Is secession a dirty word?

Did you hear the one about Georgia threatening to secede from the union – again? If that sounds like the beginning of a joke, brace yourself. The Georgia Senate really did pass a resolution (on a 43-1 vote, no less) that some people interpret as a thinly veiled threat to secede from the union if the federal government continues to ignore the limits on its power specified in the Tenth Amendment to our Constitution.

You may not have heard much about this bill because most observers consider it to have been little more than a publicity stunt, a calculated move by Georgia’s ruling party to capitalize on the frustration that many of us are feeling towards the federal government and its seemingly insatiable lust for power. I’m sure that’s exactly what it was too, but it still might provide us with some interesting food for thought.

I admit that the idea of secession seems ridiculous on its face, and I am sensitive to the fact that the last time southern states attempted to secede from the union things did not turn out well. It’s very difficult to even talk about the political and legal justifications of secession in the Civil War era without the discussion being overwhelmed by the championing of slavery by the Confederate states, and understandably so.

But that was then, and this is now.

Today the talk about secession in Georgia and a few other states (most notably the always independent-minded Texas) is not motivated by any desire to enslave or discriminate against anyone. It is motivated instead by a growing concern that the federal government has for some time been ignoring one of the bedrock principles on which our union was founded.

The Tenth Amendment to our Constitution reads as follows:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

What that means in a nutshell is that the federal government is only empowered by its founding document to govern the states and individual citizens in ways specifically spelled out in the Constitution. Many people, including me, believe that the federal government has for some time been engaging in behavior that the Constitution does not give it the authority to do.

Here are just a few things the federal government does that would be hard to reconcile with the Tenth Amendment:

- Creating mandatory government-run retirement and health care plans (Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.)

- Passing laws that regulate the practice of abortion, euthanasia, and drug use (both the “legal” and “illegal” kind).

- Setting and enforcing rules and regulations that dictate education policy to the states.

- Using taxpayer money to “bail out” and then take control of troubled private enterprises.

Obviously the phenomenon of unbounded government authority didn’t start with the Obama administration and neither party has let the Tenth Amendment temper their ambitions for a very long time. But the snowball seems to be getting a lot bigger a lot faster lately, and the fact that issue has risen to greater prominence in a lot of people’s minds seems like a very good thing to me.

I certainly don’t believe that Georgia should secede from the United States, at least not any time soon. The best way for us to deal with an out-of-control federal government is to send people to Washington who are committed to turning the ship around and hope that other states do the same.

But what if a majority of the other states do not share our commitment to the Tenth Amendment and the federal government continues to behave in a manner contrary to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution? I think perhaps people in Washington should be made aware that here in Georgia we don’t consider any option to be completely off the table. If the resolution passed by our state senate sent that message, then it was not a complete waste of time.