Dear Washington D.C.,

Are you ok? We haven't heard from you in a while.

You've been spending a lot of time over at Mainstream Media's house, and you frankly never call or text. Hell, you could just open a window and look out, but you seem to have installed security filters on those.

Look, I know you're really Gung Ho about this new WAR(tm) you want us all to buy into, but I need to ask you a serious question here.

This will be a really short Essay, but I think it's a question which needs to be answered.

Has anyone else around here noticed that every time the clause "The State is Indivisible" or equivalent appears in any country's Constitution, that country has a chunk of its land and people who emphatically do NOT want to be part of it?

We have a general idea of support for 'self-determination'. See the colonies declaring independence from Britain in 1776.

Then it gets fuzzier. We left it pretty ambiguous after that, until the south tried to exercise a
right to secede in 1861, and we said no, you don't have that right.

So if there is any principle around the issue, it seems to suggest that people who don't have the power of democracy have a right to secede, but people who have democracy, don't.