Secession is a valid option for a state in these United States

My thanks to crodgers for the opportunity to take this debate. My Burden of Proof in this debate will be to show that secession is not a valid option for a state in these United States. I will fulfill my Burden of Proof by showing that A State of the United States of America cannot currently, in good conscience and as a rational body acting rationally, hope to secede from the federal government/union of States if it also hopes to remain culturally and economically viable and sufficient or if it hopes to afford its remaining citizens the standard or quality of life to which they have been accustomed over the past 50+ years. It is important to note in this debate that I personally support (to some extent) the idea of secession from the union. I fully believe in States’ Rights and am opposed to any government that is as large as our currently federal government because you will inevitably see abuses of power such as the ones currently holding our nation back from achieving the greatness it deserves. I do not, however, hold that secession is currently a viable option for A State. Let’s get into this quickly, I’d like to keep this debate quick and clean, I won’t have the time to get bogged down in a drawn out debate. val·id : having legal efficacy or force; especially : executed with the proper legal authority and formalities well-grounded or justifiable : being at once relevant and meaningful <a valid theory> : logically correct [1] While it is possible that a state might secede, I argue that it cannot be done under economically or socially responsible terms. Firstly, secession cannot be a valid option for any state because, by definition, validity is legality, justifiability, and logically correct. Consider the following, from an article written by Adam Cohen, the author of Nothing to Fear, who teaches at Yale Law School The Constitution, which provides processes for new states to enter the union and for current states to divide or reconfigure, does not have a provision for states to leave the union. A state would have to leave by force …since there is no legal basis it could point to for breaking away….Justice Antonin Scalia — who would probably rank No. 1 or 2 in a parlor-game bet over which Justice is most likely to sign a secession petition — has said… “ [The] answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.” The conservative Republican governors of Alabama and Texas have come out publicly against secession, and the governor of Louisiana — whose state’s signature total was second only to Texas’ on Nov. 14 — called the idea “silly.” [2] Ok, so I’ve shown that A: Secession by A State is not a valid option because it isn’t legal, therefore not valid. B: Secession by A State is not a valid option because it isn’t supported by even the people who support the idea of secession (myself, Governor Perry, Justice Scalia included) Now let’s address economic viability of secession. If it is not logically justifiable to secede from an economic standpoint, secession cannot be considered a valid option. States and their citizens have become used to the comforts and niceties provided by federal funding. Is it legal or a provided power of the U.S. Federal government to police drugs and alcohol? Can the federal government tell states what the legal drinking age has to be? Not legally, but if those states want their roads paved, odds are they’re going to suck it up and send kids to war that can’t drink, because the federal government (which again, I am not a fan of at its current size) won’t fund them if they don’t play nicely. State officials have become addicted to federal subsidies because they allow them to spend money taken from taxpayers across the country instead of having to ask their voters to pony up the funds. As the following charts shows, total state spending continued to increase during the economic downturn because the federal government picked up the slack. Note that the federal share of total state spending went from 25.7 percent in 2001 to 34.1 percent in 2011. [3] Please Click on the below link for chart... I can't get my jpg to upload to this site for some reason...http://www.downsizinggovernment.org... The federal government spends about $500 billion annually on aid to the states, making it the third largest item in the budget after Social Security and national defense. The number of different aid programs has soared from 463 in 1990 to 814 by 2006 [4] Why then do states not reform under a confederacy or a republic or as individual nations of their own? If it were economically and practically viable, it would have been done already. I eagerly await my opponent’s response. Thanks again to crodgers for this debate. [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com... [2] http://ideas.time.com... [3] http://www.cato.org... [4] http://www.downsizinggovernment.org...