoff.
- Link to an April 28, 1997 New York Times story. The standoff continued, two days later.
- On May 3, 2007, the Houston Chronicle published this article, with the leader of the separatist movement convicted and serving a 99-year sentence in a Texas prison. He still believes in his cause.
... who were dissatisfied with Pres. James Madison’s mercantile policies and the progress of the War of 1812 (“Mr. Madison’s War”), as well as long resentful over the balance of political power that gave the South, particularly Virginia, effective control of the national government.All three of the links in the previous paragraph were in the Encyclopedia Britannica article.
This September 17, 2014 story in the San Antonio Express-News is about a group that wants to have Texas secede from the rest of the country.
These are the first three paragraphs of a February 23, 2015 Houston Chronicle story.
It seemed like a typical congressional meeting for the Republic of Texas. Senators and the president gathered in the center of a Bryan, Texas, meeting hall, surrounded by public onlookers, to debate issues of the national currency, develop international relations and celebrate the birthday of one of their oldest members.When uniformed and armed members of law enforcement prevent people from recording their activities, they're not enforcing the law any more. They're making their own laws, in the true spirit of a dictatorship, which is always bad news for its' own people.
But this wasn't 1836, and this would be no ordinary legislative conference. Minutes into the meeting a man among the onlookers stood and moved to open the hall door, letting in an armed and armored force of the Bryan Police Department, the Brazos County Sheriff's Office, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office, Agents of the Texas District Attorney, the Texas Rangers and the FBI.
In the end, at least 20 officers corralled, searched and fingerprinted all 60 meeting attendees, before seizing all cellphones and recording equipment in a Valentine's Day 2015 raid on the Texas separatist group
This paragraph is on this undated web page of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), with funding from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), is developing a training toolkit addressing the public’s right to record police officers. This training focuses on the public’s First Amendment right to record, limitations of this right, common police responses to recording individuals, strategies for diffusing and deflecting police-civilian confrontations, and how and when video equipment or recordings can be seized. This toolkit, expected to be released in late 2016, will include an Instructor’s Guide, Officer Study Guide, PowerPoint Presentation, and Training Video.This undated page on the website of The Texas Nationalist Movement explains why they want to secede. I hope that the Texas Nationalist Movement is not as violent as the Republic of Texas group. +San Antonio Express-News
The Texas Nationalist group failed to have a committee of the Texas Republican Party approve, by a vote, their wish to have Texas secede from the Union. Link to a May 13, 2016 Washington Post story.
A dissenting opinion from a professor of law
The November 21, 2016 story in the Sacramento Bee that I quoted earlier on this page also included these four paragraphs. Both of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.Daniel Farber is a law professor at U.C. Berkeley and has written about secessionist movements throughout America’s history."The case related to bonds sold by Texas during the Civil War."
Yes California’s plan to appeal to the United Nations wouldn’t hold up in court, he said. Other countries might hesitate to embrace California as an independent nation anyway, particularly if issues of currency and military were not negotiated with the remainder of the country first. Other nations likely wouldn’t want to “risk the blowback of being on the losing side,” he said.
The only legal avenue for California to secede requires the state to win approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states in the country, he said. Farber pointed to a Supreme Court decision, Texas vs. White, in 1869 that said Texas “entered into an indissoluble relation” when it became part of the United States. The case related to bonds sold by Texas during the Civil War.
“I don’t think it gets to the point where we have to worry about those details and how to make it work,” Farber said. “Many of us have had that thought from time to time, but in the end it’s not really a feasible option as far as I can see.”
What goes around, comes around.
Professor Farber mentioned a method that could allow the State of California to secede. He called it "the only legal avenue", and he mentioned a legal case that the
The method would require an amendment to the
This June 27, 2016 Washington Post story shows a four-step process and the odds of anyone reaching those goals.
An article published in National Review, January 29, 2017 has a very different idea, judging by the title of the article, California Shouldn’t Secede from the U.S. subtitled "It should divide in two."The article by the +National Review advocates for a handful of coastal counties to be one state, with the rest of California being a different state. The article includes this map of their concept.
My opinions
If the Yes California activists have their way, California will become a separate and sovereign nation, with its' own government and the legal power to establish its' own "national defense", using its' own military. The new country called California will, of course, need to prepare to defend its' borders as a nation with potentially hostile neighbors. This is what their border with Nevada could look like.
This is the 21st century, so the new nation would have to use more modern weapons, including chemical and biological poisons. The video and photo below shows these weapons successfully being used in Iraq.
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The Yes California organization is studying these weapons so that they can decide how to use them effectively. The actual implementation would, of course, have to be done by trained soldiers of the California State Police, who would become the new national army of California.
