Firing the First Shot

Liberty and no Union

Secession is in the air.  I’ve been keeping an eye on the rapidly evolving situation in the States.  The latest information I have is that the Texas petition now has well over 110,000 signatures, almost four times over the threshold for an official response on the White House’s We the People website. 

The 25,000 signature threshold has also been exceeded in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, with some other states not far behind.  Nationally the petitions lodged in all fifty states have collected close on a million signatures.  America wants to leave America! 

This is all great fun.  I don’t take it seriously and I’m certain that the vast majority of signatories do not take it seriously either.  But it’s most certainly boosted spirits on the American right, deflated by Romney’s defeat.  It shows how agile Americans are at bouncing back.  The people are using We the People in a way that Obama could never have anticipated when the site was set up.  The comment in the Washington Post was spot on; there is indeed something empowering about putting your name on a document that sticks it to the establishment.

I’m a secessionist.  Oh, not so far as the United States is concerned.  That’s a Union best preserved.  It’s the European Union I want my country to leave.  I have little doubt that a secession petition here would gather hundreds of thousands of signatures in a very short time.  But it Americans have some form of empowerment, even if only in online petitions, we have none at all.  All of the main parties are committed to membership of Europe.  David Cameron, the Prime Minister, may blow a little anti-European wind from time to time, but that’s all it is – wind. 

Day by day the European monster eats away at English freedom, imposing upon us foreign laws and foreign customs.  It’s taking liberties, liberties that were once ours.  What I resent most of all is that we have become the victims of France’s fear of Germany and Germany’s fear of itself.  We have become the victims of a history that is not ours, of a political and dictatorial style that is most assuredly not ours.  Secession is the only way of rediscovering ourselves, of reclaiming our own past and our own traditions. 

I call to mind Edmund Ruffin.  If you’ve never heard the name he was a political activist in the Old South, a Virginian and a strong believer in states' rights and secession.  He was in South Carolina when it became the first state to leave the Union in December, 1860.  He is also reputed to have fired the first shot on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, thereby beginning the Civil War. 

Well, now, I hate the European Union as much as Ruffin hated the Federal Union.  I hope in my lifetime to see my country take the road to secession.  If we ever have a referendum on membership I would be delighted to fire the first shot.