Opinion | Texas Republicans want to secede? Good riddance.

However, because the saying goes: If at first you don’t secede, strive, strive once more. The Texas GOP now needs the state to vote on declaring independence.

And the US ought to let Texas go! Higher but, let’s provide Texas a severance package deal that features Oklahoma to sweeten secession — the Sooner the higher.

Over the weekend, whereas many Individuals had been celebrating the 167th anniversary of Juneteenth (when Union Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Tex., delivered the order abolishing slavery) the Texas Republican Get together voted on a platform declaring that federal legal guidelines it dislikes “must be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”

The proposed platform (it’s anticipated to be authorized when votes are tallied) provides: “Texas retains the appropriate to secede from the US, and the Texas Legislature must be referred to as upon to cross a referendum constant thereto.” It needs the secession referendum “within the 2023 common election for the folks of Texas to find out whether or not or not the State of Texas ought to reassert its standing as an unbiased nation.”

After all, protections must be negotiated for elements of Texas that want to stay on Workforce Regular. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and elements of South Texas would stay in the US, and they’ll want assured protected passage to New Orleans or Santa Fe, together with common airlifts of sustainable produce, correct textbooks and contraceptives.

However think about the advantages to the remainder of the nation: Two fewer Republican senators, two dozen fewer Republican members of the Home, annual financial savings of $83 billion in protection funds that Texas will get. And one of the best motive? The Texas GOP has so little regard for the Structure that it’s calling for a “Conference of the States” to successfully rewrite it — and so little regard for the US that it needs to depart.

In democracy’s place, the Republican Get together, which enjoys one-party rule in Texas, is successfully proposing a church state. In case you appreciated Crusader states and Muslim caliphates, you’ll love the Accomplice Theocracy of Texas.

The Texas GOP platform provides us a good suggestion what such a paradise for Christian nationalists would seem like. Texas would formally declare that “homosexuality is an irregular way of life selection.” It could redefine marriage as a “covenant solely between one organic man and one organic girl,” and it might “nullify” any court docket rulings on the contrary. (The homosexual Log Cabin Republicans had been banned from organising a sales space on the conference.) It could fill colleges with “prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments” however ban “the educating of intercourse training.” It could abolish all abortions and require college students to “be taught in regards to the Humanity of the Preborn Youngster.”

The Texas Theocracy, which maintains that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” would preserve solely traces of democracy. It needs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “repealed,” and it might rewrite the state structure to empower minority rule by small, rural (and White) counties. It could rescind voters’ proper to elect senators and the Structure’s assure of birthright citizenship.

The Texas Theocracy would most likely be broke; it needs to abolish the federal revenue tax, “Axe the Property Tax” and get rid of the property tax and numerous enterprise taxes. But it’s planning a hawkish international coverage! The platform argues that Texas is at the moment “underneath an energetic invasion” and will take “any and all acceptable measures the sovereign state defines as essential to defend” itself. It imagines assaults by a “One World Authorities, or The Nice Reset” — an internet-born conspiracy perception — and proposes “withdrawal from the present United Nations.” The Theocracy would put the “wild” again within the West, abolishing the minimal wage, environmental and banking rules, and “red-flag” legal guidelines or ready intervals to stop harmful folks from shopping for weapons.

Above all, the Accomplice Theocracy of Texas can be outlined by thought police. It could penalize “woke companies” and companies that disagree with the theocracy over abortion, race, trans rights and the “inalienable proper to refuse vaccination.”

Authorities applications can be stripped of “training involving race.” Evolution and local weather change “shall be taught as challengeable scientific theories topic to vary.” There can be a “full repeal of the hate crime legal guidelines.” The Texas Revolution “shall not be ‘reimagined’” in a method the theocracy finds “disrespectful.” Accomplice monuments “shall be protected,” “plaques honoring the Accomplice widows” restored, and classes on “the tyrannical historical past of socialism” required.

Of their platform, the Texas Republicans invoked “God” or the “Creator” 18 occasions and “sovereignty” or sovereign energy 24 occasions. And the phrase “democracy”? Solely as soon as — in reference to China.