The California State Legislature has already taken many actions that are different than the attitudes of the rest of the nation. For example, State legislation, formally called
Another example is a new state law that decriminalizes child prostitution. These are the first three paragraphs of a January 4, 2017 op-ed in the Washington Times.
At the start of each new year we’re subjected to a whole host of new laws. The modern liberal government, you see, imagines itself not as the champion of individual freedom but as Mommy and Daddy, a taskmaster charged with controlling your life. Most of the time, it makes everything, including our lives, worse.
Case in point: California. Completely at the mercy of the left, which now controls two-thirds of the state government, California serves as a living illustration of what the left really wants to accomplish. As of Jan. 1, that includes decriminalizing what is commonly called “child prostitution.”
They may not have technically legalized it, but decriminalizing the act per se will have the same results, while putting exploited children in even more danger.
The following words in the Declaration of Independence are a harsh accusation of the abuse of a group of British colonies by the British King. This accusation is an explicit one, with examples of the tyranny that they have suffered.
"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
In the 1860s, a large number of the people in our southern states felt that the government in Washington was behaving tyrannically. One of them even assassinated President Lincoln and then immediately jumped from a theater balcony to the theater stage. He shouted the Latin phrase Sic semper tyrannis. The English-language translation is "Thus always to tyrants".
During the years that preceded the American Revolution, a few people published their reasons for wanting to have a separate country. These people included Benjamin Franklin. I named my Twitter account @BennyTheKite in his honor.
He wrote Poor Richard's Almanack.
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Another man who published and distributed reasons to leave Great Britain was Thomas Paine.
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| Let the people in California who want to leave the United States publish their reasons for wanting to leave. If their cause is just and if they are willing to fight for it, they will win their independence, but they will pay a price for it, and none of them will be able to wear the symbol on the right very proudly. +Peace Corps |
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Dated updates
The dates you see in the headlines are the dates that I posted the articles.May 21, 2017
This is a link to a March 1, 2017 Atlantic Monthly article titled, Is Russia Behind a Secession Effort in California?.Their article was accurate. These are the first four paragraphs of an April 18, 2017 Fox News story.
The man behind the Calexit movement, which pushed for California to secede from the union, is now distancing himself from the controversial effort and said he will stay in Russia.Link to a similar article, dated the same day, in the New York Magazine.
Louis Marinelli, who helped launch the movement to make California an independent state, said that he “intends to make Russia” his “new home.” As a result, he is withdrawing his petition for a “Calexit” referendum.
Marinelli has said in the past that in Russia he has found, “a new happiness, a life without the albatross of frustration and resentment towards ones’ homeland.”
The activist said in a statement he does not intend to return to California in the foreseeable future and therefore feels it’s only right for him to withdraw the Calexit petition.
August 15, 2017
These are the first five paragraphs of a July 25, 2017 Los Angeles Times story. All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.Supporters of a plan for California to become independent from the United States are now allowed to gather signatures for their ballot measure.Link to a similar story, dated the same day, written by the Associated Press and published on the website of U.S. News and World Report.
On Tuesday afternoon, Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra's office released an official title and summary for the initiative, now called the "California Autonomy From Federal Government" initiative.
The proposal, scaled back from an initially more aggressive version, would direct California's governor to negotiate more autonomy from the federal government, including potentially putting forward a ballot measure to declare independence.
The initiative wouldn't necessarily result in California exiting the country, but could allow the state to be a “fully functioning sovereign and autonomous nation” within the U.S.
Backers of the plan, known informally as "Calexit" have 180 days to collect nearly 600,000 valid signatures for the initiative to go on the 2018 ballot.
Link to a similar story, dated the next day, and published by Breitbart.
August 1, 2018
These are the first three paragraphs of a July 31, 2018 Fox News story. The graphic and caption were included in their story. Both of the links in these paragraphs were also in their story.
California secessionists plan to retool their movement this week to include a large-scale land giveaway to Native Americans. (Calexit founder Louis J. Marinelli)
Organizers of a long-running initiative to secure California’s secession from the United States now say they want to give away nearly half of the state, including all of its federal land, to form an “autonomous Native American nation.”This August 1, 2018 Daily Mail (U.K.) story linked to the Fox News story.
“Calexit,” as the proposal for California’s secession is known, was given the green light by the state government earlier this year to begin collecting signatures to place the measure on the November ballot. Advocates had until mid-October to gather 365,880 signatures of registered voters to put it up for a statewide vote.
But the revamp announced by Calexit’s founders on Tuesday adds an additional objective: constructing “the first ever autonomous Native American nation in North America,” by giving Native Americans all federal lands in the state, running from the border with Mexico to the state boundary shared with Oregon.
