The modern world keeps voting on this. Texas would not be first.

The wrong example

When someone says "every secession has failed," they are almost always picturing one thing: the Confederate States of America, 1861 to 1865.

That is the wrong example. It is not the only example, and it is not the relevant one. A war fought to preserve slavery, lost on the battlefield, is not the template for a 21st-century democratic vote. The relevant examples are the modern ones: peaceful, democratic, negotiated separations, and near-misses decided at the ballot box. Look at those, and the picture flips entirely.

Start with the one that gave this whole movement its name.

Brexit: the precedent in the name itself

TEXIT is derived from Brexit. That is not a coincidence or a marketing trick. It is the literal etymology.

The word traveled a short road. When Greece looked like it might leave the Eurozone, two Citigroup economists mashed up "Greece" and "exit" and coined "Grexit." It stayed locked in policy-wonk circles. Then a British blogger, Peter Wilding, lamenting the rise of UK voices resisting further integration with the European Union, wrote that the Greek exit "might be followed by another sad word, Brexit." That one caught fire. Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party ran with it. Pro-Brexit members of both major parties picked it up. The opposition railed against it, and the public folded the term into every conversation about Europe.

When Prime Minister David Cameron called the referendum on Britain's EU membership, the connection to Texas's own long-gestating independence movement was immediate. In the wake of the Brexit result, the domestic media turned to Texas and started asking the obvious question: "Is Texit next?"

So when the establishment tells you that leaving a larger political union is unthinkable and unprecedented, remember that the most consequential democratic separation of the modern era happened in 2016, it was decided by ordinary voters at the ballot box, and Texas independence is named after it. Brexit is the lead precedent. Everything else fills in the picture.

Scotland, 2014: the mechanism works

In September 2014 the people of Scotland answered six words on a ballot: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" Centuries of longing and decades of political struggle came down to that.

Westminster and the Scottish Parliament negotiated the terms in advance (the Edinburgh Agreement). Two campaigns formed: Yes Scotland for independence, Better Together to remain. The No side won, 55 to 45. Scotland did not become independent.

But notice what the vote proved. The United Kingdom recognized, in advance, that a Yes vote would have produced a sovereign Scotland with full international recognition. The mechanism for a peaceful separation by referendum exists and is well understood. Scotland simply voted No. (One detail worth keeping: insiders inside Better Together privately called their own operation "Project Fear," because scaremongering was the strategy. Hold that thought.)

Quebec, 1995: decided by a whisker

Canada and Quebec held a sovereignty referendum on October 30, 1995. The No side won 50.58 to 49.42, a margin of roughly 54,000 votes out of 4.7 million. The federal government recognized, beforehand, that Quebec's National Assembly had the authority to put the question to its people and that a Yes vote would trigger a negotiation. This followed an earlier 1980 referendum and years of constitutional wrangling. Again: the mechanism worked. Quebec just did not vote Yes.

Catalonia, 2017: when Project Fear backfires

Here is the one the opposition files under "failure." They have it exactly backwards.

In the run-up to the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, the Spanish central government chose a strategy of threats and fear to stop the vote. The Catalans held it anyway. Spain chose threat, fear, and outright violence to stop people from participating. People participated anyway. Even as Spanish batons were cracking Catalan skulls and grandmothers were being assaulted at polling places, the joy of a people exercising their right of self-determination was everywhere in the streets.

And then came the part Madrid never saw coming. After the vote, the Spanish government found itself staring at the result of its own campaign of fear: more people supported independence after the referendum than before it. Ana Pousa, Spanish by birth but raised in Catalonia, put it to Fox News:

"They don't realize how many people they converted. Hearing myself saying 'I'm Spanish' sounds strange. Because now it means something different."

That is the lesson, and it is the opposite of what the opponents claim. State coercion does not crush an independence movement. It converts the undecided. Fear is a weak weapon, and when it is aimed at a proud people, it backfires far more often than it works. Texans respond to threats and fear exactly the way Catalans did: by digging in. Catalonia is not a cautionary tale against independence. It is a live demonstration of why Project Fear is destined to fail in Texas too.

The Velvet Divorce: one clean example

For a textbook case of a calm, mutual, no-drama split, there is Czechoslovakia. On January 1, 1993, it separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The leadership of both sides negotiated the terms over about six months. There was no violence, which is why it is called the Velvet Divorce. International recognition followed within weeks. Both states later joined the European Union and are stable democracies today. It is the cleanest example in modern history of a peaceful national separation by mutual consent. One example, cited and moved past, not the entire frame.

What "failed secession" actually means

When someone insists every secession has failed, they are usually collapsing three very different things into one word, and none of the three describes Texas:

Wars that ended in defeat. The American Civil War, the Biafran War, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. These are wars, not democratic separations. Texit is structured as a referendum, not a war.

Unilateral declarations no one recognized. A go-it-alone declaration with no negotiated path and no recognition is a different animal from what Texas proposes. Texit runs through the Texas Independence Referendum Act, a vote first, then a negotiated settlement with U.S. recognition built into the framework.

Successful separations that later hit governance bumps. Some new nations struggled after independence. That is a governance problem that comes after the separation, not a flaw in the separation itself, and Texas, with a developed institutional base and one of the world's largest economies, starts from a stronger position than almost any of them.

The frame, corrected

The Confederacy met none of the conditions a modern separation rests on: it was a unilateral declaration, founded to preserve slavery, never internationally recognized, built on an economic system already obsolete. Pointing at 1865 to answer a 2026 question is a category error.

The honest precedents are Brexit, Scotland, Quebec, Catalonia, the Velvet Divorce. Decided by voters. Recognized by the world. Named, in our case, after the most famous one of them all.

Stop letting the 1860s be the comparison for a question the modern world keeps answering at the ballot box.