By now you may have read about Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck's desire to secede from the Union (if not an excellent primer is located here). Obviously, talk of armed revolt is not only treasonous, but it's down right stupid. Allow me to explain...
In the Norris fantasy (warning! link contains powerful wingnut), Texas is the heart of the secession, so let's give him that. He also believes that "some in the military" will join their movement, so let's give him an unbelievably high number and say 25% will join him (honestly, they'd be lucky to get 5%, but I'm willing to give them a chance). So they've got a "country" of about 24.5 million people (compare to the USA at 301 million), but now the real questions start;
What about resources - Texas is currently the nations leading cattle producer, which would mean beef prices would go up. They also have a fair amount of oil, about 1/4 of our total capacity. After that comes commercial fishing, which would probably be contested now since they wouldn't be part of the US. The state of Texas is also a major technology and commerce hub, but both sectors would undoubtedly migrate to maintain their business ties to the rest of the world.
Speaking of the rest of the world, who would their allies be - When the secessionist of the Confederacy made their attempt they had hoped that Britain and France would step in. Texas would have no such hope. In fact, they could pretty much count out any of the US allies (who's a bigger trading partner, the US or Texas?). The best they could probably hope for would be countries that wanted to harm the US (North Korea, Cuba, maybe a very quiet China), but that wouldn't look good would it? Nope, they'd be pretty alone, which would be a problem considering the above paragraph.
Then there would be their economy - Even assuming that Texas could get some kind of recognition (and that's a HUGE assumption), they've got no real basis for an economy. They might have minimal assest to back a currency at the start, but as the Confederacy found out, that runs out very quickly.
In short, like most wingnut fantasies and B-movies, it wouldn't work even if they wanted it to. Mr. Norris, if you and your little band of friends don't like the current government, work to change it. If you don't like the current plan, come up with a better one. But until that time, shut the fuck up becuase this isn't "Invasion USA" and nobody is waiting for you to come to the "rescue".
