Secession movements move well beyond Texas

AUSTIN, Texas -- As head of the Texas Nationalist Movement, Daniel Miller of Nederland believes it's time for the Lone Star State to sever its bond with the United States and return to the days when Texas was an independent republic.

"Independence. In our lifetime," Miller's organization proclaims on its Web site.

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested that some Texans might want to secede from the Union because they are fed up with the federal government, the remarks drew nationwide news coverage and became fodder for late-night comedians.

But to Texas separatists such as Miller and Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Kilgore of Mansfield, secession is no laughing matter. Nor is it exclusive to the nation's second-largest state.

Fanned by contempt for Washington, secession movements have sprouted up in perhaps more than a dozen states in recent years. In Vermont, retired economics professor Thomas Naylor leads the Second Vermont Republic, a self-styled citizens network dedicated to extracting the sparsely populated New England state from "the American Empire."

And on the other side of the continent, Northwestern separatists envision a Republic of Cascadia carved out of Oregon, Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

While most Americans dismiss the breakaway sentiments, sociologists and political experts say they are part of a larger anti-Washington wave that is spreading across the country. More commonplace are states' rights movements to directly challenge federal laws, a citizens revolt that one scholar says is unparalleled in modern times. Among the actions in which states are thumbing their nose at Washington:

• Montana and Tennessee have enacted legislation declaring that firearms made and kept within those states are beyond the authority of the federal government. Similar versions of the law, known as the Firearms Freedom Act, have been introduced in at least four other states.

• Arizona lawmakers will let voters decide a proposed state constitutional amendment that would opt the state out of federal health-care mandates under consideration in Congress. The amendment will be on the November 2010 ballot.

Republican state Rep. Nancy Barto said five other states considered similar versions of the amendment this year, and at least nine others are expected to do so next year.

• Nearly two dozen states have approved resolutions refusing to participate in the Real ID Act of 2005, which requires that driver's licenses and state ID cards conform to federal standards.

• A campaign called "Bring the Guard Home" is pushing legislation in 23 states that would empower governors to recall state National Guard units from Iraq on the premise that the federal law authorizing such deployments has expired.

"It's gaining momentum, to say the least," said Jim Draeger, program manager for Peace Action Wisconsin. He said the initiative has a respectable chance of passing the Legislature in his state.

Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center in Los Angeles, a think tank that monitors states' rights activity, said defiance of federal policy is "unprecedented" and cuts across the philosophical spectrum, ranging from staunch conservatives to anti-war activists to civil libertarians. Legislatures in 37 states, he said, have introduced state-sovereignty resolutions, and at least seven have passed. Perry, who faces a tough Republican primary challenge from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, has made state sovereignty one of his signature themes. During the 2009 Legislature, he endorsed an unsuccessful resolution supporting the 10th Amendment, which says powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution belong to the states.

Texas was an epicenter for this year's "tea party" protests, in which thousands of Americans displayed their contempt for rising taxes and federal intrusion. After a tea party in April, Perry told reporters that secession might be on the minds of some Texans disgusted with the federal government. He later stressed that he wasn't advocating secession.

But others are.

In a poll of 1,209 respondents conducted by Zogby International last year, 22 percent said they believed that "any state or region" has the right to secede and become an independent republic, and 18 percent said they would support a secessionist movement in their state. Conversely, more than 70 percent expressed opposition to secession.

Kirk Sale of Mount Pleasant, S.C., formed the Middlebury Institute in 2004 for the study of "separatism, secession and self-determination." The institute conducted the Third North American Secessionist Convention in New Hampshire in 2008, drawing delegates from about two dozen secessionist organizations in the U.S. and Canada.

Breakaway sentiments and anger at Washington also run high within the Southern National Congress, a 14-state organization aiming to "express Southern grievances and promote Southern interests."

Chairman Tom Moore, who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, says the group is "not explicitly a secessionist organization," although "most of our people probably do favor that option."