Ironically, it wasn’t until four-years after the end of The War Between the States that it became unconstitutional for any given state to take it upon themselves to secede from the United States (see the 1869 Supreme Court ruling regarding Texas v. White).
Nonetheless, from where I sit, America’s so-called Great Experiment in a republic-style of democracy is actually coming apart at the seams.
Just a few of the tell-tale signs may have been when both the New York and California state governments officially banned state-business travel to a number of various states such as Texas, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi and South Dakota based on little more than Albany and Sacramento not liking how these certain states govern themselves.
What I see as the latest example of Balkanization would be the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) just signed by 26 Republican governors, Spartanly titled the American Governors’ Border Strike Force.
Signed off by the governors of Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, the document’s opening sentence pretty much says it all;
Due to President Biden’s disastrous border policies, dangerous transnational criminal organizations continue flooding our communities with drugs while reaping billions of dollars from human smuggling and causing a record breaking number of apprehensions at the Southern Border.
Interestingly enough, the signatories agreed to rather broad solutions that made my heart smile;
In the absence of federal leadership, states are partnering together to create the American Governors’ Border Strike Force to disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations by increasing collaboration, improving intelligence, investing in analysis, combating human smuggling, and stopping drug flow in our states.
By partnering across state lines, governors can serve as a force multiplier to target cartels and criminal networks financially and operationally. Together, governors will improve public safety, protect victims from horrific crimes, reduce the amount of drugs in our communities, and alleviate the humanitarian crisis at the Southern Border.
Perhaps it’s just the retired Marine in me that my ears perk-up with words and phrases used such as “increasing collaboration”, “combatting” and “operationally.”
Here are a handful of specifics that the governors noted;
- WHEREAS, the states, through the adoption of the United States Constitution, created the federal government to protect the states from those outside our borders that seek to harm our country and its people; and
- WHEREAS, the federal government has inexplicably failed to complete the border wall, which would be a major impediment to those crossing the border illegally; and
- WHEREAS, in the absence of the federal government, the states have spent billions of dollars to protect their citizens from threats caused by the federal government’s failure to protect the states from a breach of the Southern Border; and
- WHEREAS, the federal government’s neglect of its duty has forced the states to take actions to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens and to join together at times to protect their collective interests.
Even deeper in the weeds, this stuck out (emphasis mine);
Assist border states with supplemental staff and resources at state fusion centers, such as on rotation assignments, to share information obtained both on the border and in other states.
These specifics strike me as the governors laying the groundwork for officially declaring the United States is in the state of being invaded, and these states will eventually have no other choice than to respond militarily.