Actual presidential contender Ron Paul (right), seen here posing with the Politibot 3000.

Actual presidential contender Ron Paul (right), seen here posing with the Politibot 3000.

“Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession. Some felt it was treasonous to secede from England, but those ‘traitors’ became our country’s greatest patriots,” the former presidential candidate wrote in a post on his House website. “There is nothing treasonous or unpatriotic about wanting a federal government that is more responsive to the people it represents.” He continued: “If the possibility of secession is completely off the table there is nothing to stop the federal government from continuing to encroach on our liberties and no recourse for those who are sick and tired of it.”

Rep. Ron Paul, currently wrapping up his long career of doing whatever it is Ron Paul thinks he's been doing, these many years Ah, yes. The current conservative intellectual masturbation, wondering aloud at how maybe America has come to suck far too much in the last four Obama-having years and maybe it's about time for certain states to cast off their Pell Grants and federal highways and other book-learnin' oppressions and have a go at being their own darn countries for a while.

We could argue with Paul's definition of secession, I suppose. We might wonder aloud at how it is that calling for the dissolution of the nation because the last election left you slightly butt-hurt no longer ranks as "unpatriotic." We might also point out that secession is, in fact, quite specifically legally off the table, and that it's been off that table for quite some time now, and so on and so forth, blah blah blah. And it's sorely, sorely tempting to marvel at how the modern Republican Party considers loudly bailing out in the face of adversity (insert Palin reference here) to be something akin to a freaking sacrament.

Look, we're mostly Democrats here at Daily Kos. With few possible exceptions, everyone reading this was (1) alive and (2) conscious during the clustermuffin that was 2000, when George W. Bush got to be president because a Supreme Court said the nation could not possibly handle any more of this difficult "counting" business, and I think it's safe to say that that and the resulting eight years was a considerably deeper cut than the "oh, the nation's first black president got reelected" part that has the current conservative secession-mumblers so convinced of the republic's imminent demise. Nonetheless, I don't seem to remember non-conservatives signing up to have their states removed from the union by the tens or hundreds of thousands, and I don't think it was just because the internet was a bit newer back then.

So seriously, Ron Paul and Rick Perry and half the state of Texas and conservatives in general, suck it up a bit. Nobody likes whiners. Stop claiming a glorious permanent conservative revolution every time you win (2010) and threatening an actual conservative revolution every time you lose (2012). Stop waffling between the bullying "love it" and the maudlin, emo "leave it" parts depending on which day of the week it is.

And for God's sake, please, please stop demanding the end of the republic each and every time you get pissed off that maybe the government is treating some minority a bit more like they're actually human. It's been two hundred and some odd years of this crap, that horse died a long while back.

