Secession talk is just a bridge to nowhere

It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.

There’s a close contest and the side that comes out on the short end wants to take its ball and go home. If we can’t win, they decide, we’ll go play somewhere else where we can.

And just as certainly, those who take that knee-jerk approach will fume for a while and then come back for another game.

That’s pretty much what the latest secessionist movement is — the presidential election didn’t turn out the way they wanted, so now they want to get out of the country altogether.

The idea, though, that this line of thinking is merely right-wing sour grapes is incorrect. We can remember quite a few high-profile left-wingers who threatened to pack up and move to Canada if President George W. Bush were re-elected, and he was. And they didn’t.

One difference, however, is that enough signatures have been collected in a Texas petition so that the Obama administration is required to respond to the petition.

We’ll go ahead and give you the short answer — no.

Petitions in other states haven’t picked up enough signers to require a White House response.

The election of 2012 was a hard fought one, a bitter one and a divisive one. There’s no doubt that feelings were hurt and resentment has resulted. And quite a few on the winning side have been quick to rub it in.

Unfortunately, political partisanship these days seems to mimic professional wrestling more than it does intellectual debate. It’s time both sides found some common ground for a solid foundation on which this nation can build its recovery and advancement.

In any event, talk of secession is, in a word, ridiculous. No one is going to take an acre of American soil and turn it into another nation.

It’s easy to point out our problems and threaten to leave. It’s harder to address those problems and improve the situation. One thing is true about Americans — we have always been great builders.

And right now, we have a great gap in our country. We need to go to work building a bridge that will span it.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board