One of the most puzzling reactions to President Barack Obama’s re-election last week is the growing movement by residents of more than half the states to secede from the Union. Tens of thousands are signing petitions that in effect seek the ability to form their “own new government.” What nonsense.
The petitions posted on the White House website “We the People” have been signed by hundreds of thousands of people. Tennessee and Georgia are among the states are represented, but they are hardly alone. Residents of at least 30 states have signed petitions, though it appears to some who have scanned the signatures that some individuals have signed petitions for multiple states.
It is pretty clear that those who want to secede from the union are unhappy with Obama’s re-election. Those who have signed the petitions and who have commented publicly about them are pretty coy. Most, in fact, don’t mention the president by name but say things like “We’re fed up with the way things are …” or “It would be a crime against the people of any state to hold them, against their will, in a Union that they desire to leave.”
It’s not hard to divine what drives many, but not all of those who signed the petition. Some observers of the contemporary political scene mince no words, in fact, in what they perceive as the reason for the nascent secession movement.
“It’s nothing but race,” says Tyrone Brooks, president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials. “Some people are upset at the fact that we have an African-American president.” That’s not so, says one Georgia signer of the secession petition.