'Why not Texit?': Texas nationalists look to the Brexit vote for inspiration
 

Daniel Miller and others draw parallels with what they call Britain?s ill-suited relationship with Europe and frustration in Lone Star state with US government


How closely is Daniel Miller tracking the news ahead of the referendum about whether Britain should leave the European Union? ?Hourly!? he grins. The Sun?s recent editorial calling for the UK?s departure got him quite excited.

Miller, though, is not from London or Liverpool. He hails from Longview, Texas, and we are talking in a cafe in the bleakly industrial Gulf coast town of Port Arthur, some 5,000 miles from Westminster.

Culturally, too, we are a long way from Europe. Heck, we are even a long way from Dallas. But the referendum matters deeply to Miller and like-minded Texans. As the president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, which wants Texas to secede from the United States, he is hoping for a Leave vote that he believes will ripple all the way from Austria to Austin.

?There are a lot of people asking, if Brexit why not Texit?? he says. ?I do talk with some folks over there on a pretty regular basis that are involved in Ukip and the Conservative party.?

The night before we met, Miller addressed a local Tea Party group, drawing parallels between Brexit and Texit, which the TNM is pushing as a hashtag. In Miller?s telling, Britain?s relationship with Europe was a marriage of convenience between ill-suited partners that has become stormy and ripe for divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences, with too much sovereignty ceded to an ineffective central bureaucracy and too much hard-earned money sent elsewhere.

?Sound familiar?? he asked the audience. ?Nigel Farage, you guys ever heard of him? Look him up on YouTube ? trust me, you will enjoy.?

Added to the near-miss of Scottish independence in 2014, a vote for Brexit on 23 June, Miller tells me, ?only helps our case because there is a concrete first world example of a modern democracy having a legitimate and public debate where the people of a country, not the political class, get to vote on how they govern themselves and that will resonate not just through Europe but here as well?.

The arguments are fundamentally identical, he insists. ?You could take ?Britain? out and replace it with ?Texas?. You could take ?EU? out and replace it with ?US?. You could take ?Brussels? out and replace it with ?Washington DC?. You could give you guys a nice Texas drawl and no one would know any different. So much of it is exactly the same.?

The TNM, based in this humid corner of south-east Texas near the Louisiana border, is the most prominent and best organised of the groups that want the Lone Star state to go it alone, and plausibly asserts that the issue is growing in popularity and gathering more mainstream credibility (or at least, less mainstream ridicule).

Miller, 42, is a polished advocate who grew up in a politically active household and became frustrated by what he sees as the shackles of a federal government that are stopping Texas from reaching its full potential.

Buoyed by the rearguard action at the battle of the Alamo, Texas toiled to free itself from Mexican rule and was an independent nation from 1836 to 1845. But its fiercely solitary spirit did not fade when it became part of the union. Texas Independence Day, 2 March, is still an annual state holiday. In 2003 a state law was passed requiring schoolchildren to pledge allegiance daily to the Texas flag as well as the US flag.

Continued https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-eu-referendum

now everybody wants out from somewhere :)

Boredom ?

Oh I was waiting for this ... There is one rule though.. All Trumpaloompas have to go with them..

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cd3ZdCgXIAAUSfM.jpg

You guys can build a wall around Texas..

Because Texas is part of the country and UK is a country?

Never mind the obvious but let them play their game...

I still think they should all move to Afghan..no taxes, all the guns you want, no real govt to tell you what to do and they can shoot at muslims anytime they want.. Added bonus there is no Mexicans

The notion of secession, whether it be Brexit or Texit, are the same concept. The only difference lies in their naming convention as part of a nation-state.

One is called a country and the other a state. What their called is their only difference. Both are comprised of a group of individuals.

And if we recognize, through democracy, that one collective has the right to secede from a larger collective, then the logical conclusion is that the individual should have that same right.

Crockett, being the statist that you are, I know you don't like the notion of freedom, but god damn that would be great.

You have no clue what real freedom is.. You think changing the people who rule you is freedom. I think doing what I want as long as it doesn't harm someone else is freedom..

The problem with your idea of sucession being freedom is not everyone agreed to go meaning they are forcing people to leave who do not want to leave.

It's not like it was 80 or 90% in favor it was barely over 50%. That means over 40% of the population is being forced into this..

Where is their freedom?

You will never be free of govt and if you are there will be someone there in the anarchy who will want to rule you..

Meanwhile, my idea of freedom, is to do what I want as long as I harm no others.. That's exactly what I do.. I know freedom you will never understand because you are more worried about who your leader is and when you will make your next rent/mortgage payment.. You are owned by the system and think changing your ruler equals freedom.

Your idea of freedom is being ruled by the majority.. I choose to have no ruler over my personal life.. As long as I can live my life how I choose I have freedom you will never understand.

You guys should read up on the referendums that went down in Quebec, Canada!

Ahahahahahahahaahahahahaha, you don't even realize you sound just like the Texans you point your finger at.

