Now you're opening up the whole can of worms of what's legal and what's not, which is a good thing in my opinion. When I 1st came on these boards the issue of legality over cuban cigars came up, whereby I claimed purchasing and smoking them may be considered illegal for some, but it sure as hell weren't for me. Needless to say some became very agitated over this claim, assuring me that I was wrong and that rectitude was their exclusive property. I had to break down some Searlean categories on ontology and epistemology to show precisely that law is epistemiic (made up in the noggin), even though it can have drastic affects (like over half a million dead in the civil war).
This isn't a thread jack, but an application of what defines law and legality, etc. Law is epistemic, i.e., people make up laws. Is secession legal or illegal according to the constitution? It doesn't say anymore than it says whether abortions are legal, illegal, or a federally or state determined social event. Abortion was tested in Roe v. Wade, and is now determined by the federal courts. Similarly, secession was tested in the civil war. By this criterion, precedent, abortion is legal and secession illegal.
Now, can a state still secede if they so choose to put this to the test again? Legality is largely determined by who holds the power, so probably another test of the legality of secession would have the same outcome; the feds would kick the state or states' asses and secession would remain illegal. In this context military defeat does render secession illegal.
States' rights have been steadily losing ground since the Constitution supplanted the Articles of the Confederation, since the south was defeated in the civil war, since woman's sufferage, since Roosevelt's new deal and social security act of 1935, since Johnson's great society and the 1965 title 18 & 19 amendments to the social security act, and since Roe v. Wade. I think with these considerations in mind blue state voters are still strongly federalist, meaning they support social progress, something states' rightists and red state voter types seem set against. Indeed, most pro-states' rights arguments seem no more than lingering bitterness over the losers in the civil war of the mid-19th century, the southern slave states, who often seem motivated by forces too bizarre for me to understand, which seek the return of America to an era of white supremacy, the degradation of women, and some theocracy similar to Iran's, except with Pat Robertson at the helm.
Now in an ideal world, Bush finishes his current term, returns to Texas and regains the governorship, continues his maniacal ways and secedes from the union, and the fed comes in, led by former ACLU and NOW operatives, and claps him in irons by powers vested in them under the US constitution. Now that's what I'm talking about!
