Secession? Well, I swear and declare

And to continue with another old southern expression, “I’ll be switched.”  To think that our beloved state of Texas has joined a number of states submitting petitions for applying for secession.  That’s right, secession from America – from the United States of America.  It seems that there is a group of intense folks who are so determined to remove themselves and our state from membership in the USofA, that they are including  everybody in our state in the process.  Now I don’t have a bit of a problem with folks who are like-minded to these secessionist individuals all getting together and going somewhere else.  There’s Mexico, there’s Canada (if Canada would take them), there’s Australia, heck there’s probably some odd island somewhere that could use a sudden population.

Folks, we need dissent.  We need different points of view and we need debate. But that’s not what is happening.  These secessionist folks (or as they used to refer to them during the Civil War in the 1800’s, these ‘secesh’), are so determined to achieve their brand of ‘freedom’ that they clean forgot us other folks and our brand of democracy.  And doesn’t that seem to be the way of it nowadays?   Folks so determined to be free of the government telling them what to do that they decide to tell everyone else what to do.  And I do not wish for such nonsense, particularly for such nonsense to be presented as if these ‘secesh’ are speaking for all of us Texans.  They are not.

Decades ago, back in the ‘eighties, I mentioned to my mate and best friend that it sure seemed that our country had not yet recovered from our involvement in Vietnam.  “Heck,” this wise man exclaimed, “our country has not yet recovered from the Civil War.”  Thinking about it all, I realized he was exactly right.  And that seems to be what is going on right now in states such as Texas, in fact all across the South.  There are folks who are consciously or subconsciously reacting and over-reacting to the re-election of Barack Obama, purely because he is half black.  Or half white, depending on one’s view.  We simply think he's a good man.

Well, we can say that for us and our family, we’re proud to be Americans, proud of our President, and most of the time, proud to be Texans and Southerners, at least until some fool thing like this comes up.     And one more thing, we are always, always proud to say the Oath of Allegiance, particularly the part that goes, “one nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”