Adventures in Whirlwind-Reaping

When Gov. Rick Perry started talking secession, and everyone in the media told him he was playing with fire, it seemed to get laughed off. Now the even firebrands are saying he lit them.

While an estimated 2,000 advocates for health care reform met politely on Saturday afternoon, the Texas Nationalist Movement was up at the capitol, attracting about a tenth of that crowd and railing against the USA.

Perry, even thought he was invited, was a no-show, so today TNM leader Daniel Miller wrote, "It’s time for the governor to prove that he wasn’t just making 'pillow talk' during an election cycle to ensure he’d retain the support of his party’s conservative wing. It’s time to prove that he believes what he says and is not just posturing for the cameras."

Probably best that Perry wasn't present, otherwise he'd have to explain exactly why he was hanging around with people suggesting bloody revolution against the USA.

The secession crew are now no longer even pretending to find legal covers for their cause. Biblical literalist Larry Kilgore kicked things off on Saturday by telling the crowd that George Washington didn't care about legal secession (that will be George Washington the American). "Sovereignty is not good enough," he added, "Secession is the answer." He then went on to say "(The US) will not be part of Texas any more," thus showing a sterling grasp of geography.

It's easy enough to write Kilgore off as a full-on bona fide fringoid Lew Rockwell-boosting loon (just look at his agenda), but he still got 7% of the Republican primary vote in a four-way race in 2006 when he ran against Perry for governor.

This year's fringe right gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina said she was "aware that stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war" and brought out the regularly misquoted saying about the tree of freedom and the blood of patriots and tyrants. Of course, Medina missed what Thomas Jefferson said earlier in that famous quote ("The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive") which seems far more pertinent in these circumstances.

These opinions are, in reality, marginal even within the Republican party. So why should Perry be worried? Because when Miller writes that "if the Governor will not act to protect the rights of Texas and Texans as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, then we will," then Perry probably should wonder which side of that "tyrants versus patriots" equation he's being placed.