What if texas was still a country

Rick Perry R , who told a crowd that year that when the former Republic of Texas "came in the Union in , one of the issues was that we would be able to leave, if we decided to do that. Some Texas Republicans posit that faced with the threat of eight new Republicans tilting the balance of the Senate, Washington would let the Texas offshoots leave without a fight.

What would happen if the feds let states go peacefully? First of all, "it would be excellent financial news for those of us left behind if Obama were to grant a number of the rebel states their wish," says Dana Milbank at The Washington Post. That's because most states threatening to secede are part of the old Confederacy, and "low tax" southern red states typically get "far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. And what about residents of unshackled red states?

If you're in a state intent on bolting the Union, there is good tax news, says MarketWatch 's Arends : "You will be liberated from the sheer living hell of the federal tax code. Obama would close down or repossess federal courthouses, prisons, national parks, and military bases that pump tens of billions each into local economies. Plus, Texas and other newly minted nations would have to pay for their own militaries, says Jack Simmons at the UT-Arlington Shorthorn.

So why is secession so popular? It's not, really. Even in Texas, the hotbed of the secession movement, support for breaking free is limited to "a loud but small minority," says the Houston Chronicle 's Dunham. The biggest state in the continental United States would not only be a midsize nation in terms of land area, the world's 40th biggest, but an economic powerhouse.

It would be the 14th largest economy in the world, bigger than South Korea or the Netherlands, and roughly equivalent to two Switzerlands. GDP, placed it just behind Spain, and one notch above its neighbor Mexico, in the rankings compiled by the International Monetary Fund. To power all of this, Texas has a lot of oil, producing about 2 million barrels per day. Houston, the largest city in the state, calls itself the energy capital of the world, and with good reason: Oil giant ConocoPhillips NYSE: COP is based there, as well as many other energy firms.

So, the basics of a successful nation are there. But as Frank Zappa once said, "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It's certainly not lacking for beer. Lone Star Beer, brewed in Fort Worth, proudly says on its site that "Drinking any other beer is treason" a crime that can be committed only against a sovereign state, as it were -- and Wikipedia lists 25 active breweries in the state, where beer is a far more popular drink than wine.

As for airlines, Texas is spoiled for choice. OK, now try it as a foreigner. Then there's the matter of national defense. The U.

Clearly, they'd have to go since no independent Texan would want to live in an occupied country. And the American soldiers and sailors would take their guns, munitions, tanks, fighter jets, bombers, naval destroyers and carriers and helicopters with them.

Vibrant posts like Fort Hood and Fort Bliss would become ghost towns as the economic ripples the military brings to nearby cities and towns abruptly flatline. And don't forget about the thousands of jobs at all of the defense plants across Texas.

The remaining American congressmembers and the 98 other senators are all going to want the billions spent in plants like Lockheed-Martin in Fort Worth to flow to their states and districts back in the good old US of A. More: Judge to U. That means Texas would have to build and outfit an army, navy and air force from scratch. When the United States rebuilt the Iraqi army from scratch all those years ago, it cost tens of billions of dollars not dillos and it took a lot of false starts because all of the political factions in Iraqi society made it hard to develop a cohesive fighting force.

Surely, nobody thinks a vote to secede would be unanimous here in Texas. That means any cohesive Lone Star fighting force would have to be drawn from a cross section of Texas society and political persuasions.

If you're not sure what that looks like, read all the comments from all the posts on your Facebook feed. And what if a foreign power were to unleash force to liberate Texas of its oil, or even its barbecue, before the new military was up and running? Would Texas leaders have to beg their estranged Uncle Sam to ride to the rescue? That would be like a year-old just off on his own having to call dad the first time his car conked out.