Jan 9^th

George Abbott is the Governor of Texas, and Governor Abbott believes we need a constitutional convention because he isn’t happy with the constitution we have. Changing the constitution requires a great deal of work; first you have to get the states’ approval for a constitutional convention;  this means that have to get two-thirds of them to approve the idea. Once you have a convention, any proposed changes to the constitution must be approved by 38 states. The amendment process we’ve used up to now has worked quite well but I’m afraid that the Governor wants to go far beyond an amendment to the constitution, he wants wholesale changes. (At this point a number of states want to require a balanced budget amendment and we might get that. Of course getting it might mean we would have to start paying for wars as we fight them. Would that mean raising taxes? What, give up war or raise taxes…what a dilemma!)

Governor Abbott has a list of changes in the constitution he hopes to accomplish: Most interesting is that Abbott wants to prohibit Congress from regulating any activity occurring wholly within a state. So if a state wants to re-institute slavery, just so long as they don’t sell or buy their slaves from out of state that will be fine. Is this man hopelessly unacquainted with history? Actually, he probably is; this is the same state that has insisted on re-writing the high school history books to show that slavery was not all that large a cause for the Civil War; it was really states’ rights. And of course it was states’ rights, the rights of the states to perpetuate slavery that was the issue. This is obvious for anyone who bothers to read the Declaration of Causes for Texas’ succession from the union published 2/2/1861. The third paragraph clearly states that slavery of the Negro race should be entirely up to the states. The governor must have been reading his own state’s high school history books which now claim that slavery was really a “side issue.”

I should point out that Governor Abbott has been in the national news several times lately. Back awhile he called out the Texas National Guard. At issue was the potential threat that the federal government was about to invade Texas and Governor Abbott was not about to take chances about that. In fact the federal government was conducting some simulated war games but Governor Abbott I guess, is abnormally nervous about federal power and felt that he should be prepared. At about this time the governor floated the notion of Texas withdrawing from the union. I have never been to Texas so there might be advantages there that appeal to many outside the state, but I believe that if funds were required to accomplish Texas’ withdrawal from the union many outsiders would be happy to help and the financing would not be a problem. I hope Governor Abbott will let us know if financial help for the succession movement is needed.