It will never make those sob sister and sob brother daytime talk shows, but the U.S. government’s relationships with the states are abusive. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
If you’ve ever read about abusive relationships, you already know one of the top five criteria defining such:
If you try to leave me . . . I’ll kill you.
The relationship, in other words, isn’t consensual and thus by definition violent. More precisely, it is one-sidedly violent. The violent party uses threats of violence (and if those aren’t sufficient, actual violence) to force the other party to remain when she – or he – would rather go.
The same applies politically – to they.
As for example the cohort of American colonists (it wasn’t all of them) who no longer wanted to remain in a political relationship with the government of Great Britain, its king and parliament. The king and parliament would not accept a peaceful parting-of-the-ways and sent troops to use violence against the “rebellious” colonists. The latter in air-fingers quotation marks to make note of the abusive verbiage. The colonists who objected to being forced to submit to the king and parliament (who are these people? – as Seinfeld used to say) were etymologically framed as “rebellious” – implying they had an obligation to remain in a relationship they considered abusive.
I wonder what would have transpired if, instead of secession and firing on Fort Sumpter, the Attorney’s general of several of the Southern States had instead, chosen to file a motion to the Supreme Court on behalf of the “joint and several States,” asking for a ruling on the Constitutionality of secession?
Given the number of years since the founding ideals and documents, I cannot imagine the idea that secession was “unconstitutional” to be remotely plausible in the minds of the legal scholars at that time in our history!
Thoughts, anyone?