That said, if we are to embark on this course it is important that we not re-create the same conditions which led to disaster and meltdown. We have to have a common belief in personal responsibility and accountability. We must eliminate excusism and victimhood. We must ensure that never again will organizations take precedence over people. We must re-embrace several key fundamentals of morality -- and I'm not talking about sex or religion, I'm talking about fundamental core beliefs that some things are right and some are wrong; we have to again come to believe in Good and Evil, and that there can be no shades of gray in the matter. And we have to accept that not everyone is willing or able to embrace that view and have the courage to take from those people the right to decide the direction of society and government.

We have only to look at the circus which is our Legislature and state government to see that without this fundamental shift in our personal beliefs, all we'd gain by secession is a big mess on a smaller scale. We have state representatives and senators who represent their insurance agencies and law firms, not the people of the districts they are elected from, and craft legislation to protect those industries. We have a governor who talked tough about the invasion from our southern neighbor, then tried to steamroller property owners into submission to create a "corridor" through which the invaders could suck our nation dry.

Before we can achieve independence, we must first ensure that our new government can never travel the direction the old one took. Political parties have become part of that failure. Many of te Founding Fathers of the U.S. feared the formation of political parties because they enable the concentration of political power. The two major parties today wrestle with one another not over issues, but only over which one is in power. And they conspire with one another to keep all other political organizations marginalized by limiting ballot access and by fomenting conditions in which money, not political ideology, enables electability. If we are to succeed as an independent nation, Texas must prohibit the formation of political parties.

We Texans have, because of our long association with the United States, come to view our system of government as a "democracy." Yet it is, in fact, a Republic based on democratic representation. We have seen over the last century a drift more toward pure democracy, and the result of that drift has been a legislative and executive branch which tends to reward or favor those who voted it into power. While some now call the passage a "myth," Scottish professor Alexander Tyler is credited with having asserted that democracy cannot survive as a form of government: "It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury ... From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." 

This is precisely what is happening in the United States right now. AIG gave massive donations to members of Congress and both major party presidential candidates, for example. They rewarded that by gifting the failed business with massive amounts of money from the public treasury. Vast numbers of Americans voted for liberal politicians who promised expanded social welfare programs and entitlements; the legislators thus elected reward that loyalty by expanding social welfare programs and entitlements, while their political opponents fear challenging the constitutionality of those programs to avoid "offending" blocs of voters who over the last half-century have become perpetually government-dependent. The system of taxation increasingly penalizes those who work the hardest and rewards those who contribute the least.

Constitutionally prohibiting charity by the government is the first step. While many of us maintain that it is already prohibited because it is not expressly allowed by the current Constitution, a specific clause in our new framework for government can help ensure that never again will government be dominated by those who do not contribute. 

The second layer of protection would be to limit the franchise, which would take us away from direct democracy and guide us more toward a true Republic. To ensure that those who decide the direction of government recognize the importance of the burden they bear, I would propose that we limit the franchise to those who have demonstrated by their willingness to serve society that they accept the responsibility for the protection of that society via national military service. Anyone who is mentally capable would be eligible to serve -- today's military forces include only about 10-15 percent jobs which are "combat" in nature, and there are many positions which even the most physically disabled could perform, and age would also not be an issue. Two years' service and you become eligible to vote, hold office and make decisions to help guide society.  Initially, of course, we would have to include those who have already proven their responsibility -- military veterans -- as well as such important civil servants like police, firemen and others, but eventually such a system would ensure that the irresponsible and lazy never again dominate society as they do now.

Most importantly, we as a society have to change our fundamental way of thinking. We must accept that the world is not always a fair place, but that right and wrong, good and evil, exist. We cannot accept or tolerate excuses. It is unfortunate to grow up impoverished, for example, but a thief is still a thief, whether he steals a stick of gum or a car. Penalties must actually give those contemplating breaking the law pause to think -- no more probation, no more "rehabilitation." We may define things such as public punishments or humiliations as "cruel" these days, but let's face facts: those ideas worked.

Finally, we have to accept that for our new society to survive, anything which threatens it must be destroyed -- not just defeated, but destroyed utterly so that it can never threaten us again. The half-measures and "diplomatic solutions" so common today only serve to create more strife around the world, and never solve it. If illegal drugs are destroying our youth, we not only combat them at the border, we destroy the places the drugs are grown or created, we destroy the criminals who transport them and we destroy anyone who distributes them. If Muslim extremists carry out terrorism against us, we destroy the extremists and we destroy the society from which they sprang.

There are a lot of us out here who think that Texas should be free. The question is, are we willing to do what is necessary to avoid the mistakes which brought down the United States and so many other empires before them?