House of Burgess

"Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."
- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.

Chuck Norris wants Texas to secede from the United States of America so he can become its president.
That is not a joke I heard or made up. It is very real.
“On Glenn Beck’s radio show last week, I quipped in response to our wayward federal government, ‘I may run for president of Texas.’” wrote Norris on last month on the Web site “World Net Daily.” “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”
That alone might not be enough to make anything more than make a blip on the odd news radar, but apparently the current head of the state isn’t ruling out the idea.
“Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax ‘tea party’ (April 15) with his stance against the federal government and for states’ rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, ‘Secede!’,” stated a portion of an Associated Press story. “An animated Perry told the crowd at Austin City Hall -- one of three tea parties he was attending across the state -- that officials in Washington have abandoned the country's founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt...Later, answering news reporters’ questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that.
“There's a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot.”
Really? Then go on and do something then. Please. I’d love to see you try. Keep talking greasy. We’ll make like Honest Abe and school you to what it means to be a part of the Union like it’s 1865 up in here. It’ll be a grand time.
I double, nay, triple dog dare you.
Don’t believe me? Then consider the prophetic words of another Texas governor, one Sam Houston.
“Let me tell you what is coming,” he said in 1860. “After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union.”
What’s really appalling to me is how this kind of talk went out and everyone on both sides of political spectrum didn’t immediately call them out on their frankly treasonous comments. Sure, a group of Texas House Democrats, including Democratic Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, called the comments anti-American, but where, oh where, are those über-“patriotic” countrymen who would, and have before, just as soon have chanted “USA! USA! USA!” until any dissent was drowned out on this one?
And another thing: I clearly remember the firestorm of faux-outrage that would errupt every time an entertainer would reportedly threaten to move if a certain candidate won the election.
“Before the election actor Robert Redford said if Bush won, he’d leave the country for Ireland,” wrote Corey Deitz on the Web site “About.com” on Nov. 17, 2004. “Well, syndicated talker, Glenn Beck, has raised over $7,000 and purchased airline tickets for him for a December flight. Beck’s website says, ‘We realized after we started this fund raiser that we didn't have a way to contact Robert Redford with the good news about his plane tickets. So we are now collecting additional funds to purchase a full page advertisement in his home town news paper, the Provo Daily Herald.’”
Sheesh. Imagine what would have happened if Redford had threatened to take Utah with him?
They couldn’t have gotten their torches and pitchforks together fast enough, that’s what would have happened.
What I love about my country is that we don’t have to share each others values to live here. In fact, that’s fundamentally the only thing we have to agree on.
And if the future president of Norrisland and anyone else have a problem with that, we’ll have it their way...again.