The Texas Nationalist Movement Responds to the White House's Dismissal of the Texas Secession Petition
When the White House dismissed a petition for Texas independence, the Texas Nationalist Movement answered that the response was itself one more argument for the right of Texans to decide their own future.
The people of Texas adhere to the principle set out in Article 1, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution, which declares that Texas is “a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” In the absence of any constitutional prohibition on a state asserting its independence, the administration's response to the petition is simply one more argument in favor of it.
In dismissing the petition, the White House restated a view once held by figures from Santa Anna to King George III, and more recently by the world's strongmen, all of whom believed that governments can and should deny the right of self-determination. It did so with misreadings of the Constitution, a misunderstanding of how the union was constructed, and thinly veiled warnings against any state that would exercise that right.
We can agree on one point. Democracy is, in the administration's own words, noisy and controversial. That is precisely why the founders built a union of republics rather than a single democracy, and why they abandoned the Articles of Confederation, the only document in our history to claim a perpetual union, in favor of a Constitution that is silent on a state's departure and a Tenth Amendment that reserves to the states and the people every power not granted to the federal government.
“If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation to a continuance in union,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I have no hesitation in saying, let us separate.” The right of self-determination is as fundamental as the freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and it is not granted or withdrawn at the pleasure of any administration. If the federal government insists, with the Supreme Court, that this is an indestructible union of indestructible states, it is bound by its own logic: the agreement that brought Texas into the union expressly allowed Texas to divide into as many as five states, a provision no “indestructible state” could ever honor.
TNM Communications Office · media@thetnm.org · 800-662-1836
The Texas Nationalist Movement is the largest organization working to put a single question to the people of Texas in a binding, up-or-down vote: whether Texas should govern itself as an independent nation. 635,352 Texans across all 254 counties are on record in support. Learn more at tnm.me.