WND/ Drew Zahn
The White House has responded to the hundreds of thousands of
Americans who signed digital petitions asking permission for states to
peacefully secede from the union.
In a nutshell, the answer is no.
“As much as we value a healthy debate,” writes Jon Carson, director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement, in in the official response, “we don’t let that debate tear us apart.”
WND was the first news outlet in the nation to report when a Louisiana man began a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, asking permission for his state to peacefully secede.
The Louisiana petition
quoted from the Declaration of Independence: “‘Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and
institute new Government.’”
According to the guidelines of the “We the People” website, when a
petition reaches 25,000 signatures, the White House has pledged to put
the petition on a queue for response.
Louisiana’s petition quickly reached that threshold and was followed
by similar petitions from all 50 states, several of which also topped
the 25,000 mark.
Counter-petitions were also created, including one
that called on the White House to “deport everyone that signed a
petition to withdraw their state from the United States Of America.” That petition also cleared the 25,000-signature hurdle.
The official White House response is listed as a response to all of the secession petitions, pro and con.
“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,” the response
reasoned. “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,’” the response
continued. “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.’”
The question of secession’s constitutionality has been debated,
indeed, since long before Abraham Lincoln’s time, and has remained
debated even since the Texas v. White Supreme Court decision cited in
the White House response.
WND columnists Walter E. Williams and Alan Keyes, for example, have
both penned columns arguing secession is perfectly constitutional.
Williams’ column, available here, cites historical evidence from both the Founding Fathers and the Civil War era. Alan Keyes’ column, available here, argues God-given rights cannot be trumped by man-made law, Supreme Court decisions or civil war.
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