Did you know that — After a secession petition from all of the fifty states was sent to the White House for a formal response, a poll taken by Huffington showed that a lot of Americans, especially Republicans, favor the idea of the secession of their own states from the Union, and also the secession of other states if that’s what a majority of those states’ citizens want ?

At the time Glenn Beck said that a majority of states actively participated in the petition, but warned that any attempt at secession would certainly mean another civil war

It has been reported in the Huffington Post and others that many residents in most of these United States have used the online petition tool – "We The People" –  to file with the White House “requests to secede” from the United States in the wake of the presidential election.  Apparently this had been done, because the petitioners apparently are not getting all that they wanted out of this country's traditional version of participatory democracy, the national elections.  That method of petitioning had been previously best known as the primary method that marijuana enthusiasts had used to communicate with high-ranking members of the White House staff ( “Residents In All 50 States File Petitions To Secede From United States” by Jason Linkins, 11/14/12
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/secession-50-states-_n_2131447.html#slide=more32984 ]). According to the U.S. News the largest petition came from the State of Texas with over sixty-four thousand (64,000) signatures ( “Texas Wants To Secede From America More Than Any Other State” by Elizabeth Flock, 11/13/12
 [http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/11/13/white-house-flooded-with-secession-petitions-after-obama-re-election ] ).

Apparently, intrigued by the initial petition, The Huffington Post conducted a snap HuffPost/YouGov  poll on the popularity of the notion of secession and posted a report of its results ( “Secession Poll: Majority Opposes Their State Seceding From The Union” by Ariel Edwards-Levy, 11/16/12 [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/secession-poll_n_2147048.html ]
Those results are almost incredible; and if they reflect anything approaching reality, the number people in the United States favoring their own state’s self-removal from the union is quite large. (A complete tabulation of the poll conducted by HuffPost/YouGov  is available as a PDF at
[ http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/yougovsecession.pdf ]). Those favoring the secession from the union of other states’ desiring to do so is similarly remarkable.

According to the Ariel Edwards-Levy post carried by Huffington, “...[M]ost Americans don't embrace their own state severing ties with the nation. Over half opposed seeing their state secede, with forty-two percent [42%] strongly opposing the idea, while twenty-two  percent [22%] said they supported the idea and about a quarter [@1/4] saying they weren't sure.”

Digging into the numbers reported by the Huffington Post told a much more interesting and nuanced  tale. For example, Republican respondents were more likely to support the proposition of their own state’s secession from the Union: forty-three percent (43%) said they were in favor of the idea, compared to twenty-two percent (22%) of Independents, who said they favored secession; while even ten percent (10%) of Democrats favored that option.

Although the petitions to secede that had been submitted to the White House reached the 25,000-signature mark needed to get an “official” White House response, in some states just over twenty percent (20%) of those polled said they'd even heard a very much about the petitions, while forty-two percent (42%)  said they'd heard only a little bit and twenty-seven percent (27%)  said that they'd heard nothing at all.

On a related question, most Americans were split on whether states other than their own should be allowed to call it quits. Twenty-nine percent (29%)  said states should be allowed to secede if a majority of their residents supported secession, while thirty-eight percent (38%) said they should not be allowed to do so, and about a third weren't sure. Republicans were more likely to approve of secession by some other state, with forty-six percent (46%)  saying states should be allowed to leave the union if a majority of their citizens chose to do that.

For a description of the initial petitioning effort, see Glenn Beck’s post “More than 30 states have a serious secession movement” on the Glenn Beck blog, 11/13/12
[ http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/13/more-than-30-states-have-a-serious-secession-movement/ ].  That post by Mr. Beck was made before the initial petitioning to the White House was completed.  Nonetheless, at the end of his posting about secession, Glenn Beck had this very important caveat: “... the issue of secession was settled during the Civil War. *** ‘ ...if you think you’re going to have secession without war, you’re crazy. You’re not going to. What you are going to have instead,  I believe, more likely than secession is you’re going to have a significant disruption in the lifestyle of the United States of America’.”

No doubt, many of those polled by HuffPost/YouGov  would say that’s already happened, so bring on what it takes for secession and what follows from that.