Rebel rebel, you tore your dress.

Not the same concept by any means:
UK as a country is just stopping being in some country group, completely different from part of the country trying to secede.
2 not even remotely comparable things.

Texas secession would be much more closely in comparison to Saxony secession from Germany, than Brexit. I am not saying the same because Saxony as German state does not have as much autonomy as US states, but I am saying it would be MUCH more closer comparison.

The difference is Texans are all talk just like conservatives...

I actually do.

Hence the reason I troll them.. They are all talk no action. Texans love to preach freedom but they are likely tje biggest police state in the union..FL is likely the 2nd as far as police state.

Just another asshole craving attention. Instead of getting it the right way he has to get it by saying something stupid!

That would be an unlawful act of succession and start a new civil war. Just a bunch of Texans takin' shit.

After the US Civil War the Federal US government stationed troops throughout the rebel states for a reason. Those troops are not a majority of Texans -- if you get my drift.

Few people realize a huge part of the civil war was about succession. Maybe even the biggest part.

Uhm, I'm an anarchist -- so, no, I don't think changing rulers is freedom. Anarchy is "without rulers".

That's why I said in my original post, that applying the idea of secession consistently means individuals should be able to secede/opt out of involuntary collectives (such as governments).

Will *want* to, whether or not they will is another story. That's where being armed enters the picture. And once a population rejects the notion of government, there's no army on earth that can take it over and implement a government, as that requires the populace to believe in the notion of authority and government -- and along with it, taxation.

Again, I think you're confused here and I must have been confused about you. And yes, what you're describing is known as the non-aggression principle, a libertarian/voluntaryist/anarchist principle. I agree with that.

But I'm all for allowing Texans to secede. While it's going from a macro level of control to a slightly lesser scale (going from federal to state-sized government), it's still a reduction of control, similar to what Brexit did.

Anarchist My Ass -- Last week you were a Libertarian :1orglaugh

Making bombs in the basement -- look out kid ...

Brexit opened a situation that all states that want to be separate are now going to be able to. wonder what its going to do for the economy

Article 50 is not anarchy or some great revolution.


I made some e-z money off Brexit. A lot of people did :2 cents: You made your bed lie in it.

US based businesses will reassess their locations in the UK as a duty free and VAT tax-free gateway to the EU. Ireland looks like the big winner, I would invest in Dublin commercial development.

When the hard times hit the USA will break up like yugoslavia LOL I hope I live to see and raugh!

So we get a black president and Texas wants out...I get it.

These Photos Show A Fast Disappearing Way Of Serbian Life

Looks like Odessa in my maternal grandfather's time --he was a blacksmith too 100 years ago in Czarist Russia

Lol bro.. I'll give you a pass because most people don't dive into these topics very much.

One can be a libertarian and an anarchist simultaneously. How?

Central to libertarianism is the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), which is the recognition that it's wrong to initiate or threaten the initiation of force against a person or property.

Libertarians who consistently adhere to the NAP in every aspect, are also anarchists. This is because taxation breaks the NAP (taxation is a required element of any government).

So the libertarian political party, who attempts to run for political office; those guys don't consistently apply the NAP. They're not consistent in their philosophy. Some do it because they think it's the best way to "transition" from state to stateless societies, but most are just confused minarchists.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_anarchism

Edit: Ron Paul was a libertarian, but he was one of the very few who's ultimate end goal was anarchy / voluntaryism.

Observe:

no imaginations in this thread.

the USA would never allow texas to go because of the oil infrastructure. if texas did that, feds would go putin & invade houston, like putin did the crimea.

but with obama in office he would probably let texas take away our oil.

then texas could price gouge the rest of the USA on oil products & become the richest country in america.

it would be like biff tanners america, 1985...:)

This seems to pop up every couple of years. Texas thinks it could survive on its own and it might be able to, but once the US government stop spending billions on military bases, paying for the government, paving the roads etc they might find themselves without a whole lot of cash.

They do have oil, which will help to some degree, but with oil prices dropping it might not help that much.

Let them try and die. Texas is a shithole. Anyone stupid enough to still live there after a 1 year warning in the future deserves what they get.

You think I don't know what an anarchist is LMAO

I was a spiritual Yippie 40 years while you were probably drool running down your father's leg.



But in a modern society it is not possible to be an Anarchist. Even if you live in a tent in the woods someone owns the land you are squatting on and he got his title to that land from some government. The same government that will lock you up for vagrancy or as a mentally diminished person. That is an anarchists real life.

There is a hierarchy in life -- and a food chain.

Whatever ...

@DBS.US;

You need to photochop a cowboy on the front side and a Lone Star Beer on the backside of that bill.

And secured by a longhorn cowshit 'pie':2 cents:

You don't think we would include Florida?

You obviously don't know enough about it to know that one can be a libertarian and an anarchist:

And then we have this gem down here... Ever hear of moving the goalposts? That's what you're doing now..

I never made any claim that you can live freely as an anarchist, so what are you talking about?