They do everything bigger in Texas, I’ve been told. Well almost everything:
For some folks in Texas, the prospect of a universal health care scheme isn’t just cause for protest and debate — it’s reason enough to secede from the United States altogether.
Some 200 people rallied at the State Capitol in Austin on Saturday, a small but vocal crowd that set itself in opposition to pro-health care reform protesters.
Larry Kilgore, a Christian activist that the Texas Observer says has advocated execution for homosexuals, “drew some murmurs of disapproval” when he told the crowd: “I hate that flag up there. … I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”
“We hate the United States!” he declared later in his address.
Here’s the video:
I pity the fool. And by that reference I specifically mean Larry Kilgore. If health care reform is enough to make him go secesh on the US than he and those like him really are pitiful creatures. Maybe he can go hole up in some small West Texas enclave and declare his forty acres of wasteland the Republic of Gilead. I bet it would make a great reality show for the Fall TV season. I’m sure FOX would pick it up in a heartbeat.
Yet another “Christian” for hate. I love them. I do, however, wonder if he hated the US government when GWB and the Dark Lord of the Underworld were in charge
God damn America, eh.
calling rev. wright …wonder if the reichwing pontificators will jump on mr. kilgore?…………a rhetorical question btw.
can we just give tejas back to mexico?
What’s in it for Mexico?
Now what percentage of the 25 million people agree with Larry Kilgore?
Or is this another episode of our Right Wing Zoo series, featuring exotic and/or endangered species.
Having spent a good deal of time in Texas over the years, I would have to say that these folks represent a tiny sliver. They are far over the top, even for Texas.
Keep in mind, Obama got 44% of the vote in Texas.
That fact was what prompted my question. That’s just 1 point from being a purple state.
You are correct. According to Tengrain (Mock Paper Scissors) there is a petition for secession with about a million signatures on it.
Dissing the loonies is one thing, but we don’t want to lump them in as representing all of Texas.
Do these people ever explain just what it is they’re all in a frenzy about? It’s always just a lot of vague ranting about nothing in particular. I don’t think it has anything to do with healthcare or any other issue. Looks to be just a bunch of not overbright folks getting attention the way 2-year-olds do. Maybe the Nanny State keeps trying to change their diapers when they still want to play in the shit.
The Russians have sent in agitprop agents to divide the nation – don’t be an ex-commie dupe!
I wish he WOULD create the Republic of Gilead (lol name) or whatever. The USA is far too big and far too homogeneous politically.
Each California senator represents circa 26 million people aka more than my entire COUNTRY – that is just ridiculous. We either need about 5000 more senators and representatives or else more secession 🙂
Pax
I am far from being hostile to the idea of secession — I am both a Southerner and an American in part because of the Declaration of Independence which establishes secession as an inherent right — but particularly as a Southerner, where we have these pockets of nutcases, I’m less than sympathetic to the idea of secession to gain the unimpeded right to torment and oppress one’s neighbors.
In short, yes, we would probably be better off as a collection of smaller countries, but not if those smaller countries included, let’s say, a nuclear-armed northern Alabama. For the time being, the federal state is our best bulwark against a dozen petty regional thugocracies. If, someday, an egalitarian Texas that looks to the well-being of all of its citizens, white, black, and brown, decides it wants to be independent, more power to them. But these kooks are not the ones to do it.
Demographics are changing Texas. That’s part of where the white anger is coming from. They see that their days of power are slipping away and the thought that what they did might be done to them makes them a little nutty.
Plus, unlike other states of the Confederacy, Texas seceded twice–once from Mexico and then from the US. No other state has that history. Twice might seem like routine to some folks. Routine as in “no big deal”. In the South, the teaching of state history tends toward triumphalism.
That said, 200 people at a rally in the state capitol is a pitifully small number. Obviously most Texans paid as much attention to their history lessons as the rest of America, or they aren’t as eager to embrace their secessionist past as these kooks.
corvus, on a serious note corporatists like small countries because they are even more malleable than big countries.
Dividing up the US into smaller countries gets the Exxons of the world salivating.
I don’t know about that. My impression is that he megacorps do better in the US than in the EU. Outfits like Microsoft and the communications industries do not find the EU as malleable as the US of A. The Exxons may be an exception that disproves your rule. Maybe the lesson is, keep the big countries a while longer, until the petro-economy is dead and gone. One of the benefits of sustainable energy is that it can’t be monopolized or centralized.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Small, poor, and deeply corrupt countries — like much of sub-Saharan Africa, yes. Small, rich, and reasonably honest countries, like much of western Europe, not so much.
Besides, corrupt one European country, and you still have to corrupt the other couple of dozen. Corrupt a really big, rich country like the US, and you can use it as a proxy to dictate terms to the rest of the world. Conversely, if you want to throw off the shackles of a corrupt government, it’s easier to do it in a small country than a large one.
There is, of course, no simple solution to our problems, or else simpletons would have ushered in a utopian age long ago. As a general rule, though, all large concentrations of power, public or private, are a threat to individual liberty.
If Texas secedes the US can invade it, kill the religious extremists and steal their oil. Where’s the down side?
Oh, how I WISH we could carve out some land for Republicans to secede to!!!
Their Private Idaho?
Nice. 😉 Although I’d be happy to just give them Texas and be done with it. But the good folks in San Antonio would be much displeased.
As long as we can STRICTLY enforce immigration policies on their asses. I’d volunteer for that Minuteman brigade!
If a health care overhaul would be done under George W. Bush they would have no problem with staying in the Union. It’s quite pathetic.