Have you ever wondered if there are any pro-Texit academics, especially after every media report trots a liberal professor to say, “you can’t secede?”
The TNM is hosting a live-streamed webinar with the foremost global expert on independence referendums, Dr. Matt Qvortrup. As the only prominent academic to accurately predict the outcome of the BREXIT vote, Dr. Qvortrup will discuss his work on independence movements worldwide, his new book “I Want To Break Free,” and how it all shatters the opposition myths about TEXIT.
Dr. Matt Qvortrup is an internationally recognized political scientist with a strong presence in the world of practice. Described by the BBC as ‘the world’s leading expert on referendums”, he has specialized in European Affairs, populism and democracy, most recently in his BBC program ‘How to Kill a Democracy’. Currently a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Coventry University and visiting professor of Political Theory at the American University of Rome, Matt earned his doctorate in politics from Brasenose College, Oxford University, and holds a qualification as a lawyer from the University of Law, London.
The winner of the Oxford University Press Law Prize 2012 for his research on referendums, he was also awarded the BJPIR Prize by the Political Studies Association in 2013 for his work on European political institutions. He has won funding from research councils, including the ESRC, and consultancies from national and international bodies. In 2015, he was a consultant to the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs and Public Administration Committee, and he was chief researcher for the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute study of referendums, and he is currently the holder of a grant from the Westminster Foundation of Democracy, on the conduct of referendums in the age of populism.
In addition to his academic work, Professor Qvortrup has written op-eds for The Guardian, The New Statesman, El Pais, Bloomberg, Foreign Policy, and the LA Times. Earlier in his career, Professor Qvortrup was a senior civil servant in the British Home Office.
The Texas Declaration of Independence itself tells us it is necessary to do so.
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.
When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.
When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.
And if that is not enough, then so does the US Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--
It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid a Compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civil Virtue. But we should only press it in Necessaries, the rest may prove a Snare and Temptation to break Society. But above all, it is a Weakness in Religion and Government, where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since besides that it makes Way for Scruples, Liberty is always the Price of it....William Penn
Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:47 am (Last edited: Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:49 am)
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